Up, and at my chamber all the morning and the office doing business, and also reading a little of L'escholle des filles, which is a mighty lewd book, but yet not amiss for a sober man once to read over to inform himself in the villainy of the world.
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February 9, 1668Samuel Pepys
And everyone's reading, you have to read, you can't be on the tube without reading, reading is very important. You get on on the morning and every single person is reading the Metro. Everyone, everyone. [imitates line of people reading newspaper] Why doesn't one person just read it to the carriage?
Michael McIntyre
[On book reviewing] I will only turn down a book if I know I won't be able to muster enough interest to read the bloody thing. Or if I realize that I despise the author, and that I'm just going to become hysterical in my dispraise. A couple of times in my life I've disobeyed my own rule, and later regretted it. [...] It's a delicate business. All too often, if one writes a favorable notice, it's seen as a product of the old-boy network, and if one dispraises a book, it's seen as envy. Nobody seems able to accept that I review books as a book reviewer, not as a competing novelist. When I review, I'm being as honest as I can. And I'm saying to the reading public the minuscule segment of the reading public that reads reviews that this is my judgment.
John Banville
I've noticed a certain anti-intellectualism going around this country; since about 1980, coincidentally enough. I was in Nashville, Tennessee, and after the show I went to a Waffle House. I'm not proud of it, but I was hungry. And I'm sitting there eating and reading a book. I don't know anybody, I'm alone, so I'm reading a book. The waitress comes over to me like, [gum smacking] "What'chu readin' for?" I had never been asked that. Not "What am I reading?", but "What am I reading for?" Goddammit, you stumped me. Hmm, why do I read? I suppose I read for a lot of reasons, one of the main ones being so I don't end up being a f**king waffle waitress.
Bill Hicks
Take a book, the poorest one written, but read it with the passion that it is the only book you will read-ultimately you will read everything out of it, that is, as much as there was in yourself, and you could never get more out of reading, even if you read the best of books.
Soren Aabye Kierkegaard
There is only one way to read, which is to browse in libraries and bookshops, picking up books that attract you, reading only those, dropping them when they bore you, skipping the parts that drag and never, never reading anything because you feel you ought, or because it is part of a trend or a movement. Remember that the book which bores you when you are twenty or thirty will open doors for you when you are forty or fifty and vice versa. Dont read a book out of its right time for you.
Doris Lessing
Pepys, Samuel
Perahia, Murray
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