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Link Quote Stars Tags Author
dbd3681 A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one. reading reading-books readers George R.R. Martin
7a75ae3 We read to know we're not alone. reading William Nicholson
4ad0309 Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them. reading Lemony Snicket
715ed93 You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me. reading books inspirational tea C.S. Lewis
91a43a9 Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book. reading power-of-words John Green
827e263 The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go. reading seuss Dr. Seuss
1d7bdbc What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though. literature reading writing books J.D. Salinger
c8d9133 I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book! -- When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library. library reading Jane Austen
d185207 Books are a uniquely portable magic. magic reading Stephen King
2d8dd57 A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading. reading William Styron
04dde88 Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live. reading books life inspirational Gustave Flaubert
ee205d4 You get a little moody sometimes but I think that's because you like to read. People that like to read are always a little fucked up. reading Pat Conroy
a946549 Many people, myself among them, feel better at the mere sight of a book. reading Jane Smiley
a70b96b Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty. There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all. reading writing morality Oscar Wilde
cdecb3a Reading was my escape and my comfort, my consolation, my stimulant of choice: reading for the pure pleasure of it, for the beautiful stillness that surrounds you when you hear an author's words reverberating in your head. reading Paul Auster
d4c5be1 I read a book one day and my whole life was changed. reading the-new-life orhan-pamuk Orhan Pamuk
919b146 A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say. words literature reading meaning classics Italo Calvino
739e574 Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind. reading humor Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
71fbf53 "Isn't it odd how much fatter a book gets when you've read it several times?" Mo had said..."As if something were left between the pages every time you read it. Feelings, thoughts, sounds, smells...and then, when you look at the book again many years later, you find yourself there, too, a slightly younger self, slightly different, as if the book had preserved you like a pressed flower...both strange and familiar." thoughts reading feelings Cornelia Funke
1402b79 Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book. And then there are books like An Imperial Affliction, which you can't tell people about, books so special and rare and yours that advertising your affection feels like betrayal reading john-green the-fault-in-our-stars John Green
76cbd42 The world was hers for the reading. reading feminist Betty Smith
44411dd She read books as one would breathe air, to fill up and live. words literature reading Annie Dillard
1cc6edd The best books... are those that tell you what you know already. reading George Orwell
3c0ee38 A half-read book is a half-finished love affair. reading love David Mitchell
c2ab59f "Have you really read all those books in your room?" Alaska laughing- "Oh God no. I've maybe read a third of 'em. But I'm going to read them all. I call it my Life's Library. Every summer since I was little, I've gone to garage sales and bought all the books that looked interesting. So I always have something to read." library reading John Green
7eeb513 "[D]on't ever apologise to an author for buying something in paperback, or taking it out from a library (that's what they're there for. your library). Don't apologise to libraries library reading Neil Gaiman
1a7f5f3 I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in. reading books inspirational on-writing Robert Louis Stevenson
a333fa8 Once you have read a book you care about, some part of it is always with you. reading books inspirational Louis L'Amour
23ce50c We are of opinion that instead of letting books grow moldy behind an iron grating, far from the vulgar gaze, it is better to let them wear out by being read. reading Jules Verne
d10d3d9 For some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die. reading Anne Lamott
982b4df Some of these things are true and some of them lies. But they are all good stories. story reading fiction books read stories Hilary Mantel
21cf87b I owe everything I am and everything I will ever be to books. reading Gary Paulsen
3707f62 To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life. escape reading books life good-habits refuge pleasure W. Somerset Maugham
