Everything you ever wanted to know about Reading* *actually, possibly more than you wanted to know, although you will be blown away by the information, including way too many awesome quotations about reading from some VERY interesting and probably surprising sources by Helen Turnbull, Balboa High School, San Francisco, California Dedicated to the beautiful brains of my students, who make my day every single day.
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Transcript
Everything you ever wanted
to know about
Reading**actually, possibly more than you wanted to know, although you will be blown away by
the information, including way too many awesome quotations about reading from some
VERY interesting and probably surprising sources
by Helen Turnbull, Balboa High School, San Francisco, California
Dedicated to the beautiful brains of my students,
who make my day every single day.
What do you think about READING?Is it something you like to do?
Or is it something you try to avoid?
Ever wonder why people (especially your
teachers and parents) think reading is such a
BIG DEAL?
The truth is, ever since people have
been able to write, some of the most
brilliant and accomplished people from
all times and walks of life have been
celebrating the value of reading...
“A book is like a garden
carried in the pocket.”
--Chinese proverb
“Once you learn to read,
you will be forever free.”
--Frederick Douglass
“Once I got my library card, that was
when my life began.”
--Rita Mae Brown
“Never trust anyone who has not
brought a book with them.”
--Lemony Snicket
“It is not true that 'we have only one life to live'; if we
can read, we can live as many more lives and as
many kinds of lives as we wish.”
--S.I. Hayakawa
“I learned to dream through reading, learned to
create dreams through writing, and learned to
develop dreamers through teaching. I shall always
be a dreamer.”
--Sharon Draper
“Books are lighthouses erected in the
great sea of time.”
--E.P. Whipple
“Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to
read. One does not love breathing.”
--Harper Lee
“Books are the bees which carry the
quickening pollen from one to another mind.”
--James Russell Lowell
“And when I read, and really I
do not read so much, only a
few authors, - a few men that I
discovered by accident - I do
this because they look at
things in a broader, milder and
more affectionate way than I
do, and because they know life
better, so that I can learn from
them.”
--Vincent Van Gogh
“I like best to have one book in my hand, and a stack
of others on the floor beside me, so as to know the
supply of poppy and mandragora will not run out
before the small hours.”
--Dorothy Parker
“If you have never said "Excuse me" to
a parking meter or bashed your shins
on a fireplug, you are probably wasting
too much valuable reading time.”
--Sherri Chasin Calvo
Ouch!!!
“To learn to read is to light a fire;
every syllable that is spelled out is a
spark.”
--Victor Hugo
“I think that when you read
about other people’s
suffering and they have
wound words around their
wounds like a bandage
that it can be healing, both
to the writer and the
reader. It’s like going to a
word hospital.”
--Margaret Cho
“When I get a little money, I buy books. If
any is left, I buy food and clothes.”
— Erasmus
“Through literacy you can begin to see the
universe. Through music you can reach
anybody. Between the two there is you,
unstoppable.”
— Grace Slick
“One glance at a book and you hear the
voice of another person, perhaps someone
dead for 1,000 years. To read is to voyage
through time.”
--Carl Sagan
“Reading is a discount ticket to
everywhere.”
--Mary Schmich
“You have to remember that it is
impossible to commit a crime while
reading a book.”
--John Waters
“Books, for me, are a home. Books don't make a
home - they are one, in the sense that just as you do
with a door, you open a book, and you go inside.
Inside there is a different kind of time and space.
There is warmth there too - a hearth. I sit down with
a book and I am warm.”
--Jeanette Winterson
“Man reading should be man
intensely alive. The book should be
a ball of light in one’s hand.”
--Ezra Pound
“No one who loves life can ignore
literature, and no one who loves
literature can ignore life.”
--Laura Esquivel
“Always read something that will
make you look good if you die in the
middle of it.”
--P.J. O’Rourke
“Life-transforming ideas have always
come to me through books.”
--bell hooks
“Some books are to be tasted, others to
be swallowed, and others to be chewed
and digested: that is, some books are to
be read only in parts, others to be read,
but not curiously, and some few to be
read wholly, and with diligence and
attention.”
--Sir Francis Bacon
“As a child, I read because books–violent and not,
blasphemous and not, terrifying and not–were the most loving
and trustworthy things in my life. I read widely, and loved
plenty of the classics so, yes, I recognized the domestic terrors
faced by Louisa May Alcott’s March sisters. But I became the
kid chased by werewolves, vampires, and evil clowns in
Stephen King’s books. I read books about monsters and
monstrous things, often written with monstrous language,
because they taught me how to battle the real monsters in my
life.
And now I write books for teenagers because I vividly
remember what it felt like to be a teen facing everyday and
epic dangers. I don’t write to protect them. It’s far too late for
that. I write to give them weapons–in the form of words and
ideas-that will help them fight their monsters. I write in blood
because I remember what it felt like to bleed.”
--Sherman Alexie
“It is nice that nobody
writes as they talk and
that the printed language
is different than the
spoken otherwise you
could not lose yourself in
books and of course you
do you completely do.”
--Gertrude Stein
“Outside of a dog, a book is
probably man’s best friend. Inside
of a dog, it’s too dark to read.”
--Groucho Marx
REALLY?!
A dog?
In other words...
NYF, though!
Maybe you didn’t have the right support at the right time. Maybe you haven’t
found the right books yet! We can fix that! And maybe you’re spending a lot
of time reading and writing online?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gokm9RUr4ME
Anyway, blame and shame don’t help anyone
become a better reader. Don’t feel bad if you haven’t
made reading a voluntary habit yet--lots of kids your age
haven’t, and getting reading assignments in class
doesn’t always encourage you, either. Check out the
video through the link below to learn about how common
it is for kids to “fake read” in high school English class.