A Quote by Walter Dean Myers

Reading is not optional.

Walter Dean Myers

Quote Topics

Optional Reading

Quote Author

Walter Dean Myers
American - Writer
August 12, 1937 - July 1, 2014

We need to tell kids flat out: reading is not optional.

Walter Dean Myers

I've known Alan Zweibel since 1975, and I've always had this sneaking suspicion that he might possess a sense of humor. After reading CLOTHING OPTIONAL, I'm almost sure he does.

Rob Reiner

Reading for experience is the only reading that justifies excitement. Reading for facts is necessary bu the less said about it in public the better. Reading for distraction is like taking medicine. We do it, but it is nothing to be proud of. But reading for experience is transforming.

Henry Seidel Canby

Reading usually precedes writing. And the impulse to write is almost always fired by reading. Reading, the love of reading, is what makes you dream of becoming a writer.

Susan Sontag

All reading is good reading. And all reading of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens is sublime reading.

Anna Quindlen

We’re suggesting that [kids are] missing something if they don’t read but, actually, we’re condemning kids to a lesser life. If you had a sick patient, you would not try to entice them to take their medicine. You would tell them, ‘Take this or you’re going to die.’ We need to tell kids flat out: reading is not optional.

Walter Dean Myers

I like reading. I prefer not reading on my computer, because that makes whatever I am reading feel like work. I do not mind reading on my iPad.

Neil Gaiman

[B]riefing is not reading. In fact it is the antithesis of reading. Briefing is terse, factual and to the point. Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting. Briefing closes down a subject, reading opens it up.

Alan Bennett

I grew up in this household where reading was the most noble thing you could do. When I was a teenager, we would have family dinners where we all sat there reading. It wasn't because we didn't like each other. We just liked reading. The person who made my reading list until my late teen years was my mom.

Keith Gessen

My personal view is that reading has to be balanced. Obviously, there's a certain amount of reading that we have to do academically to continue to learn and to grow, but it's got to be balanced with fun and with elective reading. Whether that's comic books or Jane Austen, if it makes you excited about reading, that's what matters.

Emma Walton Hamilton

When I was young, there was no such thing as YA. You simply went from reading children's novels to reading adult novels. So one year, I was reading Tove Jansson, and the next year, I was reading Stephen King.

Matt Haig

Reality is not optional.

Thomas Sowell

Optional is latin for 'Be There'.

Darryl Sutter

Teenagers are always sneaking around in drawers where they shouldn't go and reading things they shouldn't be reading. And that's an attempt to try, I think, to penetrate, that's how I found out as a teenager what was going on, was by sneaking into drawers and reading letters that I had no business reading.