89ffa1e Sections in the bookstore - Books You Haven't Read - Books You Needn't Read - Books Made for Purposes Other Than Reading - Books Read Even Before You Open Them Since They Belong to the Category of Books Read Before Being Written - Books That If You Had More Than One Life You Would Certainly Also Read But Unfortunately Your Days Are Numbered - Books You Mean to Read But There Are Others You Must Read First - Books Too Expensive Now and You'll Wait 'Til They're Remaindered - Books ditto When They Come Out in Paperback - Books You Can Borrow from Somebody - Books That Everybody's Read So It's As If You Had Read Them, Too - Books You've Been Planning to Read for Ages - Books You've Been Hunting for Years Without Success - Books Dealing with Something You're Working on at the Moment - Books You Want to Own So They'll Be Handy Just in Case - Books You Could Put Aside Maybe to Read This Summer - Books You Need to Go with Other Books on Your Shelves - Books That Fill You with Sudden, Inexplicable Curiosity, Not Easily Justified - Books Read Long Ago Which It's Now Time to Re-read - Books You've Always Pretended to Have Read and Now It's Time to Sit Down and Really Read Them reading humor Italo Calvino
efc5f46 When we read a story, we inhabit it. The covers of the book are like a roof and four walls. What is to happen next will take place within the four walls of the story. And this is possible because the story's voice makes everything its own. story reading stories John Berger
d1e9d54 There is nothing more luxurious than eating while you read--unless it be reading while you eat. Amabel did both: they are not the same thing, as you will see if you think the matter over. reading humor luxury eating E. Nesbit
eda9835 Why can't people just sit and read books and be nice to each other? reading world people peace David Baldacci
9a1da5b Books don't offer real escape, but they can stop a mind scratching itself raw. escape reading David Mitchell
401651c "What an astonishing thing a book is. It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic." [ (1980)]" words literature reading writing Carl Sagan
f8596bc From that time on, the world was hers for the reading. She would never be lonely again, never miss the lack of intimate friends. Books became her friends and there was one for every mood. There was poetry for quiet companionship. There was adventure when she tired of quiet hours. There would be love stories when she came into adolescence and when she wanted to feel a closeness to someone she could read a biography. On that day when she first knew she could read, she made a vow to read one book a day as long as she lived. solitude literature reading lonliness Betty Smith
0081335 He liked the mere act of reading, the magic of turning scratches on a page into words inside his head. words literature reading John Green
3f7fe4b We live and breathe words. words reading living Cassandra Clare
9212005 So Matilda's strong young mind continued to grow, nurtured by the voices of all those authors who had sent their books out into the world like ships on the sea. These books gave Matilda a hopeful and comforting message: You are not alone. words literature reading Roald Dahl
ab281f3 A good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read. reading bookstore read discworld Terry Pratchett
57ed5a4 It is only a novel... or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language reading novels Jane Austen
9112351 The world was a terrible place, cruel, pitiless, dark as a bad dream. Not a good place to live. Only in books could you find pity, comfort, happiness - and love. Books loved anyone who opened them, they gave you security and friendship and didn't ask anything in return; they never went away, never, not even when you treated them badly. reading inkheart cruelty Cornelia Funke
07f4135 The books transported her into new worlds and introduced her to amazing people who lived exciting lives. She went on olden-day sailing ships with Joseph Conrad. She went to Africa with Ernest Hemingway and to India with Rudyard Kipling. She travelled all over the world while sitting in her little room in an English village. words literature reading Roald Dahl
37a70fb I guess there are never enough books. reading sufficiency John Steinbeck
c749226 The odd thing about people who had many books was how they always wanted more. reading books book-lovers readers Patricia A. McKillip
5f8457e Fools have a habit of believing that everything written by a famous author is admirable. For my part I read only to please myself and like only what suits my taste. reading books pg-84 senator-pococurante opinions fame taste judgment independent-thought Voltaire
1610ba3 There's nothing wrong with reading a book you love over and over. When you do, the words get inside you, become a part of you, in a way that words in a book you've read only once can't. words reading re-reading Gail Carson Levine
781e581 All morning I struggled with the sensation of stray wisps of one world seeping through the cracks of another. Do you know the feeling when you start reading a new book before the membrane of the last one has had time to close behind you? You leave the previous book with ideas and themes -- characters even -- caught in the fibers of your clothes, and when you open the new book, they are still with you. reading character impact characters ideas Diane Setterfield
1eaa2f9 Reading is my favourite occupation, when I have leisure for it and books to read. reading hobby leisure Anne Brontë
