Reading is an exercise in empathy; an exercise in walking in someone else’s shoes for a while.

Malorie Blackman, 20th ct. British writer of children’s literature

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.

Joseph Addison, 17th ct. English writer and politician

She read books as one would breathe air, to fill up and live.

Annie Dillard, 20th ct. American writer

Reading is a form of prayer, a guided meditation that briefly makes us believe we’re someone else.

George Saunders, 20th ct. American writer

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, 20th ct. American writer

Reading makes immigrants of us all. It takes us away from home, but more important, it finds homes for us everywhere.

Jean Rhys

Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.

Frederick Douglass

I can feel infinitely alive curled up on the sofa reading a book.

Benedict Cumberbatch

Salvation is certainly among the reasons I read. Reading and writing have always pulled me out of the darkest experiences in my life. Stories have given me a place in which to lose myself.

Roxane Gay

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, who had ever been alive.

James Baldwin

That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you’re not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Reading is a discount ticket to everywhere.

Mary Schmich

Reading is like thinking, like praying, like talking to a friend, like expressing your ideas, like listening to other people’s ideas, like listening to music, like looking at the view, like taking a walk on the beach.

Roberto Bolano

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

Reading was a joy, a desperately needed escape—I didn’t read to learn, I was reading to read.

Christian Bauman

Keep reading. It’s one of the most marvelous adventures that anyone can have.

Lloyd Alexander

It is not true that we have only one life to live; if we can read, we can live as many more lives and as many kinds of lives as we wish.

S. I. Hayakawa

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

If one reads enough books one has a fighting chance. Or better, one’s chances of survival increase with each book one reads.

Sherman Alexie