Best reading & firsts Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“I took the first James Kelman novel, 'The Bus Conductor Hines', home to my dad. I thought, 'My dad will like this; it's written in Scots.' But my dad said: 'I can't read that.' He was reading James Bond and John le Carre. That was part of what attracted me to crime - the idea of getting a wide audience.”

Firsts Said I Can Ideas Home Reading Novel Audience Written Crime Dad My Dad Wide Bus Conductor Scots

Author:Ian Rankin

“I tend to write first drafts that are incredibly cognitive, very rational, very boring. They come off as justification. Like, 'This is my idea and here's all the reasons that it's right.' It doesn't make for very compelling reading.”

Writing Firsts Ideas Reason Reading Boring Rational Justification Compelling Cognitive

Author:Donald Miller

“From the first time I held an iPhone, the space has evolved quickly, and people have shifted from reading content on their desktops to smartphones and iPads, even long-form stuff.”

People Firsts Long Form Reading Stuff Space First Time Iphone Ipads Smartphones Desktop

Author:Matt Mullenweg

“I like to read first thing in the morning. I'm addicted to the Kindle. I read a lot of business books, because I feel like I should figure out how to be a real businessman before someone figures out that I'm not one. I really enjoy reading classics as well, which I try to work in once every two months.”

Feels Should Trying Firsts Wells Two Book Real Reading Enjoy Morning Figures Months Businessman Kindles Two Months

Author:Matt Mullenweg

“I read everything by Ian McEwan, he is so elegant. I love reading anything about Shakespeare, too. He is my first love. If I had a time machine, I would be hanging out with him.”

Ifs Firsts Would Be Reading Machines Hanging Out First Love Elegant Love Of Reading Time Machine

Author:Kate Fleetwood

“At first I could not believe what I was reading. I got up from my seat and walked away, talking to myself that I may have found my mom.”

Firsts Believe May Reading Found Talking Mom My Mom Seats

Author:Reese Hoffa

“How do you get into magazines? How can you get on TV or in your local newspaper? What can you do so others will take notice of your art? When I was first trying to get noticed, all of these questions went through my mind. After a lot of trial of error and a lot of reading, I began to understand the world of public relations.”

World Trying Mind Firsts Art Reading Tvs Relation Errors Newspapers Trials Locals Magazines Public Relations

Author:Mark Edward

“Writing is a difficult trade which must be learned slowly by reading great authors; by trying at the outset to imitate them; by daring then to be original; by destroying one's first productions.”

Writing Trying Firsts Book Reading Difficult Originals Trade Productions Destroying Daring Books And Reading Great Author

Author:Andre Maurois

“When I got the script to this movie, The Good Girl, I read it in an hour. The writer, Mike White, has an ability to create characters that are so creepy and dysfunctional and human, with this duality that makes people feel empathy for them at the same time. My first thought was 'Was this sent to the right person?' I called my agent. 'Are they sure? Let's say yes before they realize they've sent it to the wrong person!'”

“I don't know if any single book made me want to write. C.S. Lewis was the first writer to make me aware that somebody was writing the book I was reading - these wonderful parenthetical asides to the reader.”

Ifs Knows Want Writing Firsts Made Book Reading Wonderful Reader

Author:Neil Gaiman

“You should never try and teach a pig to read for two reasons. First, it's impossible; and secondly, it annoys the hell out of the pig!.”

Should Trying Firsts Two Book Reason Reading Teach Hell Impossible Annoying Pigs Impossibility Books And Reading

Author:Will Rogers

“Literacy is much more than an educational priority - it is the ultimate investment in the future and the first step towards all the new forms of literacy required in the twenty-first century. We wish to see a century where every child is able to read and to use this skill to gain autonomy.”

“I think the written word is my first love. I was just a very imagination - centered child and a big part of that imaginary life came from reading.”

Thinking Firsts Children Bigs Reading Imagination Written Imaginary First Love Written Word Imaginary Life

Author:Zoe Kazan

“It was not a choice of writing or not writing. It was a choice of loving my life or not loving my life. To keep writing was always a first priority.... I worked probably 25 years by myself.... Just writing and working, not trying to publish much. Not giving readings. A longer time than people really are willing to commit before they want to go public.”

