40 Best Quotes About Reading That Explain Why Books Are So Important

Reading a book can transport you to a place you’ve never been before, get to know a person you’ve never met before, or teach you something you never knew before. These quotes about reading will hopefully inspire you to pick up a book that will spark your interest.

People like to read because they can gain knowledge, learn and discover new things, and use their imagination. 

It's been proven that books are good for you. They can help stimulate your brain, therefore making you smarter, engage your imagination, and help strengthen your concentration, which we all seem to struggle with nowadays in the age of instant gratification.

RELATED: 15 Powerful And Inspirational Books Every Woman Should Read At Least Once

If you haven’t had the chance to experience reading a book that changed your life or one that you literally could not put down, try and take a book quiz to see what book would fit best for you! 

The best thing about reading is that it helps you become a well-informed and well-rounded person. These quotes about reading will hopefully inspire you to find that book that help you understand why reading is so important. 

40 Quotes About Reading

1. “Books are a uniquely portable magic.” — Stephen King

2. “A room without books is like a body without a soul.” — Marcus Tullius Cicero

3. “Books train your mind to imagination to think big.” — Taylor Swift

4. “Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.” — Mark Twain 

5. “There is no friend as loyal as a book.” — Ernest Hemingway

6. “Whenever you read a good book, somewhere in the world a door opens to allow in more light.” — Vera Nazarian

7. “Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world." — Voltaire

8. “You know you’ve read a good book when you turn the last page and feel a little as if you have lost a friend.” — Paul Sweeney

9. “One must always be careful of books," said Tessa, "and what is inside them, for words have the power to change us.” ― Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Angel

10. “Reading gives us someplace to go when we have to stay where we are.” — Mason Cooley

11. “If you are going to get anywhere in life you have to read a lot of books.” — Roald Dahl

12. “I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in my life. And I am horribly limited.” ― Sylvia Plath

13. “Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers.” ― Charles W. Eliot

14. “I think of life as a good book. The further you get into it, the more it begins to make sense” — Harold Kushner

15. “A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading.” ― William Styron

16. “If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.” — Haruki Murakami

17. “To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark.” — Victor Hugo

18. “The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.” ― St. Augustine

19. “You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.” ― James Baldwin

20. “A book is a dream that you hold in your hand.” — Neil Gaiman

RELATED: 5 Good Books To Read That Will Make You Smarter & More Successful

21. “It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it.” — Oscar Wilde

22. “So many books, so little time.” — Frank Zappa

23. “The only important thing in a book is the meaning that it has for you.” — W. Somerset Maugham

24. “The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.” — Dr. Seuss

25. “Many people, myself among them, feel better at the mere sight of a book.” ― Jane Smiley

26. “Books are my friends, my companions. They make me laugh and cry and find meaning in life.” ― Christopher Paolini

27. “Reading was my escape and my comfort, my consolation, my stimulant of choice: reading for the pure pleasure of it, for the beautiful stillness that surrounds you when you hear an author's words reverberating in your head.” ― Paul Auster

28. “Books can be dangerous. The best ones should be labeled 'This could change your life.'” — Helen Exley

29. “It is a good rule after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between.” — C.S. Lewis

30. “In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.” ― Mortimer J. Adler

31. “Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination and the journey. They are home.” ― Anna Quindlen

32. “Some books leave us free and some books make us free.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

33. “I love books. I adore everything about them. I love the feel of the pages on my fingertips. They are light enough to carry, yet so heavy with worlds and ideas. I love the sound of the pages flicking against my fingers. Print against fingerprints. Books make people quiet, yet they are so loud.” — Nnedi Okorafor

34. “For some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die.” — Anne Lamott

35. “Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write.” — Annie Proulx

36. “Reading is an exercise in empathy; an exercise in walking in someone else’s shoes for a while.” — Malorie Blackman

37. “Reading is a discount ticket to everywhere.” — Mary Schmich

38. “It wasn’t until I started reading and found books they wouldn’t let us read in school that I discovered you could be insane and happy and have a good life without being like everybody else.” — John Waters

39. “We read in bed because reading is halfway between life and dreaming, our own consciousness in someone else’s mind.” — Anna Quindlen

40. "She reads books as one would breathe air, to fill up and live." — Annie Dillard

RELATED: 19 Incredible Titles To Add To Your 2020 Reading And Bookclub List

Megan Hatch is a writer at YourTango that covers books and reading, health and wellness, and pop-culture news.