Top 20 Quotes & Sayings by Donalyn Miller

I realized that every lesson, conference, response, and assignment I taught must lead students away from me and toward their autonomy as literate people.

Although I enjoy digging through the library to help students find books, my aim is to help them develop self-confidence in choosing books for themselves.

Readers enjoy talking about books almost as much as they like reading.

I try to teach my students that books are a mirror, reflecting their own lives, and a window, giving them a peek into someone else's.

Students need to make their own choices about reading material and writing topics.

A classroom atmosphere that promotes reading does not come from the furniture and its placement as much as it comes from the teacher's expectation that students will read.

Failing to graduate a populace that values reading has long-term consequences for everyone.

Failure is not an option, so why talk about it?

The purpose of schools should not be to prepare students for more school. We should be seeking to have fully engaged students now

If you don't read, I don't know how to communicate with you...I can never express who I am in my own words as powerfully as my books can.

Our children shouldn't have to wait for adulthood to become wild readers. For many, it will be too late.

Books are love letters (or apologies) passed between us, adding a layer of conversation beyond our spoken words.

When we meet and I discover that we have read and loved the same books, we are instant friends.

Exposing students to lots of books and positive reading experiences while building a network of other readers who support each other provides students with tools that last beyond the classroom setting.

Reading changes your life. Reading unlocks worlds unknown or forgotten, taking travelers around the world and through time. Reading helps you escape the confines of school and pursue your own education. Through characters - the saints and the sinners, real or imagined - reading shows you how to be a better human being.

By believing that only some of our students will ever develop a love of books and reading, we ignore those who do not fall into books and reading on their own. We renege on our responsibility to teach students how to become self-actualized readers. We are selling our students short by believing that reading is a talent and that lifelong reading behaviors cannot be taught.

If we value all readers, we must value all reading.

Students will read if we give them the books, the time, and the enthusiastic encouragement to do so. If we make them wait for the one unit a year in which they are allowed to choose their own books and become readers, they may never read at all. To keep our students reading, we have to let them.

I am a reader, a flashlight-under-the-covers, carries-a-book-everywhere-I-go?, don't-look-at-my-Amazon-bill. I choose purses based on whether I can cram a paperback into them, and my books are the first items I pack into a suitcase. I am the person who family and friends call when they need a book recommendation or cannot remember who wrote Heidi. My identity as a person is so entwined with my love of reading and books that I cannot separate the two.

I never tell students they cannot read a book they pick up, but I do guide them toward books that I think would be a good fit for them. I think of myself as a reading mentor-a reader who can help them find books they might like.