The quotations on reading are organized alphabetically by author and are in bold type. The link underneath an author’s name is to the Views on Reading blog entry reviewing the author’s article, speech, or book.

MORTIMER ADLER, (1902 –2001) was an American philosopher, educator, and popular author. He was a primary force behind the Encyclopedia Britannica’s Great Books program. He authored How to Read a Book in 1940 and, with Charles L Van Doren (1926 –2019) as co-author, brought out a 1972 revised edition of How to Read a Book.

• “In the case of good books, the point is not how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.” Taken from the book, Quote/Unquote, by Lizette Rabe (African Sun Media, SUN MeDIA, 2016), from the chapter “On writing, reading, books and, finally, words,” which can be loaded for free from the JSTOR database: https://tinyurl.com/2p9m3f9m

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (1977-) Nigerian Novelist, Short-story Writer and Activist
https://viewsonreading.com/2024/11/07/review-of-book-black-ink-literary-legends-on-the-peril-power-and-pleasure-of-reading-and-writing-edited-by-stephanie-stokes-oliver/

• “Stories matter.  Many stories matter.  Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign, but stories can also be used to empower and humanize.  Stories can break the dignity of a people, but stories can also repair the broken dignity.”

HENRY WARD BEECHER ((1813-1887) American Clergyman, Social Reformer, and Speaker

• “The pen is the tongue of the hand – a silent utter of words for the eye.” The International Thesaurus of Quotations (1987), Compiled by Rhoda Thomas Tripp

ARNOLD BENNETT, English Novelist (1867-1931)
https://viewsonreading.com/2024/05/25/arnold-bennetts-essay-translating-literature-into-life/

• “What is the object of reading unless something definite comes of it?” From Arnold Bennett’s essay, “Translating Literature Into Life,” contained in his book Things That Have Interested Me (1921)

• “…then I will ask you to take down any book at random from your shelves and conduct in your own mind an honest inquiry as to what has been the effect of that particular book on your actual living. If you can put your hand on any subsequent period, or fractional moment, of your life, and say: ‘I acted more wisely then, I wasn’t such a dupe then, I perceived more clearly then, I felt more deeply then, I saw more beauty then, I was kinder then, I was more joyous then, I was happier then—than I should have been if I had not read that book’—if you can honestly say this, then your reading of that book has not been utterly futile. But if you cannot say this, then the chances are that your reading of that book has been utterly futile.” From Arnold Bennett’s essay, “Translating Literature Into Life,” contained in his book Things That Have Interested Me (1921)

• “What is the matter with our reading is casualness, languor, preoccupation. We don’t give the book a chance. We don’t put ourselves at the disposal of the book. It is impossible to read properly without using all one’s engine-power. If we are not tired after reading, common sense is not in us. How should one grapple with a superior and not be out of breath?” From Arnold Bennett’s essay, “Translating Literature Into Life,” contained in his book Things That Have Interested Me (1921)

• Reading without subsequent reflection is ridiculous; it is a proof equally of folly and of vanity. Further, it is a sign of undue self-esteem to suppose that we can grasp the full import of an author’s message at a single reading. I would not say that every book worth reading once is worth reading twice over. But I would say that no book of great and established reputation is read till it is read at least twice. You can easily test the truth of this by reading again any classic.” From Arnold Bennett’s essay, “Translating Literature Into Life,” contained in his book Things That Have Interested Me (1921)
  

KEN BLANCHARD, American Author, Business Consultant and Motivational Speaker, AND OTHERS
https://viewsonreading.com/2023/11/15/review-of-know-can-do-put-your-know-how-into-action-by-ken-blanchard-paul-j-meyer-and-dick-ruhe/

• “Spaced repetition is a learning technique where you don’t learn something in just one sitting. You’re exposed to the information periodically over time so it so it sinks in….That is because one statement makes little if any permanent impact on someone. It has to be repeated over and over again. Not immediately, but after a time for reflection….So a person who understands the power of repetition has a decided advantage….An important message always requires repetition over time if it’s going to have its intended results.” Know Can Do!: Put Your Know-How Into Action, by Ken Blanchard, Paul J. Meyer, and Dick Ruhe. Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., 2007

• “We all have to develop our own strategy to keep our interest and zero in on what we want to apply and use in our lives….To truly master an area, people should immerse themselves in a focused amount of information, rather than be exposed to a large amount….People should learn less information more often, rather than learn more information less often.” Know Can Do!: Put Your Know-How Into Action, by Ken Blanchard, Paul J. Meyer, and Dick Ruhe. Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., 2007

