« If you have to ask yourself where you will find the time to read, it means the desire isn’t there. Because no one has the time to read. Children don’t, teenagers don’t, adults don’t. Life is a perpetual obstacle to reading.
“Reading, I’d love to, but what with my job, the kids, the housework, I don’t have the time.” “You have so much time to read—I envy you!”
How is it that Ms X, who works, runs errands, raises kids, drives her car, loves three men, goes to her dentist appointment, is moving next week—how is it that she finds the time to read […]?
Time spent reading is always time stolen. Like time spent writing, for that matter, or time spent loving. Stolen from what? Let’s say, from the duty of living. Which is probably why the subway—this stinking symbol of the duty of living—is the world’s largest reading room.
Time spent reading, like time spent loving, increases our lifetime.
If we were to consider love from the point of view of our schedule, who would bother? Who among us has time to fall in love? Yet have you ever seen someone in love not take the time to love? I’ve never had the time to read. Yet nothing has ever stopped me from finishing a novel I loved.
Reading doesn’t belong to the societal organisation of time. Like love, it is a way of being. The issue is not whether or not I have the time to read (no one will ever give me that time) but whether or not I will gift myself the happiness of being a reader. »
— Daniel Pennac, Better Than Life
