Every writer is first and foremost a bookworm. Reading comes first, then comes the desire to create something that will give others pleasure and pause for thought.

Growing up, my house was full of books, and both my parents were keen to instil in me an appreciation of great literature. No sooner could I decipher the letters on the page than I would devour books – poetry, classics and, later, in my teens, more commercial fiction, particularly romance. Books represent magic and escapism, but also a means to interpret the world. They have always been for me a great source of comfort, and I am bereft if I do not have a book to read.

Of course, my love of books is not unusual; a whole world exists of bookworms and bibliophiles. Today, I thought I would share for fellow readers, some of my favourite quotes on the subject. Do add any you like to the post if you’d like to share.

• “To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark.”  Victor Hugo
• “Choose an author as you choose a friend.”  Sir Christopher Wren
• “A man ought to read just as inclination leads him, for what he reads as a task will do him little good.”  Samuel Johnson
• “In the highest civilization, the book is still the highest delight. He who has once known its satisfactions is provided with a resource against calamity.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
• “Every reader finds himself. The writer’s work is merely a kind of optical instrument that makes it possible for the reader to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself.” Marcel Proust
• “No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting. She will not want new fashions nor regret the loss of expensive diversions or variety of company if she can be amused with an author in her closet.” Lady Montagu
• “Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.” Frederick Douglass
• “No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance.” Confucius
• “We read to know we are not alone.” C.S. Lewis
• “Give me a man or woman who has read a thousand books and you give me an interesting companion. Give me a man or woman who has read perhaps three and you give me a dangerous enemy indeed.” Anne Rice
• “Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers.” Charles William Eliot
• “Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.” Gustave Flaubert
• “Books are a uniquely portable magic.” Stephen King
• “It is a good rule after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between.” C.S. Lewis
• A book reads the better which is our own, and has been so long known to us, that we know the topography of its blots, and dog’s ears, and can trace the dirt in it to having read it at tea with buttered muffins. Charles Lamb
• A book is like a garden carried in the pocket. Chinese Proverb
• “I’ve never known any trouble that an hour’s reading didn’t assuage.”  Charles De Secondat
• “The things I want to know are in books. My best friend is the man who’ll get me a book I [haven’t] read.” Abraham Lincoln
• “Children are made readers on the laps of their parents.” Emilie Buchwald

“There is more treasure in books than in all the pirate’s loot on Treasure Island.” Walt Disney