• “Then, with people “learning less information more often”, people are to use spaced repetition when remembering and learning the newly acquired information: “To master something, we should focus on a few key concepts, repeat them over time, immerse ourselves deeply in them, and expand on the ideas and skills. Spaced repetition is key.” Know Can Do!: Put Your Know-How Into Action, by Ken Blanchard, Paul J. Meyer, and Dick Ruhe. Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., 2007
  

ANTHONY BURGESS ((1917 – 1993) British Writer and Music Composer, best known for his novel, A Clockwork Orange (1962)

• “…the adult relation to books is one of absorbing rather than being absorbed.  In youth, a book is a door; you enter, you surrender everything, you are gladly lost.  In middle-age, you want to hold on to your own identity, to consume, to use, to carve a book like a joint and ingest it to feed the identity.” Anthony Burgess’s Article “The Book Is Not For Reading,” Published in the New York Times Book Review, December 4, 1966
  
  
•  “The possession of a book becomes a substitute for reading it.
  
  When I had to get my William Faulkner out of the public library, I read him avidly.  Now I have a set of him on my shelves, and the desire to reread him grown weaker all the time.” Anthony Burgess’s Article “The Book Is Not For Reading,” Published in the New York Times Book Review, December 4, 1966
  

PEARL BUCK, (1892-1973), American Novelist and Writer
https://viewsonreading.com/2023/11/29/review-of-article-the-importance-of-books-by-pearl-buck/

• “… in a literate democracy, where reading is required of every normal-minded citizen, books ought to be as necessary as bread. We cannot understand the present or approach the future with any sort of common sense unless we have the that material in our minds which can only be got from books. Locked away in books are not only all the facts which the human mind has brought together and comprehended, but in books alone are to be found the creative thinking of the finest minds. I use the word locked, for reading is the key.” From “The Importance of Books,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, 42, no. 2 (1949)
  
  
• “…No one should say this book is good and that book is bad for all. It is dangerous in a democracy for any group to set itself to tell people what they should read. Churches should not do it and government should not do it. Such censorship is the first step towards book-burning throughout history and book- burning has been the sign of a dictator.” From “The Importance of Books,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, 42, no. 2 (1949)
  
  
• “Censorship of books means censorship of the mind, and censorship of the mind is what every tyrant wants, wherever he is found, and he can be found in any country. Sometimes he wears the robe of a minister of religion, sometimes he wears a business suit, or a soldier’s uniform, sometimes he is a government bureaucrat or official … [We] must watch for him wherever he is, and the sign of censorship of books is a sign of his presence. The freedom of people everywhere is closely linked with the freedom from the censorship of books …” From “The Importance of Books,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, 42, no. 2 (1949)
  
  
• “Too many of our people do not know how to read. They can read something they must read, but they don’t know how to read well enough for pleasure. Every teacher will tell you that teaching children to read is the basic difficulty in education. Many a pupil with good enough mind fails because literally he doesn’t read well enough to get his mind educated. He cannot understand processes because he cannot read them with ease. You would be surprised at the number of people who turn away from a book which they would enjoy because it looks too hard to read. I am not speaking of technical books alone-I am speaking of books of thought and fancy. Yet reading is basic to democracy unless people keep themselves informed, and the only way to be informed is to read. When the majority of people cannot read well enough to keep themselves informed, then democracy is in danger.” From “The Importance of Books,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, 42, no. 2 (1949)
  
  
• “I should like to see the first years of school devoted, other than physical activity, only to reading, so that the child reads as easily and as instinctively as he breathes, before any other requirement is put upon him. I should like him to feel that reading is the door to all sorts of interesting knowledge and enjoyment, that in reading books he can find endless pleasure, that books are printed by the million in every subject and that all he has to do is pick up a book to find what he wants.” From “The Importance of Books,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, 42, no. 2 (1949)
  
  
• “Adults need help in reading too. Many of them read painfully word by word, each word a thing to be separated in the mind. But reading, as anyone knows who has made reading an instinct, is not done word by word. It is not done line by line or paragraph by paragraph or page by page-it is done idea by idea.” From “The Importance of Books,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, 42, no. 2 (1949)
  
