Notes & Quotes
Quotes: On Reading
“Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.”
Sir Richard Steele, The Tatler, 1710.
“I’ve never known any trouble that an hour’s reading didn’t assuage.”
Montesquieu (d. 1755), Pensees Diverses
“The novel remains for me one of the few forms where we can record man’s complexity and the strength and decency of his longings. When we can describe, step by step, minute by minute, our not altogether unpleasant struggle to put ourselves into a viable and devout relationship to our beloved and mistaken world.”
John Cheever, accepting the National Book Award, The Writer, September 1958.
“All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one, you will feel that that all happened to you.”
Ernest Heminway, Esquire, December 1934.
“A good book should leave you…slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while you are reading it.”
William Styron, interview, Writers at Work, 1958.
