15 inspiring quotes from authors about the power of reading

Writers know how to turn a phrase. They capture our attention and keep us entertained across the pages of their books. Sometimes their most memorable lines make it off the page, as authors pepper interviews, essays, and other mediums with quotable sayings standing the test of time. Naturally, some of that inspiration covers their own field.

Below are 15 inspirational quotes about books from the authors who write them — everyone from Ernest Hemingway to Roxane Gay to Stephen King. Let these words encourage you as you pick up your next tome.

“There is no friend as loyal as a book.”

— Ernest Hemingway

“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one.”

— George R. R. Martin

“When I have a little money, I buy books; and if I have any left, I buy food and clothes.”

— Desiderius Erasmus

“If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.”

— Toni Morrison

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

— William Styron

“I am not influenced by books. Instead, I am shaped by them. I am made of flesh and bone and blood. I am also made of books.”

— Roxane Gay

You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.”

— C. S. Lewis

“I am reading six books at once, the only way of reading; since, as you will agree, one book is only a single unaccompanied note, and to get the full sound, one needs 10 others at the same time.”

— Virginia Woolf

“Books are a uniquely portable magic.”

— Stephen King

“I believe that reading and writing are the most nourishing forms of meditation anyone has so far found. By reading the writings of the most interesting minds in history, we meditate with our own minds and theirs as well. This to me is a miracle.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

“A book is a dream that you hold in your hands."

— Neil Gaiman

“Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.”

— Joseph Addison

“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

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

— Victor Hugo

“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