21 Quotes about Reading to Lift Up Your Soul

Shefali Lohia
September 6 2018
Share 21 Quotes about Reading to Lift Up Your Soul

A list of reasons for this list of quotes about reading: 

  1. A lot of incredible people have been able to capture the beauty of reading, and you need to read what they said and remember you’re not alone! Reading brings people together, so jump in! 
  2. Sometimes, you need a quote (or two, or ten) to remind you why you should prioritize reading, even when life is busy and it seems like there isn’t any time to do so! 
  3. These beautiful quotes about reading may even spark your own creative impulses and get you writing!
Without further ado, here are some of my favorite quotes about reading (coincidentally, from some of my favorite book people)!

“Books may well be the only true magic.”—Alice Hoffman 

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

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

“Reading is an active, imaginative act; it takes work.”—Khaled Hosseini 

“Maybe this is why we read, and why in moments of darkness we return to books: to find words for what we already know.”—Alberto Manguel, A Reading Diary: A Passionate Readers Reflections on a Year of Books 

“That’s the thing about books. They let you travel without moving your feet.”—Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake 

“Reading is a conversation. All books talk. But a good book listens as well.”—Mark Haddon 

“The story is truly finished—and meaning is made—not when the author adds the last period, but when the reader enters.”—Celeste Ng 

“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.”—Dr. Seuss, I Can Read with My Eyes Shut! 

“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies.”—George R. R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons 

“Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home.”—Anna Quindlen, How Reading Changed My Life 

“A book is a dream you hold in your hands.”—Neil Gaiman 

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“Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another’s skin, another’s voice, another’s soul.”—Joyce Carol Oates 

“A book, too, can be a star, a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe.”—Madeleine L’Engle 

“We read to know that we are not alone.”—C. S. Lewis 

“A good book is an education of the heart. It enlarges your sense of human possibility, what human nature is, of what happens in the world. It’s a creator of inwardness.”—Susan Sontag 

“When I look back, I am so impressed again with the life-giving power of literature. If I were a young person today, trying to gain a sense of myself in the world, I would do that again by reading, just as I did when I was young.”—Maya Angelou 

“One must always be careful of books, and what is inside them, for words have the power to change us.”―Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Angel 

“Some books leave us free and some books make us free.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

“A book is a gift you can open again and again.” – Garrison Keillor

“If you don’t like to read, you haven’t found the right book.” – J.K. Rowling

BONUS: Check out this list of “10 Strange and Wonderful Love Quotes from Literature!” 

This post was originally published on GetLiterary.com.

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