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I grew up in a completely bookless household. It was my father's boast that he had never read a book from end to end. I don't remember any of his ladies being bookish. So I was entirely dependent on my schoolteachers for my early reading with the exception of 'The Wind in the Willows,' which a stepmother read to me when I was in hospital.

In our fathers' time nothing was read but books of feigned chivalry, wherein a man by reading should be led to none other end, but only to manslaughter and bawdry.

I was an early reader, and my grandmother, who as a child had been forbidden to read by a father who believed books to be frivolous time-wasters, delighted in putting her favorite volumes into her grandchildren's hands.

I think throughout the 20th century, for some reason, serious writers increasingly had contempt for the average reader. You can really see this in the letters of such people as Joyce and Virginia Woolf.

My only books were woman's looks, and folly's all they've taught me.

I was gravely warned by some of my female acquaintances that no woman could expect to be regarded as a lady after she had written a book.

Our prejudices are our mistresses; reason is at best our wife, very often heard indeed, but seldom minded.

Some readers allow their prejudices to blind them. A good reader knows how to disregard inappropriate responses.

I grew up in a home where reading was a big deal.

I was brought up in the great tradition of the late nineteenth century: that a writer never complains, never explains and never disdains.