Why read? What authors have to say on books and writing

I always felt there was a place for me in all the books I read, because that’s what fantasy and fiction had taught me. That I could belong anywhere, because everything was possible… ― Enid Blyton

Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten. ― Neil Gaiman

A mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge. ― George RR Martin

The faint aroma of gum and calico that hangs about a library is as the fragrance of incense to me. I think the most beautiful sight is the gilt-edged backs of a row of books on a shelf. The alley between two well-stocked shelves in a hall fills me with the same delight as passing through a silent avenue of trees. ― RK Narayan

In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful Here lies Saadat Hasan Manto and with him lie buried all the secrets and mysteries of the art of short-story writing....Under tons of Earth he lies, still wondering who among the two is greater short story writer: God or He. ― Saadat Hasan Manto

Whether you come back by page or by the big screen, Hogwarts will always be there to welcome you home. ― JK Rowling

All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you: the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer. — Ernest Hemingway

If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it. ― Toni Morrison

Knowing you have something good to read before bed is among the most pleasurable of sensations. — Vladimir Nabokov

There are perhaps no days of our childhood we lived so fully as those we believe we left without having lived them, those we spent with a favourite book. — Marcel Proust

I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library. — Jorge Luis Borges

If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that. — Stephen King

I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is my belief. — Franz Kafka

It is literature which for me opened the mysterious and decisive doors of imagination and understanding. To see the way others see. To think the way others think. And above all, to feel. — Salman Rushdie

I still love books. Nothing a computer can do can compare to a book. You can’t really put a book on the internet. Three companies have offered to put books by me on the net, and I said, ‘If you can make something that has a nice jacket, nice paper with that nice smell, then we’ll talk.’ All the computer can give you is a manuscript. People don’t want to read manuscripts. They want to read books. Books smell good. They look good. You can press it to your bosom. You can carry it in your pocket.  — Ray Bradbury

We read to know that we are not alone. — CS Lewis