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b4a5070 It is not all books that are as dull as their readers. There are probably words addressed to our condition exactly, which, if we could really hear and understand, would be more salutary than the morning or the spring to our lives, and possibly put a new aspect on the face of things for us. How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book. The book exists for us perchance which will explain our miracles and reveal new ones. The at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered. These same questions that disturb and puzzle and confound us have in their turn occurred to all the wise men; not one has been omitted; and each has answered them, according to his ability, by his words and his life. words literature reading Henry David Thoreau
475a2c5 To read a novel is to wonder constantly, even at moments when we lose ourselves most deeply in the book: How much of this is fantasy, and how much is real? reading reality novel Orhan Pamuk
9105ef7 Reading had never let me down before. It had always been the one sure thing. reading reader Diane Setterfield
062fd59 Daydreaming does not enjoy tremendous prestige in our culture, which tends to regard it as unproductive thought. Writers perhaps appreciate its importance better than most, since a fair amount of what they call work consists of little more than daydreaming edited. Yet anyone who reads for pleasure should prize it too, for what is reading a good book but a daydream at second hand? Unlike any other form of thought, daydreaming is its own reward. reading Michael Pollan
d4d3165 So when people say that poetry is a luxury, or an option, or for the educated middle classes, or that it shouldn't be read in school because it is irrelevant, or any of the strange and stupid things that are said about poetry and its place in our lives, I suspect that the people doing the saying have had things pretty easy. A tough life needs a tough language - and that is what poetry is. That is what literature offers - a language powerful enough to to say how it is. It isn't a hiding place. It is a finding place. literature reading poetry inspiration philosophy finding-meaning tough-life solace healing Jeanette Winterson
63b30fc "* You should read the book that you hear two booksellers arguing about at the registers while you're browsing in a bookstore. * You should read the book that you see someone on the train reading and trying to hide that they're laughing. * You should read the book that you see someone on the train reading and trying to hide that they're crying. * You should read the book that you find left behind in the airplane seat pocket, on a park bench, on the bus, at a restaurant, or in a hotel room. * You should read the book that you see someone reading for hours in a coffee shop -- there when you got there and still there when you left -- that made you envious because you were working instead of absorbed in a book. * You should read the book you find in your grandparents' house that's inscribed "To Ray, all my love, Christmas 1949." * You should read the book that you didn't read when it was assigned in your high school English class. You'd probably like it better now anyway. * You should read the book whose author happened to mention on Charlie Rose that their favorite band is your favorite band. * You should read the book that your favorite band references in their lyrics. * You should read the book that your history professor mentions and then says, "which, by the way, is a great book," offhandedly. * You should read the book that you loved in high school. Read it again. * You should read the book that you find on the library's free cart whose cover makes you laugh. * You should read the book whose main character has your first name. * You should read the book whose author gets into funny Twitter exchanges with Colson Whitehead. * You should read the book about your hometown's history that was published by someone who grew up there. * You should read the book your parents give you for your high school graduation. * You should read the book you've started a few times and keep meaning to finish once and for all. * You should read books with characters you don't like. * You should read books about countries you're about to visit. * You should read books about historical events you don't know anything about. * You should read books about things you already know a little about. * You should read books you can't stop hearing about and books you've never heard of. * You should read books mentioned in other books. * You should read prize-winners, bestsellers, beach reads, book club picks, and classics, when you want to. [ reading inspiration Janet Potter
fdd6fa8 Six books... my mother didn't want books falling into my hands. It never occurred to her that I fell into the books - that I put myself inside them for safe keeping. reading Jeanette Winterson
c543160 He wanted to say: how could you be so nice and yet so dumb? The best thing you could do with the peasents was to leave them alone. Let them get on with it. When people who can read and write start fighting for those who can't, you just end up with another kind of stupidity. If you want to help them, build a big library or something somewhere and leave the door open. library reading writing ricewind Terry Pratchett
56f313c I like the sound of words, but I don't ever really expect my slow, slanted impression of the world to change by what I read. understanding words reading wicked Gregory Maguire
7c5b4a7 lys hnk mn yrwqh qr@ my't lSfHt lyjd 'n lqS@ l tnthy nhy@ wDH@ reading nobody novel Isabel Allende
6252fe7 Basically, if you want to become a good writer, you need to do three things. Read a lot, listen well and deeply, and write a lot. And don't think too much. Just enter the heat of words and sounds and colored sensations and keep your pen moving across the page. If you read good books, when you write, good books will come out of you. reading writing inspirational Natalie Goldberg