  
• “…if we can get people to reading books, we can get them to understanding that other people are as human as we are and want the same kind of world.
  What sort of books will people need to read? Well, first of all, history. For example, we cannot understand why the Russians are what they are, or what they seem to use to be, without knowing Russian history. But this is true of all people. We are incomprehensible, too, to other people. In fact, I know that we are considered the most incomprehensible people on earth, after Soviet Russia.
  Next, I think we should persuade and cajole people into reading about other peoples, anything which makes those peoples seem human and real. The sense of common humanity is needed.” From “The Importance of Books,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, 42, no. 2 (1949)
  
  
• The two questions which face us are: how can we teach people to read books? How can we persuade them to read books? For our most precious human treasure, the story of all history and all imagination, lies between covers of books, and no generation should grow to physical maturity without sharing this treasure.” From “The Importance of Books,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, 42, no. 2 (1949)
  
  MONROE E. DEUTSCH (1879-1955) was a Professor of Classics and held administrative positions at the University of California, Berkley.
• https://viewsonreading.com/2023/10/25/review-of-speech-a-life-without-books-books-are-the-great-preservatives-given-by-dr-monroe-e-deutsch/
  
  
• “All [books] have one common feature-they preserve. They keep for the use of other years, perhaps centuries, the happy phrasing of a poem or a speech, the recollection of a life; or they gather what the past has told us, modify or correct it, but pass it on.
  
  In short books are the great preservatives. Not only the thoughts men have had and cast in imperishable words, but the deeds and lives of those of other ages and lands-these things we call books hand on to us.” From “A Life Without Books” [Books are the Great Preservatives], Vital Speeches of the Day, January 15, 1944, Vol. 10 Issue 7
  
  
• “….Books have the magic quality of making both space and time vanish.
  
  So we can see with the eyes and judge with the minds of other peoples-be they Latin-Americans or Chinese or Russian as well as view the world and its problems as did the Athenians of the Fifth Century B.C. or the English of the time of Queen Elizabeth or the American of the days of Washington and Franklin and Jefferson. History is made real, biography is lived before our eyes in books.
  
  This should free us from the narrow confines of the present. It should also break down the stupid prejudices and intolerance, which are bred through ignorance. Reading the writings of Lin-yu-tang must make one understand the Chinese mind better, and help to batter down any foolish sense of white superiority. Read the life of George Washington Carver, or works of James Welden Johnson, and you will see the world through the eyes of the Negro.
  
  We talk at times of inter-cultural education, education to break down the walls of ignorance between those of different nationalities, complexions, and creeds. In my judgement, there is nothing better for this purpose than books; they will show you are not only how much we are alike beneath more or less superficial differences, but also rouse our admiration and respect for those apparently unlike us by revealing the intellectual heights at which they have arrived.” From “A Life Without Books” [Books are the Great Preservatives], Vital Speeches of the Day, January 15, 1944, Vol. 10 Issue 7
  
  
• “Books are tools, instruments; they should help us to live; but they are not life; nor can they replace life. Indeed, I shall even go so far as to say that unless you live a life with others, you cannot understand books; for they depict the thoughts and reactions of great men who did not live apart from life but drew inspiration from it.” From “A Life Without Books” [Books are the Great Preservatives], Vital Speeches of the Day, January 15, 1944, Vol. 10 Issue 7
  
  
• “At least it [my speech] gives me the chance to pat books on the back and tell them I am with them, even in the age in which machines have the center of the stage. But books are machines too. I wonder whether there are any greater. We stand in admiration of the machine which by the touch of a finger raises an object weighing several tons. But a book may do far more than that. On the one hand, think of ‘Mein Kampf’ and all the evil it has produced. Death destruction, misery, have been left in its trail. On the other hand, we have the Bible (the book), which has turned men’s minds to human brotherhood and set up the highest ideals for mankind.
  
