"The shelves were supposed to be loaded with books-but they were, of course, really doors: each book-lid opened as exciting as Alice putting her gold key in the lock. I spent days running in and out of other worlds like a time bandit, or a spy. I was as excited as I've ever been in my life, in that library: scoring new books the minute they came in; ordering books I'd heard of-then waiting, fevered, for them to arrive, like they were the word Christmas."

Reading, Books, Imagination, Discovery, Joy

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"The shelves were supposed to be loaded with books-but they were, of course, really doors: each book-lid opened as exciting as Alice putting her gold key in the lock. I spent days running in and out of other worlds like a time bandit, or a spy. I was as excited as I've ever been in my life, in that library: scoring new books the minute they came in; ordering books I'd heard of-then waiting, fevered, for them to arrive, like they were the word Christmas."

Exlpore more Reading quotes

"As a reader you recognise that feeling when you're lost in a book? You know the one - when whatever's going on around you seems less real than what you're reading and all you want to do is keep going deeper into the story whether it's about being halfway up a mountain in Brazil in 1823 of in love with a man you aren't sure you can trust or fighting a war in the last human outpost, somewhere beyond the moon. Well, if you're writing that book it's real for you too."

Sara Sheridan, Scottish Author

Reading, Escape, Story, Reality

"When someone tells me to 'just relax,' I wonder why they don't hand me a book?"

Richelle E. Goodrich, American Poet

Reading, Happiness, Today, Wisdom, Truth

"Easy reading is damn hard writing."

Nathaniel Hawthorne, American Novelist

Reading, Writing

"Books don't offer real escape, but they can stop a mind scratching itself raw."

David Mitchell, British Novelist

Reading, Books, Mind, Escape, Suffering

"He who dreads hostility too much is unfit to rule."

Seneca, Roman Philosopher

Reading, Read, Statesman, Lucius Annaeus Seneca

"With a book he was regardless of time."

Jane Austen, British Writer

Reading, Books, Time, Passion, Escape

"I read,' I say. 'I study and read. I bet I've read everything you've read. Don't think I haven't. I consume libraries. I wear out spines and ROM drives. I do things like get in a taxi and say, "The library, and step on it."

David Foster Wallace, American Writer

Reading, Knowledge, Books, Curiosity

"What a vast fertility of pleasure books hold for me! I went in and found the table laden with books. I looked in and sniffed them all. I could not resist carrying this one off and broaching it. I think I could happily live here and read forever."

Virginia Woolf, British Author

Reading, Joy, Books, Passion

"Reading for enjoyment won't die altogether, but this Ereader device has the potential to repel those less imaginative from fiction. And that could have an undesirable domino effect."

S. A. Tawks, British Author

Reading, Impact, Culture, Imagination

"Reading takes time, and the glass teat takes too much of it."

Stephen King, American Author

Reading, Time, Distraction, Television

Explore more quotes by Caitlin Moran

"The word 'spinster' tells you everything you need to know about our attitude of women who choose not to marry."

Bias

"Keith Richards is a man without regret. When I ask him if-given the chance to do it all over again-he'd start taking heroin, he doesn't pause. "Oh yes. Yes. There was a lot of experience in there-you meet a lot of weird people, different takes on life that you're not going to find if you don't go there. I loved a good high. And if you stay up, you get the songs that everyone else misses, because they're asleep. There's songs zooming around everywhere. There's songs zooming through here right now, in the air."

Regret

"One of the great things about being a writer/journalist is that my boss loves me to go out and do features on being someone else. I did a feature on Kate Middleton, where I went to an incredible fancy state home in the countryside, put on a wedding dress and posed for engagement pictures with a fake Prince William."

Creativity

"Please wait for me. Don't have all the fun now. Don't fill up on other people who aren't me. Don't ruin your appetite."

Longing

"Because this injunction for all women to have children isn't in any way logical. If you take a moment to consider the state of the world, the thing you notice is that there are plenty of babies being born; the planet really doesn't need all of us to produce more babies."

Choice

"The actual handbag is neither here nor there-- it's what you keep in it that's the most important thing."

Values

"But I am, personally, not a gambler. I wouldn't spend £1 on the lottery, let alone take a punt on a pregnancy. The stakes are far, far too high. I can't agree with a society that would force me to bet on how much I could love under duress."

Autonomy

"When a woman walks into a room, her outfit is the first thing she says, before she even opens her mouth. Women are judged on what they wear in a way men would find incomprehensible."

Judgment

"In the 21st century, it can't be about who we might make, and what they might do, anymore. It has to be about who we are and what we're going to do."

Responsibility

"A library is such a potent symbol of a town's values: each one closed down might as well be six thousand stickers plastered over every available surface, reading "WE CHOSE TO BECOME MORE STUPID AND DULL."

Knowledge