8fc4881 "He held up a book then. "I'm going to read it to you for relax." "Does it have any sports in it?" "Fencing. Fighting. Torture. Poison. True Love. Hate. Revenge. Giants. Hunters. Bad men. Good men. Beautifulest Ladies. Snakes. Spiders... Pain. Death. Brave men. Cowardly men. Strongest men. Chases. Escapes. Lies. Truths. Passion. Miracles." "Sounds okay," I said and I kind of closed my eyes." reading William Goldman
c30924c There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: and One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs. reading books fantasy education jrr-tolkien children-s-literature ayn-rand real-world life-changing lord-of-the-rings John Rogers
e2f434b I was burning through books every day - stories about people and places I'd never heard of. They were perhaps the only thing that kept me from teetering into utter despair. reading stories Sarah J. Maas
7c3594e Sit in a room and read--and read and read. And read the right books by the right people. Your mind is brought onto that level, and you have a nice, mild, slow-burning rapture all the time. reading inspirational advice-for-daily-living Joseph Campbell
7d3df28 `Ttny lqr@ `dhran mqbwlan l`zlty, bl rbm `Tt mGz~an ltlk l`zl@ lmfrwD@ `lyW reading Alberto Manguel
0cf8fc0 "You know that feeling," she said, "when you are reading a book, and you know that it is going to be a tragedy; you can feel the cold and darkness coming, see the net drawing tight around the characters who live and breathe on the pages. But you are tied to the story as if being dragged behind a carriage and you cannot let go or turn the course aside." reading tessa-gray will-herondale reading-books Cassandra Clare
b78ded5 Everybody is a book of blood; wherever we're opened, we're red. equality reading horror Clive Barker
8f0df60 "Tris: "I was reading." Sandry: "You're always reading. The only way people can ever talk to you is to interrupt." Tris: "Then maybe they shouldn't talk to me." reading sandry tris talk Tamora Pierce
f379e4e Anyway--because we are readers, we don't have to wait for some communications executive to decide what we should think about next--and how we should think about it. We can fill our heads with anything from aardvarks to zucchinis--at any time of night or day. reading Kurt Vonnegut
f4fd986 Maybe this is why we read, and why in moments of darkness we return to books: to find words for what we already know. reading inspirational readers-and-writers reasons-for-reading reading-books readers Alberto Manguel
13b3c9f As always, one of her books was next to her. reading Markus Zusak
2998dc7 Rainy days should be spent at home with a cup of tea and a good book. rain reading comfort tea Bill Watterson
d28ee99 Luckily, I always travel with a book, just in case I have to wait on line for Santa, or some such inconvenience. reading lines David Levithan
c83259c Read a thousand books, and your words will flow like a river. reading writing storytellers storytelling novelists writers Lisa See
99d416a My arms are killing me. I didn't know words could be so heavy. reading Markus Zusak
c275be8 Literature is strewn with the wreckage of those who have minded beyond reason the opinion of others. reading writing Virginia Woolf
9269f30 My daughter is seven, and some of the other second-grade parents complain that their children don't read for pleasure. When I visit their homes, the children's rooms are crammed with expensive books, but the parent's rooms are empty. Those children do not see their parents reading, as I did every day of my childhood. By contrast, when I walk into an apartment with books on the shelves, books on the bedside tables, books on the floor, and books on the toilet tank, then I know what I would see if I opened the door that says 'PRIVATE--GROWNUPS KEEP OUT': a child sprawled on the bed, reading. reading parents child children Anne Fadiman
cb631cd In the shop window you have promptly identified the cover with the title you were looking for. Following this visual trail, you have forced your way through the shop past the thick barricade of Books You Haven't Read, which are frowning at you from the tables and shelves, trying to cow you...And thus you pass the outer girdle of ramparts, but then you are attacked by the infantry of Books That If You Had More Than One Life You Would Certainly Also Read But Unfortunately Your Days Are Numbered. With a rapid maneuver you bypass them and move into the phalanxes of the Books You Mean To Read But There Are Others You Must Read First, the Books Too Expensive Now And You'll Wait Till They're Remaindered, the Books ditto When They Come Out in Paperback, Books You Can Borrow From Somebody, Books That Everybody's Read So It's As If You Had Read Them, Too. reading Italo Calvino
77a7320 My reading list grows exponentially. Every time I read a book, it'll mention three other books I feel I have to read. It's like a particularly relentless series of pop-up ads. reading A.J. Jacobs
3fea6f5 There is no Frigate like a Book To take us Lands away Nor any Coursers like a Page Of prancing Poetry - This Traverse may the poorest take Without oppress of Toll - How frugal is the Chariot That bears a Human soul. words literature reading poetry Emily Dickinson
7decfc8 At one magical instant in your early childhood, the page of a book--that string of confused, alien ciphers--shivered into meaning. Words spoke to you, gave up their secrets; at that moment, whole universes opened. You became, irrevocably, a reader. words literature reading Alberto Manguel
