Reading Maturity Quotes

It is usual to speak in a playfully apologetic tone about one's adult enjoyment of what are called 'children's books.' I think the convention a silly one. No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally (and often far more) worth reading at the age of fifty-except, of course, books of information. The only imaginative works we ought to grow out of are those which it would have been better not to have read at all. A mature palate will probably not much care for crème de menthe: but it ought still to enjoy bread and butter and honey.

I'm not actually sure I'm grown-up enough for grown-up books.

if a book is not good enough for a grownup, it is not good enough for a child.

The adult relation to books is one of absorbing rather than being absorbed.

You know, you hear about these writers reading 'Lolita' at 12. I wanted to be a chemistry teacher.

My children haven't read 'Winter Journal'. They have read some of my work, but I really don't foist it on them. I want them to be free to discover it in their own good time. I think reading an intimate memoir by your father - or an intimate autobiographical work, whatever we want to call this thing - you have to come at it at the right moment, so I'm certainly not foisting it upon them.

I've always said that Watership Down is not a book for children. I say: it's a book, and anyone who wants to read it can read it.

What can happen if a young reader picks up a book he/she isn't yet ready for? Questions, maybe. Usually, that child puts down the book and says, 'Boring.' Or, 'I'm not ready for this.' Kids are really good at knowing what they can handle.

When I was 8, I was reading 'Gone with the Wind' and 'Pride and Prejudice' and all that, not knowing it wasn't my reading level.

I'm constantly snatching my books out of the hands of precocious ten-year-olds who are simply too young to read them, despite parents insisting that dear Octavia has a reading age of 28. I remember trying to read 'In Cold Blood' at the age of twelve, and realising that just because you can read book doesn't mean you should.

I think there's a great difference in consciousness in that same way in that when we're young we read books for the story, for the excitement of the story - and there comes a time when you realise that all stories are more or less the same story.

I think that young readers have very strong stomachs.

It's a nonsense because, as we all know, there are brilliant 15-year-old readers and hopeless 50-year-old readers. All that categorisation is a matter of bookshop shelves rather than literary categories, I think.

There are good books which are only for adults. There are no good books which are only for children.

I think 'The Road' is a good example of a book everyone should read, but I wouldn't recommend it to young kids.

A lot of people worry much too much about what their children are reading... If a child picks up a book and reads something she has a question about, if she can go to her parents, great. Or else they will read right over it. It won't mean a thing. They are very good, I think, at monitoring what makes them feel uncomfortable. If something makes them feel uncomfortable they will put it down.

I didn't read a serious book until I was 19.

When I was a kid, we had this great advantage of there being no YA books. You read kid books and then went on to adult books. When I was 12 or 13, I read all of Steinbeck and Hemingway. I thought I should read everything a writer writes.

It certainly is my opinion that a book worth reading only in childhood is not worth reading even then.

We enjoy the great prophets of literature most when we have not yet lived enough to realize all they tell us.

The Classics are those books which constitute a treasured experience for those who have read and loved them; but they remain just as rich an experience for those who reserve the chance to read them for when they are in the best condition to enjoy them.

'Harry Potter' shouldn't be children's first experience with suspense and plot turns.

The distinction has blurred between young adult and adult books. Some of the teen books have become more sophisticated.

I think I was in 10th or 11th grade before I ever read a book for pleasure.

Reading time is precious. Don't waste it. Reading bad books, or books that are wrong for a certain time in your life, can dangerously turn you off the activity altogether.