  Yes, books like everything else, may prove baleful, and destructive, or beneficial and ennobling. In the selection of books, the individual can himself make the choice. At least in a free society, no one can tell him what he must read. What you read, you decide-be it the most nutritious of food or veritable poison. And, thereby you are in large measure determining the nature of your thinking and, indeed, of your doing. Each book that you read plays its part in carving your character. You can live in the company of the great of all time and share their thoughts. You need no elaborate introduction to them; they are waiting for you and, indeed, they yearn that you come. For they only live when men and women open their pages and let them speak once more.” From “A Life Without Books” [Books are the Great Preservatives], Vital Speeches of the Day, January 15, 1944, Vol. 10 Issue 7

FREDRICK DOUGLASS

((1818-1895) American Social Reformer, Orator, Writer, and Statesman.
https://viewsonreading.com/2024/11/07/review-of-book-black-ink-literary-legends-on-the-peril-power-and-pleasure-of-reading-and-writing-edited-by-stephanie-stokes-oliver/

• “Mr. Auld [slave master] found out what was going on, and at once forbade Mrs. Auld [slave master’s wife] to instruct me further, telling her among other things, that it was unlawful, as well as unsafe, to teach a slave to read.  To use his own words, further he said, ‘If you give a nigger an inch, he will take an ell.  A nigger should know nothing but to obey his master-to do as he is told to do.  Learning would spoil the best nigger in the world.  Now,’ said he, ‘if you teach that nigger (speaking of myself [Douglass]) how to read there would be no keeping him.  It would forever unfit he to be a slave.  He would at once become unmanageable, and of no value to his master.  As to himself, it could do him no good, but a great deal of harm.  It would make him discontented and unhappy.”

• “From that moment on, I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom.  It was just what I wanted, and I got it at a time when I least expected it.  Whilst I was saddened by the thought of losing the aid of my kind mistress, I was gladdened by the invaluable instruction which by the merest of accident, I had gained from my master.  Though conscious of the difficulty of learning without a teacher, I set out with high hope, and a fixed purpose, at whatever cost of trouble, to learn how to read.”

JOSEPH EPSTEIN, Writer, Editor, and Lecturer
https://viewsonreading.com/2023/10/11/review-of-the-article-the-bookish-life-by-joseph-epstein/

• “What Montaigne sought in his reading, as does anyone who has thought about it, is to become more wise, not more learned or more eloquent. As I put it elsewhere some years ago, I read for the pleasures of style and in hope of ‘laughter, exaltation, insight, enhanced consciousness,’ and like Montaigne, on a lucky day perhaps to pick up a touch of wisdom.” From “The Bookish Life,” First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion & Public Life, November 2018
  
  
• “In the risky generalization department, slow readers tend to be better readers-more careful, more critical, and more thoughtful. I myself rarely read more than twenty-five to thirty pages of a serious book in a single sitting. Reading a novel by Thomas Mann, a short story by Chekhov, a historical work by Theodor Mommsen, essays by Max Beerbohm, why would I rush through them? Savoring them seems more sensible. After all, you never know when you will pass this way again.” From “The Bookish Life,” First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion & Public Life, November 2018
  
  
• “The frisson afforded by rereading is the discovery not only of things one missed the first time around but of changes in oneself.” From “The Bookish Life,” First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion & Public Life, November 2018
  
  
• “Only by keeping company with those smarter than ourselves, in books or in persons, do we have a chance to become a bit smarter.” From “The Bookish Life,” First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion & Public Life, November 2018
  
  
• “One brings one’s experience of life to one’s reading, and one’s reading to one’s experience of life. You can get along without reading serious books-many extraordinary, large-hearted, highly intelligent people have-but why, given the chance, would you want to? Books make life so much richer, grander, more splendid.” From “The Bookish Life,” First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion & Public Life, November 2018
  

DESIDERIUS ERASMUS (1466-1536) Dutch humanist, Catholic Priest scholar, and editor of the New Testament who influenced the Renaissance and the Reformation.

• “A little before sleep, read something that is exquisite and worth remembering and when you awake in the morning, call yourself to account for it.” Books and Reading: A Book of Quotations, Edited by Bill Bradfield

CLIFTON FADIMAN (1904-1999) American Editor and Critic. Author of the book, A Lifetime Reading Plan (1960). A believer in the usefulness of anthologies and he was an editor of many anthologies.