People Want Giving Writing Trying Years Firsts Choices Reading Willing Priorities Commit Publish

Author:Mary Oliver

“Natalie Lyalin is writing some of the best poems in the world. There is an evil in her gorgeous poem-hearts. She must have sold her heart to the devil to write like this—so beautiful, so funny and so strange. Her images stack and stack down the page without spilling, each line such a bombshell you'll start reading backward to the first line. These poems are like babies—they will pop out of trees.”

World Writing Firsts Heart Beautiful Evil Reading Lines Tree Strange Baby Pages Devil Pops Gorgeous Spilling Bombshells Best Poem

Author:Zachary Schomburg

“Chris [ Nolan] and I have a strange way of working from the non-movie process, where after all these conversations and reading the script and more conversations, Chris went out and shot the films and the first thing he did, he wouldn't show it to me until I had written the music - not out of meanness, or anything, it just sort of seemed an interesting idea to see if there was some synchronicity and letting me use my imagination to the fullest instead of being constricted by cuts and images.”

“There was a f**king review in f**king Melody Maker [of the first BOSSANOVA single, 'Velouria'] - 'Sounds like someone's been taking singing lessons'. Like, motherf**king A! I am the singer. Who do sing SONGS. It's like I never sang before; like I was - I don't know - reading PROSE on my previous records and now I sing. EXCUUUUUUSE me for singing”

Knows Firsts Song Reading Sound Records Kings Lessons Singing Singers Prose Melody Makers Reviews

Author:Black Francis

“The second I learned to read in first grade, when I was 5, I preferred it to life. And I still do.”

Firsts Stills Reading Grades

Author:Fran Lebowitz

“It is in the translation that the innocence lost after the first reading is restored under another guise, since the reader is once again faced with a new text and its attendant mystery. That is the inescapable paradox of translation, and also its wealth.”

Firsts Reading Lost Wealth Mystery Reader Innocence Paradox Translations Guise

Author:Alberto Manguel

“It is time to return to close reading, to a serious and painstaking examination of an author's methods, of his style. Do not be deterred by headaches. First of all, this would be proof of your lack of stamina. And then, migraines, piercing pain and sudden stabs at the temples are more likely the effects of syphilis than of hard work.”

Firsts Hard Would Be Pain Reading Effects Style Serious Hard Work Return Criticism Method Proof Temples Examination Headache Stamina Piercings Syphilis Migraine Close Reading

Author:Louis Aragon

“The Da Vinci Code may well be the only novel ever written that begins with the word 'renowned'... I think what enabled the first word to tip me off that I was about to spend a number of hours in the company of one of the worst prose stylists in the history of literature was this. Putting curriculum vitae details into complex modifiers on proper names or definite descriptions is what you do in journalistic stories about deaths; you just don't do it in describing an event in a narrative... Why did I keep reading? Because London Heathrow is a long way from San Francisco International.”

“Nothing is more painful to me than the disdain with which people treat second-rate authors, as if there were room only for the first-raters.”

People Ifs Firsts Reading Rooms Treats Rate Painful Disdain Second Rate

Author:Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve

“The first class of readers may be compared to an hour-glass, their reading being as the sand; it runs in and runs out, and leaves not a vestige behind. A second class resembles a sponge, which imbibes everything, and returns it in nearly the same state, only a little dirtier. A third class is like a jelly-bag, which allows all that is pure to pass away, and retains only the refuse and dregs. The fourth class may be compared to the slave of Golconda, who, casting aside all that is worthless, preserves only the pure gems.”

“Ever since I was first read to, then started reading to myself, there has never been a line read that I didn't hear. As my eyes followed the sentence, a voice was saying it silently to me. It isn't my mother's voice, or the voice of any person I can identify, certainly not my own. It is human, but inward, and it is inwardly that I listen to it. It is to me the voice of the story or the poem itself.”

Firsts Humans Persons I Can Stories Eye Mother Reading Voice Lines My Own Sentences Inward

Book:One Writer's Beginnings

Source: One Writer's Beginnings

“Reading can almost be viewed as empathy training. Movies have better action scenes, sure. But books are uniquely suited to showing you the inside of another person's head. That is the root of empathy. That's the first step to understanding you're not alone in the world.”

