24 Quotes by Pamela Paul

My sort wants the book in its entirety. We need to touch it, to examine the weight of its paper and the way text is laid out on the page. People like me open books and inhale the binding, favoring the scents of certain glues over others, breathing them in like incense even as the chemicals poison our brains. We consume them.

In college, books assigned for class were read as competitive sport – the more critically, the better.

You should read this book’ almost never simply means you should read this book. It is usually far more fraught. Telling someone what to read, even asking politely, can feel more like an entreaty or an implied judgment or a there’s-something-you-should-know than a straightforward proposal. If you read this book, then you love me. If you read this book, then you respect my opinions. If you read this book, you will understand what it is I need you to understand and can’t explain to you myself.

This is every reader’s catch-22: the more you read, the more you realize you haven’t read; the more you yearn to read more, the more you understand that you have, in fact, read nothing. There is no way to finish, and perhaps that shouldn’t be the goal.

To whom do books belong? The books we read and the books we write are both ours and not ours. They’re also theirs.

Children who read are, yes, likely to excel academically, but there’s much more to the picture. The latest research shows that children who read at home are also better at self-regulation and executive function – those life skills that make us happier and well adjusted: controlling impulses, paying attention, setting goals and figuring out how to achieve them.