• “When you re-read a classic, you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in yourself than there was before.” Taken from the book, Quote/Unquote, by Lizette Rabe (African Sun Media, SUN MeDIA, 2016), from the chapter “On writing, reading, books and, finally, words,” which can be loaded for free from the JSTOR database: https://tinyurl.com/2p9m3f9m

MATTHEW FELLION, Writer and Independent Scholar, and KATHLEEN INGLIS, Academic

https://viewsonreading.com/2024/12/30/review-of-book-censored-a-literary-history-of-subversion-and-control-by-matthew-fellion-and-katrine-inglis/

• “The written word is the proving ground for freedom of speech.“ From Censored: A Literary History of Subversion and Control
  
  
• “One way to understand censorship is to imagine a chain of communication stretching from a speaker to their audience.  A simplified version of the chain, for a book published in the traditional way might look like this:  author-publisher-printer-retailer-reader.  In reality the chain is more complicated.  The ‘publisher’ includes distributors, wholesalers, and merchants.  An institution, such as a library, school, or prison, might intervene between the retailer and the reader, and various agents of law and order, such as custom officials, postal inspectors, police officers, and self-appointed moral crusaders, can intercept the communication, inserting themselves into the chain.  The reader might continue the chain, returning the book to circulation, by selling it or giving it away. And the author may choose a different method of circulation altogether, such as self-publishing or sharing the work with a coterie of friends.  Nevertheless, at every link in the chain, the substance of the communication can be altered or destroyed.” From Censored: A Literary History of Subversion and Control

BELINDA JACK English Academic and Author

https://viewsonreading.com/2025/02/25/review-of-book-reading-a-very-short-introduction-by-belinda-jack/

“Psychologists have conducted extensive research into teaching and the practice of reading. What is clear is that completely to analyse what we do when we read would be the epitome of a psychologist’s achievements. It would mean making sense of the most complex workings of the mind, as well as unraveling the convoluted story of the most remarkable act that civilization has learned in all its history.” From Reading: A Very Short Introduction.

J B KERFOOT (1865-1927) American Writer, Editor, and Critic
The review of J. B Kerfoot’s How to Read was in seven parts as follows: https://viewsonreading.com/2023/09/15/review-of-how-to-read-by-j-b-kerfoot-part-1-of-7/; https://viewsonreading.com/2023/09/20/review-of-how-to-read-by-j-b-kerfoot-part-2-of-7/; https://viewsonreading.com/2023/09/22/review-of-how-to-read-by-j-b-kerfoot-part-3-of-7/; https://viewsonreading.com/2023/09/26/review-of-how-to-read-by-j-b-kerfoot-part-4-of-7/; https://viewsonreading.com/2023/09/29/review-of-how-to-read-by-j-b-kerfoot-part-5-of-7/; https://viewsonreading.com/2023/10/03/review-of-how-to-read-by-j-b-kerfoot-part-6-of-7/; and https://viewsonreading.com/2023/10/07/review-of-how-to-read-by-j-b-kerfoot-part-7-of-7/

• “…reading so far from being a receptive act, is a ‘creative,’ not simply in the more or less cant-sodden ‘artistic sense,’ but biological sense as well.  That it is an active largely automatic, purely personal, constructive functioning.  That it is indeed, a species of anabolism.  In short, that it is a form of living.” From How To Read [Houghton Mifflin Company, 1916]
  
  
• “For reading consists of our making – with the aid of the pattern and the hints supplied by the author, but out of our mental stock,  which we have produced by living – something that never existed before; something that only exists at all so far as we make it; something that can never be duplicated by any other reader; something that we ourselves can never wholly reproduce.” From How To Read [Houghton Mifflin Company, 1916]
  
  
• “…that in reading, we deliberately and of our own choice expose ourselves to suggestion; respond automatically and personally to the successive stimuli of words and word groups; and then consciously or unconsciously criticize and control our automatic responses.” From How To Read [Houghton Mifflin Company, 1916]
  
  
• “Culture is always unique, for it is an individual achievement – a by-product of personal living.”
  From How To Read [Houghton Mifflin Company, 1916]
  
  
• “Not alone in our reading, but our lives, alternate between these two moods; are conducted in these two modes; are governed by these two appetites, urges-call them what you will,- this desire to do, and this desire to shrink form doing; this recurrent keenness personally to master reality, and this recurrent craving to escape from consciousness of its tyranny; this longing to ‘find ourselves,’ and this longing to ‘get away from ourselves.” From How To Read [Houghton Mifflin Company, 1916]
  
  
• “What really counts is the sum of what happens in us through reading-the ultimate outcome of those ‘concrete’ combings and ‘chemical transformation’ by which new tissues are added to our intelligence and new cells to our understanding.  What counts is not the quantity of our intellectual food, but the products of our intellectual digestion.” From How To Read [Houghton Mifflin Company, 1916]
  
  
• “READING SHOULD BE A ZESTFUL, CONSCIOUS, DISCRIMINATING SEARCH FOR OUR OWN.” From How To Read [Houghton Mifflin Company, 1916]
  
  
• “There are, as a matter of fact, but three services, broadly speaking, that any teacher or expounder or critic can render us.
  
