Boring Books Quotes

“I picked up one of the books and flipped through it. Don't get me wrong, I like reading. But some books should come with warning labels: Caution: contains characters and plots guaranteed to induce sleepiness. Do not attempt to operate heavy machinery after ingesting more than one chapter. Has been known to cause blindness, seizures and a terminal loathing of literature. Should only be taken under the supervision of a highly trained English teacher. Preferably one who grades on the curve.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, Twisted

“All men have heard of the Mormon Bible, but few except the "elect" have seen it, or, at least, taken the trouble to read it. I brought away a copy from Salt Lake. The book is a curiosity to me, it is such a pretentious affair, and yet so "slow," so sleepy; such an insipid mess of inspiration. It is chloroform in print. If Joseph Smith composed this book, the act was a miracle — keeping awake while he did it was, at any rate.”
― Mark Twain

“Many books are longer than they seem. They have indeed no end. The boredom that they cause is truly absolute and infinite.”
― Novalis, Philosophical Writings

“I have just read a long novel by Henry James. Much of it made me think of the priest condemned for a long space to confess nuns.”
― W.B. Yeats

“Miss von Osterloh had looked through it once during an idle fifteen minutes and pronunce it "quite sophisticated," which veredict was her euphemism for "inhumanly boring.”
― Thomas Mann, Tristan

“Ich las das langweilige Buch, schlief darüber ein, im Schlafe träumte
ich, weiter zu lesen, erwachte vor Langeweile, und das dreimal.”
― Heinrich Heine

“I got mixed up with some oddness in my youth, and the long and short of it is that I can't shuffle off this mortal coil until I have read the ten most boring classics.”
― Jasper Fforde, Lost in a Good Book

“Well… Actually, just read any books you find interesting will do. Even books that seem boring aren’t actually that dull. It’s just that the reader couldn’t find the interesting parts.”
― Yukiya Murasaki, 覇剣の皇姫アルティーナ VI [Haken no Kouki Altina VI]

“...What...could the free choice to read 'boring' books be? Reading books that -other people- find boring is not the issue. Ravenous readers do that all the time, looking up only every now and then to wonder vaguely how anyone could be bored by them. The choice to read what is boring to oneself, however, which nearly always involves suppressing the knowledge that one is in fact bored, is a kind of suicide of the mind, a refusal to visit the wellspring of one's own voice.”
― Heather Cass White, Books Promiscuously Read: Reading as a Way of Life