79a6793 Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings so that you shall come easily by what others have labored hard for. reading wisdom inspirational Socrates
c433f8c I am an omnivorous reader with a strangely retentive memory for trifles. reading Arthur Conan Doyle
0f69e67 If one wanted to depict the whole thing graphically, every episode, with its climax, would require a three-dimensional, or, rather, no model: every experience is unrepeatable. What makes lovemaking and reading resemble each other most is that within both of them times and spaces open, different from measurable time and space. sex reading Italo Calvino
dfa5dd9 There are too many books in the world to read in a single lifetime; you have to draw the line somewhere. reading re-reading Diane Setterfield
503785d I think the act of reading imbues the reader with a sensitivity toward the outside world that people who don't read can sometimes lack. I know it seems like a contradiction in terms; after all reading is such a solitary, internalizing act that it appears to represent a disengagement from day-to-day life. But reading, and particularly the reading of fiction, encourages us to view the world in new and challenging ways...It allows us to inhabit the consciousness of another which is a precursor to empathy, and empathy is, for me, one of the marks of a decent human being. reading empathy inspirational John Connolly
80f1cb4 I am eternally grateful for my knack of finding in great books, some of them very funny books, reason enough to feel honored to be alive, no matter what else might be going on. reading Kurt Vonnegut
9c9f80a Indeed, learning to write may be part of learning to read. For all I know, writing comes out of a superior devotion to reading. reading writing learning inspirational devotion Eudora Welty
68027cb "I intend to put up with nothing that I can put down." [ , August 8, 1839]" reading great-writing good-books Edgar Allan Poe
0877bc2 A young man who wishes to remain a sound atheist cannot be too careful of his reading. reading religion C.S. Lewis
9da932f " Sometimes the notes are ferocious, skirmishes against the author raging along the borders of every page in tiny black script. If I could just get my hands on you, Kierkegaard, or Conor Cruise O'Brien, they seem to say, I would bolt the door and beat some logic into your head. Other comments are more offhand, dismissive - Nonsense." "Please!" "HA!!" - that kind of thing. I remember once looking up from my reading, my thumb as a bookmark, trying to imagine what the person must look like who wrote "Don't be a ninny" alongside a paragraph in The Life of Emily Dickinson. Students are more modest needing to leave only their splayed footprints along the shore of the page. One scrawls "Metaphor" next to a stanza of Eliot's. Another notes the presence of "Irony" fifty times outside the paragraphs of A Modest Proposal. Or they are fans who cheer from the empty bleachers, Hands cupped around their mouths. Absolutely," they shout to Duns Scotus and James Baldwin. Yes." "Bull's-eye." "My man!" Check marks, asterisks, and exclamation points rain down along the sidelines. And if you have managed to graduate from college without ever having written "Man vs. Nature" in a margin, perhaps now is the time to take one step forward. We have all seized the white perimeter as our own and reached for a pen if only to show we did not just laze in an armchair turning pages; we pressed a thought into the wayside, planted an impression along the verge. Even Irish monks in their cold scriptoria jotted along the borders of the Gospels brief asides about the pains of copying, a bird singing near their window, or the sunlight that illuminated their page- anonymous men catching a ride into the future on a vessel more lasting than themselves. And you have not read Joshua Reynolds, they say, until you have read him enwreathed with Blake's furious scribbling. Yet the one I think of most often, the one that dangles from me like a locket, was written in the copy of Catcher in the Rye I borrowed from the local library one slow, hot summer. I was just beginning high school then, reading books on a davenport in my parents' living room, and I cannot tell you how vastly my loneliness was deepened, how poignant and amplified the world before me seemed, when I found on one page A few greasy looking smears and next to them, written in soft pencil- by a beautiful girl, I could tell, whom I would never meet- Pardon the egg salad stains, but I'm in love." words literature reading poetry Billy Collins