  One of these is the important and necessary, but none-the-less humble, service of supplying our memories with storable raw materials of alleged ‘facts’ of supposed relationships, and of the existence of this, that, or the other decision about these, arrived at by this, that, or the other investigator.
  
  The other two services are of a higher order; of opposed but mutually complementary character, and hence of equal value.
  
  One of them is to help us (by inducing us constructively and critically to agree with them) to a more intelligent synthetic formulation of our own reactions to life.
  The other is to help us (by inducing us) constructively and critically to disagree with them to more intelligent syntheses of these same personal reactions.
  
  And there is no more fatal bar to progressive and successful reduction to practice of our accepted attitude toward reading than habitually to allow the first of these author services to take for the place of the other two.” From How To Read [Houghton Mifflin Company, 1916]

TONI MORRISON (1931 – 2019) American Novelist and Editor
https://viewsonreading.com/2024/11/07/review-of-book-black-ink-literary-legends-on-the-peril-power-and-pleasure-of-reading-and-writing-edited-by-stephanie-stokes-oliver/

• “In addition to using their own lives to expose the horrors of slavery, they had a companion motive for their efforts.  The prohibition against teaching a slave to read and write (which in many Southern states carried severe punishment) and against a slave’s learning to read and write had to be scuttled at all costs.  These writers knew that literacy was power.  Voting, after all, was inextricably connected to the ability to read; literacy was a way of assuming and proving the ‘humanity’ that the Constitution denied them.”

CYNTHIA OZICK (1928-) American Short Story Writer, Novelist, and Essayist.

• “There’s a paradox in rereading. You read the first time for rediscovery: an encounter with confirming emotions. But you reread for discovery: you go to the known to figure out the workings of the unknown, the why of the familiar how.” From Books and Reading: A Book of Quotations, Edited by Bill Bradfield

CAROL RIGOLOT was a long-time Executive Director of Princeton University’s Humanities Council, was a Professor of French in the Romance Language Department at Princeton University, and is a Published Writer and Editor
https://viewsonreading.com/2023/11/01/review-of-speech-why-read-books-in-an-era-of-television-given-by-carol-rigolot/

• “Stories can open our imaginations to models and possibilities beyond the ones we know, broadening our imprisoning and simplistic categories. Or they can offer paradigms or models of human experience, helping us rehearse in advance the predictable patterns and events of life (both the crises and the glories).” From “Why Read Books in an Era of Television?” [Imagination, Comprehension and Analysis], Vital Speeches of the Day, September 15, 1993
  
  
• “You all know that art imitates life; every television sitcom tries to seem like real life. But I am convinced that life imitates art. This in my view is the most enriching realization gained from a sojourn among books, and the most serious argument for reading good books. We often, even unconsciously, model aspects of our lives on artistic representations of other lives.” From “Why Read Books in an Era of Television?” [Imagination, Comprehension and Analysis], Vital Speeches of the Day, September 15, 1993
  
  
• “….There are individuals in literature whose experience is both a mirror and a model and of human dilemmas and quests.
  
  The more you read in the years ahead, the more models you will have. When you find yourself in baffling situations, you can be able to cope if you recognize that your dilemma has already been lived-by Ophelia or Antigone or Don Quixote or Aeneas or Dido or Heathcliff. It is not that I wish you the fates of any of these characters, but I am quite convinced that books and paintings enable us to recognize precedents and put our strivings in a larger context. At certain crucial moments in our lives we surprise ourselves undergoing experiences that we recognize; we become aware of a precedent, a pattern that has been lived by other characters. The awareness of these patterns can place our individual grapplings in a wider context. For the rest of your lives, you will recognize events and scenes that you have read in books.” Books in an Era of Television?” [Imagination, Comprehension and Analysis], Vital Speeches of the Day, September 15, 1993
  
  
• “…when we analyze texts, in which there is not one solution, but rather a network of interpretations from several points of view. Reading calls forth our powers of imagination, comprehension, and analysis; it doesn’t ask for-or provide-quick and easy solutions.” Books in an Era of Television?” [Imagination, Comprehension and Analysis], Vital Speeches of the Day, September 15, 1993