World Firsts Persons Book Action Reading Understanding Steps Scene Empathy Training Roots First Steps Not Alone Understanding You

Author:Patrick Rothfuss

“I'm reading Barnaby Rudge, one of the less well-known Dickens novels. I've been a life-long lover of Charles Dickens ever since I think A Tale of Two Cities was the first Dickens novel I read.”

Thinking Firsts Wells Long Two Reading Cities Known Novel Lovers Tales Well Known Long Life Dickens Tale Of Two Cities

Author:George Brandis

“Teenagers have more intense reading experiences because they've had fewer of them. It's like the first time you fall in love. You have a connection to that first person you fell in love with because it was so intense and unprecedented.”

Firsts Persons Fall Reading Love You First Time Connections Falling In Love Intense Teenager Fewer First Person Unprecedented Reading Experience

Author:John Green

“After the first few readings in comedy venues I did begin to write for laughs. There's something so gratifying about stimulating laughter.”

Writing Firsts Reading Laughing Comedy Laughter Venues

Author:Aaron Belz

“First publication is a pure, carnal leap into that dark which one dreams is life.”

Firsts Book Dream Reading Dark Pure Leap Publication Books And Reading

Book:Herself

Source: Herself

“I want kids to think that reading can be just as much fun and more so than TV or video games or whatever else they do. I think any other kind of message or morals that I might teach is secondary to first just enjoying a book.”

Thinking Want Firsts Kind Book Might Kids Reading Games Fun Enjoy Moral Teach Tvs Messages Video

Author:Louis Sachar

“here are the top three global resources getting scarcer in the twenty-first century: ozone layer, rain forest, people eager to read the fiction of others. That's right, folks. For the first time in I believe written history, there are far more fiction writers on earth than fiction readers.”

Source: A Year in Van Nuys

“It is the first experience you ever had of reading a decent poem: 'Oh, somebody else is lonely, too!”

Firsts Reading Lonely Decent

Book:Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures

Source: Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures

“I am reading Sienkiewicz. What tormenting reading. What a powerful genius! And there never was such a first-rate writer of the second-rate class.”

Firsts Reading Powerful Class Genius Rate Second Rate

Author:Witold Gombrowicz

“There are two kinds of reading, reading which is contemplation - even a kind of vision & reading for information. For the first only the best will do, for the rest - then one can let in anything one would like to read in the world.”

World Firsts Kind Two Book Reading Vision Information Contemplation Book Reading

Book:The Journals of Mary Butts

Source: The Journals of Mary Butts

“I am a reader, a flashlight-under-the-covers, carries-a-book-everywhere-I-go, don't-look-at-my-Amazon-bill. I choose purses based on whether I can cram a paperback into them, and my books are the first items I pack into a suitcase. I am the person who family and friends call when they need a book recommendation or cannot remember who wrote Heidi. My identity as a person is so entwined with my love of reading and books that I cannot separate the two.”

“I remember reading Disturbia, one of the first scripts I ever got, and I go "Pfft, who wants to make a movie about a guy in a house?"”

Want Firsts Remember Guy Reading House Scripts

Author:Alex Pettyfer

“My first two books, Letters to a Young Brother and Letters to a Young Sister, were... distributed pretty widely. Judges in juvenile justice facilities started citing the book as required reading.”

Firsts Two Book Young Reading Justice Brother Judging Letters Facility Juvenile Citing Young Brother Juvenile Justice

Author:Hill Harper

“I always loved reading. I always was the spelling bee champion. I always loved words. I always wanted to know what they meant, why you used them, who first said them. I was always interested in that.”

Knows Firsts Said Wanted Used Reading Champion Bees Spelling

Author:Brenda Lee

“I highly recommend reading this book, and applying the NVC process it teaches. It is a significant first step towards changing our communication and creating a compassionate world.”

World Firsts Book Reading Process Steps Teach Communication Creating Significant Compassionate First Steps Nonviolent Communication

Author:Arun Manilal Gandhi

“I try not to think too much about an audience when Im writing the first draft of a book - at that stage, the prospect of anyone reading what Ive written would be enough to scare me into setting my laptop on fire.”

