W. Somerset Maugham Quotes

When I'm sitting in my hotel room, I'm reading. If I've got some time after class, I'm reading. If I can get away with it while I'm doing treatment, I'm reading.

From candlelight to early bedtime, I read.

I read books, but I do it because I want to - because it's like an escape in my head, like being with you.

I do have a television over there - it was a gift - but I never turn it on. I'd rather read a book.

Sometimes I - I try not to read too many fiction or novels.

I try to read for pleasure whenever I can - it's a great way just to shut it off for a while so your brain doesn't get fried.

I spend a lot of time reading.

I read much more that I do anything else. I don't watch too much television, because I like books.

You need have no dull hours if you are a sincere lover of books.

I spent my entire time reading books and going to the cinema, just to escape.

I don't want to review books any more. It cuts in too much on my reading.

Let my temptation be a book.

My mother read secondarily for information; she sank as a hedonist into novels. She read Dickens in the spirit in which she would have eloped with him.

And as for me, thogh that I can but lyte, On bakes for to rede I me delyte, And to hem yeve I feyth and ful credence, And in myn herte have hem in reverence So hertely, that ther is game noon, That fro my bokes maketh me to goon, But hit be seldom, on the holyday; Save, certeynly, when that the month of May Is comen, and that I here the foules singe, And that the floures ginnen for to springe, Farwel my book and my devocion.

All good and true book-lovers practice the pleasing and improving avocation of reading in bed ... No book can be appreciated until it has been slept with and dreamed over.

There is only one way to read, which is to browse in libraries and bookshops, picking up books that attract you, reading only those, dropping them when they bore you, skipping the parts that drag-and never, never reading anything because you feel you ought, or because it is part of a trend or a movement. Remember that the book which bores you when you are twenty or thirty will open doors for you when you are forty or fifty-and vise versa. Don’t read a book out of its right time for you.

I happen to think that a book is of extraordinary value if it gives the reader nothing more than a smile or two. It's perfectly okay to take a book, read it, have a good time, giggle and laugh - and turn off the TV. I love that.

With a book he was regardless of time.

I read constantly. If I don't have a good book, I'm beside myself.

But it doesn't stop at school. We can all enjoy books throughout our lives - as I certainly continue to do.

I sometimes get tired because I can seldom read a book for pleasure. I'm like the play reviewer who happens to go to a play on an off day and can't help but view it critically.

I'm always amazed at friends who say they try to read at night in bed but always end up falling asleep. I have the opposite problem. If a book is good I can't go to sleep, and stay up way past my bedtime, hooked on the writing. Is anything better than waking up after a late-night read and diving right back into the plot before you even get out of bed to brush your teeth?

I have an intimate relationship with books. After all, I take them with me into the bathtub-not an invitation I offer lightly.

By the age of three ... I was already an addicted reader. I still crave daily immersion in experience other than my own; (it needn't be more pleasant, exciting or illuminating -- merely other) and I still fall into books as though into catalepsy.

I lay on the bed and lost myself in stories. I liked that. Books were safer than other people anyways.