89907a1 " Sometimes the notes are ferocious, skirmishes against the author raging along the borders of every page in tiny black script. If I could just get my hands on you, Kierkegaard, or Conor Cruise O'Brien, they seem to say, I would bolt the door and beat some logic into your head. Other comments are more offhand, dismissive - Nonsense." "Please!" "HA!!" - that kind of thing. I remember once looking up from my reading, my thumb as a bookmark, trying to imagine what the person must look like who wrote "Don't be a ninny" alongside a paragraph in The Life of Emily Dickinson. Students are more modest needing to leave only their splayed footprints along the shore of the page. One scrawls "Metaphor" next to a stanza of Eliot's. Another notes the presence of "Irony" fifty times outside the paragraphs of A Modest Proposal. Or they are fans who cheer from the empty bleachers, Hands cupped around their mouths. Absolutely," they shout to Duns Scotus and James Baldwin. Yes." "Bull's-eye." "My man!" Check marks, asterisks, and exclamation points rain down along the sidelines. And if you have managed to graduate from college without ever having written "Man vs. Nature" in a margin, perhaps now is the time to take one step forward. We have all seized the white perimeter as our own and reached for a pen if only to show we did not just laze in an armchair turning pages; we pressed a thought into the wayside, planted an impression along the verge. Even Irish monks in their cold scriptoria jotted along the borders of the Gospels brief asides about the pains of copying, a bird singing near their window, or the sunlight that illuminated their page- anonymous men catching a ride into the future on a vessel more lasting than themselves. And you have not read Joshua Reynolds, they say, until you have read him enwreathed with Blake's furious scribbling. Yet the one I think of most often, the one that dangles from me like a locket, was written in the copy of Catcher in the Rye I borrowed from the local library one slow, hot summer. I was just beginning high school then, reading books on a davenport in my parents' living room, and I cannot tell you how vastly my loneliness was deepened, how poignant and amplified the world before me seemed, when I found on one page A few greasy looking smears and next to them, written in soft pencil- by a beautiful girl, I could tell, whom I would never meet- Pardon the egg salad stains, but I'm in love." -- words literature reading poetry Billy Collins
67a8b63 When I read a book, I put in all the imagination I can, so that it is almost like writing the book as well as reading it - or rather, it is like living it. It makes reading so much more exciting, but I don't suppose many people try to do it. reading reading-books Dodie Smith
b9e683c My life is a reading list. reading John Irving
4d61558 What better occupation, really, than to spend the evening at the fireside with a book, with the wind beating on the windows and the lamp burning bright...Haven't you ever happened to come across in a book some vague notion that you've had, some obscure idea that returns from afar and that seems to express completely your most subtle feelings? reading Gustave Flaubert
f5a8443 You want to remember that while you're judging the book, the book is also judging you. reading judging Stephen King
42e59a1 Me, poor man, my library Was dukedom large enough. words library literature reading William Shakespeare
163d2a7 How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book. words literature reading Henry David Thoreau
0825a31 When a reader falls in love with a book, it leaves its essence inside him, like radioactive fallout in an arable field, and after that there are certain crops that will no longer grow in him, while other, stranger, more fantastic growths may occasionally be produced. reading impact ideas readers Salman Rushdie
a8ded2a There are perhaps no days of our childhood we lived so fully as those we believe we left without having lived them, those we spent with a favorite book. words literature reading Marcel Proust
9c1dd8c You forget everything. The hours slip by. You travel in your chair through centuries you seem seem to see before you, your thoughts are caught up in the story, dallying with the details or following the course of the plot, you enter into characters, so that it seems as if it were your own heart beating beneath their costumes. literature reading Gustave Flaubert
8d478cb Fiction is like a spider's web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners. words literature reading fiction Virginia Woolf
5c01ba7 A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition. Like money, books must be kept in constant circulation... A book is not only a friend, it makes friends for you. When you have possessed a book with mind and spirit, you are enriched. But when you pass it on you are enriched threefold. reading friends learning sharing-books sharing reading-books Henry Miller
6e2bc00 It had been startling and disappointing to me to find out that story books had been written by people, that books were not natural wonders, coming up of themselves like grass. Yet regardless of where they come from, I cannot remember a time when I was not in love with them -- with the books themselves, cover and binding and the paper they were printed on, with their smell and their weight and with their possession in my arms, captured and carried off to myself. Still illiterate, I was ready for them, committed to all the reading I could give them ... literature reading writing inspiration storytelling creativity Eudora Welty
214e4a2 I read the fuck out of every book I can get my hands on. reading humor Nick Hornby
60ad2ea In the library I felt better, words you could trust and look at till you understood them, they couldn't change half way through a sentence like people, so it was easier to spot a lie. words lies library reading people Jeanette Winterson
