52 Reasons to Read a Book

“A book is a dream that you hold in your hand.” ― Neil Gaiman

“My Alma mater was books, a good library… I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity.” ― Malcolm X

“Always read something that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.” ― P.J. O’Rourke

“So many books, so little time.” ― Frank Zappa

“You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.”― C.S. Lewis

“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.” ― Haruki Murakami

“Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading (to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs) is good for him.” ― Maya Angelou

“There is no friend as loyal as a book.” ― Ernest Hemingway

“A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.” ― Franz Kafka

“… a mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge.” ― George R.R. Martin

“Some books should be tasted, some devoured, but only a few should be chewed and digested thoroughly.” ― Francis Bacon

“When I was about eight, I decided that the most wonderful thing, next to a human being, was a book.” ― Margaret Walker

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.” ― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.” ― Mark Twain

“Books are a uniquely portable magic.” ― Stephen King

“Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.” ― Groucho Marx

“A book is a version of the world. If you do not like it, ignore it or offer your own version in return.” ― Salman Rushdie

“If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.” ― Oscar Wilde

“What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn’t happen much, though.” ― J.D. Salinger

“The book you don’t read won’t help.” ― Jim Rohn

“A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading.” ― William Styron

“Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.” ― Gustave Flaubert

“I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in my life. And I am horribly limited.” ― Sylvia Plath

“When I have a little money, I buy books; and if I have any left, I buy food and clothes.” ― Desiderius Erasmus

“Make it a rule never to give a child a book you would not read yourself.” ― George Bernard Shaw

“Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?” ― Henry Ward Beecher

“I cannot live without books.” ― Thomas Jefferson

“Good books don’t give up all their secrets at once.” ― Stephen King

“Many people, myself among them, feel better at the mere sight of a book.” ― Jane Smiley

“There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.” ― Joseph Brodsky

“Books are my friends, my companions. They make me laugh and cry and find meaning in life.” ― Christopher Paolini

“It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.” ― James Baldwin

“Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home.” ― Anna Quindlen

“It is a great thing to start life with a small number of really good books which are your very own.” ― Arthur Conan Doyle

“Many a book is like a key to unknown chambers within the castle of one’s own self.” ― Franz Kafka

“Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry. When we consider a book, we mustn’t ask ourselves what it says but what it means…” ― Umberto Eco

“A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition.” ― Henry Miller

“I love books, by the way, way more than movies. Movies tell you what to think. A good book lets you choose a few thoughts for yourself.” ― Karen Marie Moning

“The library is inhabited by spirits that come out of the pages at night.” ― Isabel Allende

“I lived in books more than I lived anywhere else.” ― Neil Gaiman

“I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in.” ― Robert Louis Stevenson

“I think of life as a good book. The further you get into it, the more it begins to make sense.” ― Harold Kushner

“There are many little ways to enlarge your child’s world. Love of books is the best of all.” ― Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

“A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.” ― Gilbert K. Chesterton

“The best books… are those that tell you what you know already.” ― George Orwell

“There are perhaps no days of our childhood we lived so fully as those we spent with a favorite book.” ― Marcel Proust

“I cannot remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“A book is a device to ignite the imagination.” ― Alan Bennett

“Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren’t very new after all.” ― Abraham Lincoln

“The only important thing in a book is the meaning that it has for you.” ― W. Somerset Maugham

“A book is the only place in which you can examine a fragile thought without breaking it.” ― Edward P. Morgan

“Keep reading books, but remember that a book is only a book, and you should learn to think for yourself.” ― Maxim Gorky