Forced Reading Quotes

The second was some rather bad poetry, but it was short, and I forced my way through by gritting my teeth and occasionally closing one eye so as not to damage the entirety of my brain.

Women's studies needed a syllabus and so invented a canon overnight. It puffed up clunky, mundane contemporary women authors into Oz-like, skywriting dirigibles. Our best women students are being force-fed an appalling diet of cant, drivel and malarkey.

Turn," Liz said, trying not to hide her impatience at being forced to read at non-speed-of-light pace.

I would never require anyone to read any book. That seems antithetical to why we read - which is to choose a book for our personal reasons. I always shudder when I'm told my books are on required reading lists.

A man ought to read just as inclination leads him, for what he reads as a task will do him little good.

"Literature" is written material that, 100 years after the death of the author, is forced upon high school students.

When I was a kid and a young man I read everything. When I was about 23, I was incredibly lucky in that I wound up with several book review columns, which meant that I had to read huge amounts of stuff that was outside my experience and outside my comfort zone. I think every young writer should be forced to read the kind of stuff they would not normally read for pleasure.

Reading counts as partying, even if you're not enjoying it! Even if someone's forcing you to read, you can find a way to make it into a party if you party hard enough. It just takes more effort and a more advanced approach.

I remember having to read 'The Old Man and the Sea,' and I didn't want to read it; I didn't want to like Ernest Hemingway. I was being a stubborn teenager.

I would only read the novels that people classify as 'beach books' if I were being held prisoner and the only alternative was the 'Book of Mormon.'

I studied English literature in the honors program, which means that you had to take courses in various centuries. You had to start with Old English, Middle English, and work your way toward the modern. I figured if I did that it would force me to read some of the things I might not read on my own.

Do not suppose, however, that I intend to urge a diet of classics on anybody. I have seen such diets at work. I have known people who have actually read all, or almost all, the guaranteed Hundred Best Books. God save us from reading nothing but the best.

It's kind of sad, the way we've turned the entertainment of reading into a kind of psychic broccoli - something to feel guilty about if you don't force it on your face-making children while dutifully consuming a few token florets yourself.

I think sometimes parents and teachers can push children away from reading by telling them it's something they must do, the same way they must eat their greens and must pass their exams in school. Poppycock! Read or don't read - that's your call.

Grade school ruined reading for me by demanding book reports for such snore-a-thons as Benjamin Franklin's biography written for children.

I hated the fact that I had to read 'Moby-Dick' as a senior in high school.

I read books for exams at school, but only because I had to read them, and really didn't enjoy it one little bit! The only time I did enjoy it was when I was asked to read out loud in front of the class, as I then used it as an acting exercise!

I wasn't always such a great fan of Shakespeare, mind you. I can guess we all at one time had it rammed down our necks at school, which tends to take the edge off it.

The book which you read from a sense of duty, or because for any reason you must, does not commonly make friends with you.

I like the idea of standalone novels. I always found with series of books, it's something that publishers love obviously because they can make a lot of money and they build an audience from book to book, but I don't like that as a writer. I prefer the idea of just telling a story, completing it within your book, and moving on and not forcing a child to read eight of them.

It got so bad that by the time I was graduated, the only reading I did was in order to get the grade and the only writing I did was in order to get the grade.

Every time people force themselves to carry on with a book they're not enjoying, they reinforce the idea that reading is a duty.

I don't read books for pleasure, but in desperation.

Every time we pick up a book from a sense of duty and we find that we're struggling to get through it, we reinforce the notion that reading is something we should do, but telly is something that we want to do.

This must be a gift book. That is to say a book, which you wouldn't take on any other terms.