e517f7b "On my website there's a quote from the writer Anthony Burgess: "The greatest gift is the passion for reading. It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites, it gives you knowledge of the world and experience of a wide kind." I've always found that inspiring because the written word, as an art form, is unlike any other: movies, TV, music, they're shared experiences, but books aren't like that. The relationship between a writer and a reader is utterly unique to those two individuals. The world that forms in your head as you read a book will be slightly different to that experienced by every other reader. Anywhere. Ever. Reading is very personal, a communication from one mind to another, something which can't be exactly copied, or replicated, or directly shared. reading writing books inspiration inspirational written-word novelist novel Simon Cheshire
c9da75e She probably had her nose stuck in a book, living in a pretend fantasy world while I was actually out there living in the real fantasy world. reading Jennifer L. Armentrout
25411bc Good books often answer questions you didn't even know you wanted to ask reading questions-and-answers Will Schwalbe
2adebc2 What is the use of a book without pictures or conversations? -Alice in Wonderland reading Lewis Carroll
f896dac And he read all morning, but just to make it interesting, he put lots of dragons in it. reading books interest dragons Terry Pratchett
e354f70 People sometimes act as though owning books you haven't read constitutes a charade or pretense, but for me, there's a lovely mystery and pregnancy about a book that hasn't given itself over to you yet--sometimes I'm the most inspired by imagining what the contents of an unread book might be. ~ Jonathan Lethem, author of The Fortress of Solitude reading Leah Price
53753bb "Having to amuse myself during those earlier years, I read voraciously and widely. Mythic matter and folklore made up much of that reading--retellings of the old stories ( ), anecdotal collections and historical investigations of the stories' backgrounds--and then I stumbled upon the books which took me back to and the like. I was in heaven when began the Unicorn imprint for Ballantine and scoured the other publishers for similar good finds, delighting when I discovered someone like , who still remains a favourite. This was before there was such a thing as a fantasy genre, when you'd be lucky to have one fantasy book published in a month, little say the hundreds per year we have now. I also found myself reading (the Cormac and Bran mac Morn books were my favourites), and finally started reading science fiction after coming across 's Huon of the Horn. That book wasn't sf, but when I went to read more by her, I discovered everything else was. So I tried a few and that led me to and any number of other fine sf writers. These days my reading tastes remain eclectic, as you might know if you've been following my monthly book review column in . I'm as likely to read as as as reading books fantasy book-genres recommendations sf science-fiction sci-fi influences Charles de Lint
8280829 Every reader has found charms by which to secure possession of a page that, by magic, becomes as if never read before, fresh and immaculate. reading page reader Alberto Manguel
0f9d2dc I won't stay in with married men any more said the wise girl they're too agreeable, it's a little too much like curling up with the good book. You mean a good book Oh, dear, did I say the good book sighed the witch. sex reading witches bible the-good-book affairs witch cheating good-book Norman Mailer
affce9c I find that when I come out of the library I'm in what I call the library bliss of being totally taken away from the distractions of life. libraries reading distractions Tracy Chevalier
da4c72a Books require titles; reading them doesn't reading titles class Alan Moore
2aad391 Benim icin kitap okurken hala onemli olan anlamaktan cok, okudugum seye uygun dusler kurmaktir. reading books kitaplar okumak kitap Orhan Pamuk
4a61431 Language and hearing are seated in the cerebral cortex, the folded gray matter that covers the first couple of millimeters of the outer brain like wrapping paper. When one experiences silence, absent even reading, the cerebral cortex typically rests. Meanwhile, deeper and more ancient brain structures seem to be activated--the subcortical zones. People who live busy, noisy lives are rarely granted access to these areas. Silence, it appears, is not the opposite of sound. It is another world altogether, literally offering a deeper level of thought, a journey to the bedrock of the self. experiences silence reading world activated bedrock busy cerebral-cortex deeper gray-matter structures subcortical hearing sound brain noisy language ancient self thought journey Michael Finkel
a3de40e Stories always go on. They don't end on the last page any more than they begin on the first page reading life stories Cornelia Funke
891e95d "Once I was asked be a seatmate on a trans-Pacific flight....what instruction he should give his fifteen-year-old daughters, who wanted to be a writer. [I said], "Tell your daughter three things." Tell her to read...Tell her to read whatever interests her, and protect her if someone declares what she's reading to be trash. No one can fathom what happens between a human being and written language. She may be paying attention to things in the words beyond anyone else's comprehension, things that feed her curiosity, her singular heart and mind. ...Second, I said, tell your daughter that she can learn a great deal about writing by reading and by studying books about grammar and the organization of ideas, but that if she wishes to write well she will have to become someone. She will have to discover her beliefs, and then speak to us from within those beliefs. If her prose doesn't come out of her belief, whatever that proves to be, she will only be passing along information, of which we are in no great need. So help her discover what she means. Finally, I said, tell your daughter to get out of town, and help her do that. I don't necessarily mean to travel to Kazakhstan, or wherever, but to learn another language, to live with people other than her own, to separate herself from the familiar. Then, when she returns, she will be better able to understand why she loves the familiar, and will give us a fresh sense of how fortunate we are to share these things. Read. Find out what you truly believe. Get away from the familiar. Every writer, I told him, will offer you thoughts about writing that are different, but these are three I trust. -- from "A Voice" travel reading writing writers-on-writing writers Barry Lopez
