Literacy Challenges Quotes

I think I was 16 when I had the thought of maybe being a writer. And this is complicated, something I only now understand, because when I was young, having dyslexia and not knowing it made reading such an ordeal.

I wasn't a very good student in elementary school and had a hard time with reading and writing.

Still, one of the few good things about being dyslexic is that when I say I don’t read reviews, I mean I don’t read reviews.

I was born on a council estate with a mum who, despite doing everything she could for me, couldn't help me learn to read and write because she had never been taught herself. As the jargon would have it now, I was not 'school ready.'

The nasty little secret was that I couldn't read worth a darn. In my case, I still read very slowly to this moment.

My mother and my father were illiterate immigrants from Russia. When I was a child they were constantly amazed that I could go to a building and take a book on any subject. They couldn't believe this access to knowledge we have here in America. They couldn't believe that it was free.

A native of America who cannot read or write is . . . as rare as a comet or an earthquake.

It was hard for my father to read; it took him a long time, but he had tremendous retention and tremendous appreciation for writing.

When I was a kid in year one and year two, I had troubles with reading and writing, and my mum took me to St. Vinnies and we bought this big box of second-hand books, and she worked with me to turn that weakness around, you know.

All my life I have been trying to learn to read, to see and hear, and to write.

I was born in North London in 1947. I didn't learn to read until I was almost 8-partly bad schooling, and partly I suspect slight dyslexic problems. My father, driven mad by this, taught me to read. At 9 I began writing.

I hated school . . . . One of the reasons was a learning disability, dyslexia, which no one understood at the time. I still can't spell . . .

Children, and sometimes those of larger growth, will not read dialect.

Learning to read is probably the most difficult and revolutionary thing that happens to the human brain and if you don't believe that, watch an illiterate adult try to do it.

He who cannot read is worse than deaf and blind, is yet but half alive, is still-born.

The only things I read are gossip columns. If I read three pages of a book, I'm out like a light. When I pick up the book again, I've forgotten what I've read and have to start over again. By page three, even if I've just awakened from a nine -hour nap, I fall asleep again. So if anyone gives me a book, it had better have lots of pictures.