3e4dcc7 Reading is probably another way of being in a place. reading José Saramago
f51d6ef If a book is well written, I always find it too short. reading Jane Austen
0c27737 Don't be amazed if you see my eyes always wandering. In fact, this is my way of reading, and it is only in this way that reading proves fruitful to me. If a book truly interests me, I cannot follow it for more than a few lines before my mind, having seized on a thought that the text suggests to it, or a feeling, or a question, or an image, goes off on a tangent and springs from thought to thought, from image to image, in an itinerary of reasonings and fantasies that I feel the need to pursue to the end, moving away from the book until I have lost sight of it. The stimulus of reading is indispensable to me, and of meaty reading, even if, of every book, I manage to read no more than a few pages. But those few pages already enclose for me whole universes, which I can never exhaust. reading italo winter-s if traveler calvino on night Italo Calvino
a0fbc13 Do not, under any circumstances, belittle a work of fiction by trying to turn it into a carbon copy of real life; what we search for in fiction is not so much reality but the epiphany of truth. reading Azar Nafisi
a9f57ee Her reputation for reading a great deal hung about her like the cloudy envelope of a goddess in an epic. reading knowledge Henry James
887e2b4 To know a man's library is, in some measure, to know a man's mind. mind reading tastes insight Geraldine Brooks
c4bfc10 You don't read Gatsby, I said, to learn whether adultery is good or bad but to learn about how complicated issues such as adultery and fidelity and marriage are. A great novel heightens your senses and sensitivity to the complexities of life and of individuals, and prevents you from the self-righteousness that sees morality in fixed formulas about good and evil. individuality reading morality learning life self-righteousness issues sensitivity novels society insight Azar Nafisi
11d1d4b On Friday night, I was reading my new book, but my brain got tired, so I decided to watch some television instead. television reading funny Stephen Chbosky
954c4c6 Often on a wet day I begin counting up; what I've read and what I haven't read. reading read Virginia Woolf
d1429ff With my eyes closed, I would touch a familiar book and draw its fragrance deep inside me. This was enough to make me happy. reading happiness Haruki Murakami
412a563 "The world of literature has everything in it, and it refuses to leave anything out. I have read like a man on fire my whole life because the genius of English teachers touched me with the dazzling beauty of language. Because of them I rode with Don Quixote and danced with Anna Karenina at a ball in St. Petersburg and lassoed a steer in "Lonesome Dove" and had nightmares about slavery in "Beloved" and walked the streets of Dublin in "Ulysses" and made up a hundred stories in the Arabian nights and saw my mother killed by a baseball in "A Prayer for Owen Meany." I've been in ten thousand cities and have introduced myself to a hundred thousand strangers in my exuberant reading career, all because I listened to my fabulous English teachers and soaked up every single thing those magnificent men and women had to give. I cherish and praise them and thank them for finding me literature reading teachers english Pat Conroy
ec46126 I believe that today more than ever a book should be sought after even if it has only one great page in it. We must search for fragments, splinters, toenails, anything that has ore in it, anything that is capable of resuscitating the body and the soul. words literature reading Henry Miller
44bc7e3 Some say life is the thing, but I prefer reading. reading life escapism Ruth Rendell
ba2c86e Quiet people have the loudest minds. steven-king dark reading books inspirational inspiring-quotes authors minds quotes horror writers Stephen King
f4c8d89 Long books, when read, are usually overpraised, because the reader wishes to convince others and himself that he has not wasted his time. reading long-book overpraising reviewing praise reading-books exaggeration E.M. Forster
665261b I ate them like salad, books were my sandwich for lunch, my tiffin and dinner and midnight munch. I tore out the pages, ate them with salt, doused them with relish, gnawed on the bindings, turned the chapters with my tongue! Books by the dozen, the score and the billion. I carried so many home I was hunchbacked for years. Philosophy, art history, politics, social science, the poem, the essay, the grandiose play, you name 'em, I ate 'em. words literature reading ray-bradbury Ray Bradbury
ced14d1 I have a realistic grasp of my own strengths and weaknesses. My mind is my weapon. My brother has his sword, King Robert has his warhammer, and I have my mind... and a mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge. That's why I read so much, Jon Snow. reading strength tyrion-lannister intellect George R.R. Martin
ef72939 Insensibly he formed the most delightful habit in the world, the habit of reading: he did not know that thus he was providing himself with a refuge from all the distress of life; he did not know either that he was creating for himself an unreal world which would make the real world of every day a source of bitter disappointment. words literature reading W. Somerset Maugham
