See Also: BOOKS

1. Deprive him [the habitual reader] of printed matter and he grows nervous, moody and restless; then, like the alcoholic bereft of brandy who will drink shellac or methylated spirit, he will make do with the advertisements of a paper five years old; he will make do with a telephone directory —W. Somerset Maugham
2. A person who cannot read is something like a blind man walking through a pleasant meadow, where there are flowers and fruit trees; there are many pleasant things and many wise and good things printed in books, but we cannot get them unless we read —Timothy Dwight
3. Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body —Sir Richard Steele
4. The reading of detective stories is an addiction like tobacco or alcohol —W. H. Auden
5. Reading that is only whimful and desultory amounts to a kind of cultural vagrancy. It neither wets nor fortifies the mind. It merely distracts and tires it like traffic noises on an overcrowded street —John Mason Brown
6. Reading the same book over and over again is a mechanical exercise like the Tibetan turning of a prayer-wheel —Clifton Fadiman

   See Also: REPETITION

7. Reads like some people wrestle; she gets involved —François Camoin