Thinking Writing Trying Firsts Book Enough Would Be Reading Audience Fire Too Much Written Stage Setting Settings Scare Laptops

Author:Robin Wasserman

“No one can teach writing, but classes may stimulate the urge to write. If you are born a writer, you will inevitably and helplessly write. A born writer has self-knowledge. Read, read, read. And if you are a fiction writer, dont confine yourself to reading fiction. Every writer is first a wide reader.”

Ifs Writing Firsts May Self Reading Born Fiction Class Teach Reader Wide Urges Self Knowledge Fiction Writers Reading Fiction

Author:Cynthia Ozick

“We Americans are mildly interested, of course, in reading about the discovery of radium by Madame Curie, but what we really yearn to know is the name of the uncommemorated French female who first mixed a sauce bearnaise.”

Knows Firsts Courses Reading Names Discovery Female Sauce Madame Curie

Author:Frank Crowninshield

“I write my first draft by hand, at least for fiction. For non-fiction, I write happily on a computer, but for fiction I write by hand, because I'm trying to achieve a kind of thoughtless state, or an unconscious instinctive state. I'm not reading what I write when I wrote. It's an unconscious outpouring that's a mess, and it's many, many steps away from anything anyone would want to read. Creating that way seems to generate the most interesting material for me to work with, though.”

Way Want Writing Trying Firsts Kind States Hands Seems Reading Interesting Fiction Steps Achieve Materials Computer Creating Mess Unconscious Most Interesting Non Fiction

Author:Jennifer Egan

“The first time someone called me a role model, I remember thinking, 'What does that mean?' But I feel aware of it when I'm reading scripts.”

Thinking Feels Firsts Mean Doe Remember Reading Roles Models First Time Scripts Role Models

Author:Miranda Cosgrove

“Mr. Kaplan is the first traveler to take us on a journey to the jagged places where these tectonic plates meet, and his argument--that our future is being shaped far away 'at the ends of the earth'--makes his travelogue pertinent and compelling reading.”

Firsts Ends Earth Reading Journey Argument Our Future Far Away Plates Compelling Traveler Pertinent

Author:Michael Ignatieff

“When I was 11 or 12, I was really bored with everything on my summer reading list. It was all happy, middle-grade kinds of books. I was getting frustrated, because I liked to read. My mother went to the library and got me a copy of 'The Other Side of Midnight' by Sidney Sheldon. It was my first adult book.”

Firsts Kind Book Mother Reading Sides Middle Summer Adults Library Lists Bored Grades Copies Frustrated Midnight Summer Reading

Author:Lauren DeStefano

“Monkey Beach is a moody, powerful novel full of memorable characters. Reading it was like entering a pool of emerald water to discover a haunted world shivering with loss and love, regret and sorrow, where the spirit world is as real as the human. I was sucked into it with the very first sentence and when I left, it was with a feeling of immense reluctance.”

“I seem to have three categories of readers. The first is nonbelievers who are glad that I am reading the Bible so they don't have to bother. The second group, which is quite large, is very Biblically literate Jews. And the third, which is also very large, is Christians, most of them evangelical. The evangelical readers and the Jewish readers have generally been very encouraging, because they appreciate someone taking the book they love so seriously, and actually reading it and grappling with it.”

Firsts Book Seems Christian Three Reading Groups Reader Appreciate Thirds Jew Glad Bother Categories Evangelical Grappling Reading The Bible

Author:David Plotz

“The Bible is forbidding when you start to read it. The language is odd. The stories start and stop herkily-jerkily. The characters behave in inexplicable ways. It takes a little bit of time to get into the rhythm of the book. I found reading the first 15 chapters of Genesis very very difficult. Once I got past there, I loved reading, and found it very easy. When you get used to the Bible, it becomes thrilling to read (like any great book - I just had exactly the same experience with the Odyssey).”

Way Firsts Littles Book Character Stories Past Used Reading Found Language Easy Bits Difficult Little Bit Rhythm Odd Behave Chapters Thrilling Genesis Great Book Inexplicable Odyssey

Author:David Plotz

“My first reading of Tolstoy affected me as a revelation from heaven, as the trumpet of the judgment. What he made me feel was notthe desire to imitate, but the conviction that imitation was futile.”

Feels Firsts Made Desire Reading Heaven Judgment Conviction Revelations Affected Imitation Trumpets

Author:Ellen Glasgow

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