4076d14 There are metaphors more real than the people who walk in the street. There are images tucked away in books that live more vividly than many men and women. There are phrases from literary works that have a positively human personality. There are passages from my own writing that chill me with fright, so distinctly do I feel them as people, so sharply outlined do they appear against the walls of my room, at night, in shadows... I've written sentences whose sound, read out loud or silently (impossible to hide their sound), can only be of something that acquired absolute exteriority and a full-fledged soul. words literature reading metaphors Pessoa Fernando
671f660 Alcohol makes other people less tedious, and food less bland, and can help provide what the Greeks called , or the slight buzz of inspiration when reading or writing. The only worthwhile miracle in the New Testament--the transmutation of water into wine during the wedding at Cana--is a tribute to the persistence of Hellenism in an otherwise austere Judaea. The same applies to the seder at Passover, which is obviously modeled on the Platonic symposium: questions are asked (especially of the young) while wine is circulated. No better form of sodality has ever been devised: at Oxford one was positively expected to take wine during tutorials. The tongue must be untied. It's not a coincidence that Omar Khayyam, rebuking and ridiculing the stone-faced Iranian mullahs of his time, pointed to the value of the grape as a mockery of their joyless and sterile regime. Visiting today's Iran, I was delighted to find that citizens made a point of defying the clerical ban on booze, keeping it in their homes for visitors even if they didn't particularly take to it themselves, and bootlegging it with great and ingenuity. These small revolutions affirm the human. reading writing christianity inspiration religion ancient-greeks cana entheos judaea marriage-at-cana mullahs omar-khayyam symposia iran hellenism passover passover-seder oxford new-testament boredom brotherhood plato miracles atheism food wine Christopher Hitchens
50f8e8f There is no such thing as a child who hates to read; there are only children who have not found the right book. reading inspirational literacy Frank Serafini
205f4ad The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story. story reading reader stories Ursula K. Le Guin
0716a84 "Don't you ever do anything other than read?" said Chaol." reading Sarah J. Maas
dfa1222 I had found my religion: nothing seemed more important to me than a book. I saw the library as a temple. words library literature reading Jean-Paul Sartre
951f6f9 Each book was a world unto itself, and in it I took refuge. reading escapism Alberto Manguel
8a4ebc2 "Fiction can show you a different world. It can take you somewhere you've never been. Once you've visited other worlds, like those who ate fairy fruit, you can never be entirely content with the world that you grew up in. Discontent is a good thing: discontented people can modify and improve their worlds, leave them better, leave them different. And while we're on the subject, I'd like to say a few words about escapism. I hear the term bandied about as if it's a bad thing. As if "escapist" fiction is a cheap opiate used by the muddled and the foolish and the deluded, and the only fiction that is worthy, for adults or for children, is mimetic fiction, mirroring the worst of the world the reader finds herself in. If you were trapped in an impossible situation, in an unpleasant place, with people who meant you ill, and someone offered you a temporary escape, why wouldn't you take it? And escapist fiction is just that: fiction that opens a door, shows the sunlight outside, gives you a place to go where you are in control, are with people you want to be with(and books are real places, make no mistake about that); and more importantly, during your escape, books can also give you knowledge about the world and your predicament, give you weapons, give you armour: real things you can take back into your prison. Skills and knowledge and tools you can use to escape for real. As JRR Tolkien reminded us, the only people who inveigh against escape are jailers." reading fiction fantasy neil-gaiman escapism Neil Gaiman
c0febe6 I wanted to crawl in between those black lines of print, the way you crawl through a fence, and go to sleep under that beautiful big green fig-tree. words literature reading Sylvia Plath
0821384 Oh! it is absurd to have a hard-and-fast rule about what one should read and what one shouldn't. More than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn't read. literature reading humor Oscar Wilde
424ce6d May I suggest that you all read? And often. Believe me, it's nice to have something to talk about other than the weather and the Queen's health. Your mind is not a cage. It's a garden. And it requires cultivating. reading Libba Bray
740350d It had filled my time - given me quiet, steadfast company with those characters, who did not exist and never would, but somehow made me feel less ... alone. reading lonely Sarah J. Maas