NICHOLAS SAMSTAG (1904-1968) was a recognized Advertising Executive and a published Writer
https://viewsonreading.com/2023/10/18/review-of-speech-read-and-grow-upbe-more-than-a-specialist-given-by-nicholas-samstag/

• “And when I titled this talk ‘Read – – and Grow Up’, I wanted to suggest that a certain immaturity characterizes the man who allows himself to become under-read; and if this got him mad that was all right with me. Because I truly believe that men who are under-read tend to be under generalized-and that the under-generalized man is a case of arrested development.” From “Read – – and Grow Up” [Be More Than a Specialist], Vital Speeches of the Day, March 1, 1960
  
  
• “…I am not here concerned with technical reading-reading about your business or your profession. That is necessary kind of reading and we must all do some of it, but it does nothing to make us ‘a full man’; it intensifies rather than ameliorates our natural provincialism.” From Read – – and Grow Up” [Be More Than a Specialist], Vital Speeches of the Day, March 1, 1960
  
  
• “Reading for immersion is what people don’t do enough of. Reading to become immersed in a style, reading to become immersed in a period of history, in a mood, in a style of thinking, in an old or new point of view, in a noble or comical setting.
  
  One of the most important features of reading for immersion is that it can be (perhaps even ought to be) unfocused or half attentive reading. If you forget names of characters or don’t understand certain literary allusions, just keep on going. If it’s a piece of high brow or tough thinking and you haven’t the special knowledge to understand it all, go on anyway. Keep ploughing ahead and odds are, you will come out at the other side with something you didn’t start with.
  
  Some of the most enjoyable and rewarding reading that I do is what I call immersion reading. It is as if you were a shrimp and the book is a cup of cocktail sauce. You dip yourself into the sauce, you immerse yourself, and see how you feel. If it’s a spicy sauce you tingle; if it’s a foreign, exotic sort of sauce, you may be disturbed and perhaps even upset-but in either case you are changed-and broadened and deepened. This is also the way to see and experience foreign cities-become immersed in them and, when you leave, a little of them stays on in your blood.” From Read – – and Grow Up” [Be More Than a Specialist], Vital Speeches of the Day, March 1, 1960

JAMES V. SCHALL (1928 – 2019) was an American Jesuit Roman Catholic Priest, Teacher, Writer, and Philosopher
https://viewsonreading.com/2024/01/11/review-of-speech-but-what-is-a-book-an-artifact-which-only-exists-when-it-is-being-read-and-understood-given-by-reverend-james-v-schall/

• “…some books move our souls. We cannot forget them.” From “But What Is A Book? An Artifact Which Only Exists When It Is Being Read and Understood,” Vital Speeches of the Day, July 12, 2012, Vol. 78 Issue 7
  
  
• “A book is something that can change the world because it records the ideas of men. Ideas that can be tested for coherence and incoherence, truth and falsity because of the order of things.” From “But What Is A Book? An Artifact Which Only Exists When It Is Being Read and Understood,” Vital Speeches of the Day, July 12, 2012, Vol. 78 Issue 7
  
  
• “A book is an artifact which really exists when it is being read and understood. The book is the intelligibility we encounter when we understand and judge its truth… [books also contain] the signs of our humanity. These signs are preserved for us in books that we read and tell others about because we just cannot keep what is true or moving… to ourselves. Ultimately this is what a book is.” From But What Is A Book? An Artifact Which Only Exists When It Is Being Read and Understood,” Vital Speeches of the Day, July 12, 2012, Vol. 78 Issue 7

SUSAN SONGTAG (1933-2004) American Writer, Critic, and Public Intellectual

• “Writers, of course, are readers as well. When I taught creative writing, I didn’t produce writers, I was really teaching reading.” From Books and Reading: A Book of Quotations, Edited by Bill Bradfield

TERRY SHEPARD AND LYNN B. ILSE. At the time this article was published (1976) Terry Shepard was an Assistant Professor at Southern Illinois University (Carbondale, Illinois) and Lynn B. Isle was a Graduate Student, Instructional Media Department, Southern Illinois University.

