'He loves quiet chats over his own dinner table
with such friends as Gerhart Hauptmann
and Professor Schrodinger. He reads only
little. Modern fiction does not seduce him.
Even in science he limits himself largely to
his special field. "Reading after a certain
age diverts the mind too much from it's creative pursuits. Any man who reads too
much and uses his own brain too little falls
into lazy habits of thinking, just as the
man who spends too much time in the
theater is tempted to be content with living
vicariously instead of living his own life."
In his own field of thought Einstein follows every development with keen interest.
He has the gift of reading at a glance a whole
page of equations. Einstein can master a
whole new system of mathematics in half
an hour.'
http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/sateve...
Not really the total repudiation of reading that this quote is being implied to be