To be a reader is to live the lives of so many characters. We walk the paths of adventurers, experience the drama of the lives of romantic couples, and fight battles with the enemy on our tails. For non-readers, readers appear to be lazy and have no lives for all we do is sit with our noses in books. Little do they realize that, although we appear introverted and antisocial, we have some of the most incredible lives full of imagination and adventure.
Only another reader can truly understand a fellow reader, so here are 15 quotes from authors that represent their readers:
1. “The odd thing about people who had many books was how they always wanted more.”
~ Patricia A. McKillip
2. “Every reader finds himself. The writer’s work is merely a kind of optical instrument that makes it possible for the reader to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself.”
~ Marcel Proust
3. “Most non-readers are nothing but an agglomeration of third-hand opinion and blindly received wisdom. ”
~ Tom Bissell
4. “Bookish people, who are often maladroit people, persist in thinking they can master any subtlety so long as it’s been shaped into acceptable expository prose.”
~ Carol Shields
5. “Not all readers become leaders, but all leaders must be readers.”
~ Harry Truman
6. “People who read are hiders. They hide who they are. People who hide don’t always like who they are.”
~ André Aciman
7. “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
8. “A good reader has the power to move the world.”
~ Aman Jassal
9. “If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.”
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
10. “I divide all readers into two classes; those who read to remember and those who read to forget.”
~ William Lyon Phelps
11. “Readers can surprise you. Many times, they notice layers in your stories, that even you were not aware of while writing.”
~ Shon Mehta
12. “If every library is in some sense a reflection of its readers, it is also an image of that which we are not, and cannot be.”
~ Alberto Manguel
13. “Because often it is the reader of adventures who saves the world. Because no matter how bad things look, or how rough things get, the reader keeps turning the pages… A reader never walks away from her own story.”
~ R.K. Ryals
14. “I know that no reader ever asks a question. A writer must force his favors upon his readers.”
~ Jan Neruda
15. “Books can truly change our lives: the lives of those who read them, the lives of those who write them. Readers and writers alike discover things they never knew about the world and about themselves.”
~ Lloyd Alexander
It doesn’t matter if someone calls you an introvert, a bookworm, a nerd or antisocial. As long as you read, you will live an extraordinary life.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8i-Pm7P7sg
YouTube Channel: the World of a Bookworm
Featured image via Deviant Art