ea80866 "It was an emergency!" Seth blurted. "Read my lips - emergency reading - not some demented idea of fun. If I was starving, I would eat asparagus. If somebody held a gun to my head, I would watch a soap opera. And to save Fablehaven, I would read a book, okay, are you happy?" reading funny seth fablehaven mull Brandon Mull
671b239 Do you know why books such as this are so important? Because they have quality. And what does the word quality mean? To me it means texture. This book has pores. It has features. This book can go under the microscope. You'd find life under the glass, streaming past in infinite profusion. The more pores, the more truthfully recorded details of life per square inch you can get on a sheet of paper, the more 'literary' you are. That's my definition anyway. Telling detail. Fresh detail. The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies. So now you see why books are hated and feared? They show the pores in the face of life. literature reading life Ray Bradbury
3ab39f3 "Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody read." [As quoted in reading censorship George Bernard Shaw
66d6185 The taste for books was an early one. As a child he was sometimes found at midnight by a page still reading. They took his taper away, and he bred glow-worms to serve his purpose. They took the glow-worms away and he almost burnt the house down with a tinder. words literature reading Virginia Woolf
a9af2df What a blessing it is to love books. reading Elizabeth von Arnim
e9940ad Books can truly change our lives: the lives of those who read them, the lives of those who write them. Readers and writers alike discover things they never knew about the world and about themselves. reading life readers writers Lloyd Alexander
049fd92 His habit of reading isolated him: it became such a need that after being in company for some time he grew tired and restless; he was vain of the wider knowledge he had acquired from the perusal of so many books, his mind was alert, and he had not the skill to hide his contempt for his companions' stupidity. They complained that he was conceited; and, since he excelled only in matters which to them were unimportant, they asked satirically what he had to be conceited about. He was developing a sense of humour, and found that he had a knack of saying bitter things, which caught people on the raw; he said them because they amused him, hardly realising how much they hurt, and was much offended when he found that his victims regarded him with active dislike. The humiliations he suffered when he first went to school had caused in him a shrinking from his fellows which he could never entirely overcome; he remained shy and silent. But though he did everything to alienate the sympathy of other boys he longed with all his heart for the popularity which to some was so easily accorded. These from his distance he admired extravagantly; and though he was inclined to be more sarcastic with them than with others, though he made little jokes at their expense, he would have given anything to change places with them. reading isolation popularity W. Somerset Maugham
4214a24 Read. Read anything. Read the things they say are good for you, and the things they claim are junk. You'll find what you need to find. Just read. reading books inspirational Neil Gaiman
2a9d78f A written word is the choicest of relics. It is something at once more intimate with us and more universal than any other work of art. It is the work of art nearest to life itself. It may be translated into every language, and not only be read but actually breathed from all human lips; -- not be represented on canvas or in marble only, but be carved out of the breath of life itself. words reading books life language Henry David Thoreau
e37df5b I believe that reading and writing are the most nourishing forms of meditation anyone has so far found. By reading the writings of the most interesting minds in history, we meditate with our own minds and theirs as well. This to me is a miracle. reading writing Kurt Vonnegut
f5637bc Reading is merely a surrogate for thinking for yourself; it means letting someone else direct your thoughts. Many books, moreover, serve merely to show how many ways there are of being wrong, and how far astray you yourself would go if you followed their guidance. You should read only when your own thoughts dry up, which will of course happen frequently enough even to the best heads; but to banish your own thoughts so as to take up a book is a sin against the holy ghost; it is like deserting untrammeled nature to look at a herbarium or engravings of landscapes. reading Arthur Schopenhauer
ab1ab93 Reading is going toward something that is about to be, and no one yet knows what it will be. reading philosophy-of-life Italo Calvino
1859c38 There's nothing as cozy as a piece of candy and a book. reading candy cozy Betty MacDonald
3eb9231 I was always going to the bookcase for another sip of the divine specific. reading Virginia Woolf
26bdb14 I've developed a great reputation for wisdom by ordering more books than I ever had time to read, and reading more books, by far, than I learned anything useful from, except, of course, that some very tedious gentlemen have written books. words literature reading Marilynne Robinson
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