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I don't want to approach reading from the viewpoint of that it's a pleasant adjunct to your life. I want to approach it from the idea that you have to read or you're going to suffer. There's a difference to be made - and you can make it if you read with your child.

Children have to be motivated to want to learn to read. Reading must not be taught simply as a school exercise.

Read in order to live.

Reading is equivalent to thinking with someone else's head instead of with one's own.

Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life.

As a young man, I saw families prosper without reading because there were always sufficient opportunities for willing workers who could follow simple instructions. This is no longer the case. Children who don't read are, in the main, destined for lesser lives. I feel a deep sense of responsibility to change this.

Reading should not be presented to children as a chore, a duty. It should be offered as a gift.

Reading is a free practice. I think the readers are free to begin by the books where they want to. They don't have to be led in their reading.

As the true object of education is not to render the pupil the mere copy of his preceptor, it is rather to be rejoiced in, than lamented, that various reading should lead him into new trains of thinking.

In my position you have to read when you want to write and to talk when you would like to read.