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

Reading is a means of thinking with another person's mind; it forces you to stretch your own.

Reading is a form of prayer, a guided meditation that briefly makes us believe we're someone else, disrupting the delusion that we're permanent and at the center of the universe. Suddenly (we're saved!) other people are real again, and we're fond of them.

Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.

Reading is an act of civilization; it's one of the greatest acts of civilization because it takes the free raw material of the mind and builds castles of possibilities.

Reading is a heady thing. You can be into the action of someone's thoughts and take a whole trip down someone's ruminations while seconds tick by in the world that they're in, but you can't really do that in film.

Reading is an exercise in empathy; an exercise in walking in someone else's shoes for a while.

I think reading is important for a variety of things. I mean, first of all, it's a way to get information and find out what's going on in the world. But also, it helps your imagination.

I do believe that reading can help you understand what you're writing and see what others are doing. But sometimes the desire for more information can act as an inhibitor.

There are very many people who read simply to prevent themselves from thinking.