VIRGINIA WOOLF (1882-1941) English Novelist, Essayist, Publisher, and Critic
https://viewsonreading.com/2024/02/25/review-of-article-how-should-one-read-a-book-by-virginia-woolf/

• “The mind seems (‘seems,’ for all is obscure that takes place in the mind) to go through two processes in reading. One might be called the actual reading; the other the after reading. During the actual reading, when we hold the book in our hands, there are incessant distractions and interpretations. New impressions are always completing or canceling the old. One’s judgement is suspended for one does not know what comes next. Surprise, admiration, boredom, interest, succeed each other in such quick succession that when at last, the end is reached, one is for the most part in a state of complete bewilderment. Is it good? or bad? What kind of book is it? How good a book is it? The friction of reading and the emotion of reading beat up too much dust to let us find clear answers to these questions …. [in the after reading process] different details which have accumulated in reading assemble themselves in their proper places. The book takes on a definite shape; …. Holding this complete shape in mind it now becomes necessary to arrive at some opinion of the book’s merits, for though it is possible to receive the greatest pleasure and excitement from the first process, the actual reading, though this is of utmost importance, it is not so profound or so lasting as the pleasure of the second process – the after reading – is finished, and we hold the clear, secure, and (to the best of our powers) complete in our minds.” From “How One Should Read a Book,” The Yale Review, Autumn 1926, Volume 16, No. 1. Reprinted in June 2008 in The Yale Review, https://yalereview.org/article/virginia-woolf-essay-how-should-read-book#:~:text=To%20read%20a%20book%20well,books%2C%20begin%20by%20writing%20them
  
  
• “But if we remember, as we turn to the bookcase, that each book was written by a pen, which, consciously, or unconsciously, tried to trace out a design, avoiding this, accepting that, adventuring the other; if we try to follow the writer in his experiment from the first word to the last, without imposing our design upon him, then we shall have a good chance of getting hold of the right end of the string.” From “How One Should Read a Book,” The Yale Review, Autumn 1926, Volume 16, No. 1. Reprinted in June 2008 in The Yale Review, https://yalereview.org/article/virginia-woolf-essay-how-should-read-book#:~:text=To%20read%20a%20book%20well,books%2C%20begin%20by%20writing%20them
  
  
• “To read a book well, one should read it as if one were writing it. Begin not by sitting on the bench among the judges but by standing in the dock with the criminal. Be his fellow worker, become his accomplice. Even, if you wish merely to read books, begin by writing them.” From “How One Should Read a Book,” The Yale Review, Autumn 1926, Volume 16, No. 1. Reprinted in June 2008 in The Yale Review, https://yalereview.org/article/virginia-woolf-essay-how-should-read-book#:~:text=To%20read%20a%20book%20well,books%2C%20begin%20by%20writing%20them
  
  
• “And we have to remind ourselves that it is necessary to approach every writer differently in order to get from him all he can give us. We have to remember that it is one of the qualities of greatness that it brings heaven and earth and human nature into conformity with its own vision. It is by reason of this masterliness of theirs, this uncompromising idiosyncrasy, that great writers often require us to make heroic efforts in order to read them rightly. They bend and break us.To go from Jane Austen to Hardy, from Peacock to Trollope, from Scott to Meredith, from Richardson to Kipling, is to be wrenched and distorted .… If then, this is true – that books are of very different types, and to read them rightly we have to bend our imaginations powerfully, first one way, then another – it is clear that reading is one of the most arduous and exhausting of occupations.” From “How One Should Read a Book,” The Yale Review, Autumn 1926, Volume 16, No. 1. Reprinted in June 2008 in The Yale Review, https://yalereview.org/article/virginia-woolf-essay-how-should-read-book#:~:text=To%20read%20a%20book%20well,books%2C%20begin%20by%20writing%20them
  
  
• “It is necessary to have in hand an immense reserve of imaginative energy in order to attack the steeps of poetry. Here are none of those gradual introductions, those resemblances to the familiar world of daily life with which the novelist entices us into his world of imagination. All is violent, opposite, unrelated. But the various causes, such as bad books, the worry of carrying on life efficiently, the intermittent but powerful shocks dealt to us by beauty, and the incalculable impulses of our minds and bodies frequently put us into that state of mind in which poetry is necessary.” From “How One Should Read a Book,” The Yale Review, Autumn 1926, Volume 16, No. 1. Reprinted in June 2008 in The Yale Review, https://yalereview.org/article/virginia-woolf-essay-how-should-read-book#:~:text=To%20read%20a%20book%20well,books%2C%20begin%20by%20writing%20them