5f77319 Travel in contested territory. Hard-working writing and reading when safely home, in the knowledge that an amusing friend is later coming to dinner. travel reading writing friends Christopher Hitchens
7c89be8 Be a good boy, remember; and be kind to animals and birds, and read all you can. reading animal-welfare jude-the-obscure Thomas Hardy
0052850 Both reading and writing are experiences--lifelong-- in the course of which we who encounter words used in certain ways are persuaded by them to be brought mind and heart within the presence, the power, of the imagination. reading writing Eudora Welty
11f7d05 "You should've thought of that before becoming a fireman." "Thought!" he said. "Was I given a choice? I was raised to think the best thing in the world to read. The best thing is television and radio and ball games and a home I can't afford and, Good Lord, now, only now I realize what I've done. My grandfather and father were firemen. Walking in my sleep I followed them." television reading sleep-walking tv reading-books read radio Ray Bradbury
181884f She didn't really enjoy reading but she liked how the books were clues. Each one a piece in a puzzle. Even when they didn't fit together, they revealed a little more about what kind of picture she was making. reading lexicon Max Barry
bc68842 "Every fairy tale offers the potential to surpass present limits, so in a sense the fairy tale offers you freedoms that reality denies. In all great works of fiction, regardless of the grim reality they present, there is an affirmation of life against the transience of that life, an essential defiance. The affirmation lies in the way the author takes control of reality by retelling it in his own way, thus creating a new world. Every great work of art, I would declare pompously, is a celebration, an act of insubordination against the betrayals, horrors and infidelities of life. The perfection and beauty of form rebels against the ugliness and shabiness of the subject matter. This is why we love "Madame Bovary" and cry for Emma, why we greedily read "Lolita" as our heart breaks for its small, vulgar, poetic and defiant orphaned heroine." reading-thinking tragedylolita-in-tehran why-we-love-reading reading lolita tehran Azar Nafisi
6344e30 I can hear the library humming in the night, a choir of authors murmuring inside their books along the unlit, alphabetical shelves, Giovanni Pontano next to Pope, Dumas next to his son, each one stitched into his own private coat, together forming a low, gigantic chord of language. words library literature reading poetry Billy Collins
53fa6c9 En resolucion, el se enfrasco tanto en su lectura, que se le pasaban las noches leyendo de claro en claro, y los dias de turbio en turbio, y asi, del poco dormir y del mucho leer, se le seco el cerebro, de manera que vino a perder el juicio. Llenosele la fantasia de todo aquello que leia en los libros, asi de encantamientos, como de pendencias, batallas, desafios, heridas, requiebros, amores, tormentas y disparates imposibles, y asentosele de tal modo en la imaginacion que era verdad toda aquella maquina de aquellas sonadas invenciones que leia, que para el no habia otra historia mas cierta en el mundo. reading lettura leggere libri Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
e2cf7c2 I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in. As I walked, my mind was busy fitting what I saw with appropriate words; when I sat by the roadside, I would either read or a pencil and a penny version-book would be in my hand, to note the features of the scene or commemorate some halting stanzas. Thus I lived with words. words reading writing Robert Louis Stevenson
511c95e "How many books are there?" said Masklin. "Hundreds! Thousands!" "Do you know what they're all about?" Gurder looked at him blankly. "Do you know what you're saying?" he said. "No. But I want to find out." "They're about everything! You'd never believe it! They're full of words even I don't understand!" "Can you find a book which tells you how to understand words you don't understand?" said Masklin. Gurder hesitated. "It's an intriguing thought," he said." reading Terry Pratchett
758d158 Great readers (are) those who know early that there is never going to be time to read all there is to read, but do their darnedest anyway. reading readers Larry McMurtry
1d8ff60 I learned from the age of two or three that any room in our house, at any time of day, was there to read in, or be read to. reading writing creativity Eudora Welty
24e4851 Book should go where they will be most appreciated, and not sit unread, gathering dust on a forgotten shelf, don't you agree? library reading brisingr christopher-paolini Christopher Paolini
9c2e9ea "We've inherited many ideas about writing that emerged in the eighteenth century, especially an interest in literature as both an expression and an exploration of the self. This development part of what distinguishes the "modern" from the "early modern" has shaped the work of many of our most celebrated authors, whose personal experiences indelibly and visibly mark their writing. It's fair to say that the fiction and poetry of many of the finest writers of the past century or so and I'm thinking here of Conrad, Proust, Lawrence, Joyce, Woolf, Kafka, Plath, Ellison, Lowell, Sexton, Roth, and Coetzee, to name but a few have been deeply autobiographical. The link between the life and the work is one of the things we're curious about and look for when we pick up the latest book by a favorite author." -- reading readers-and-writers James Shapiro
5f35595 There's a kid or some kids somewhere. I'll never know them. They're particle-puzzle-cubing right now. They might be mini-misanthropes from Moosefart, Montana. They might be demi-dystopians from Dogdick, Delaware. They dig my demonic dramas. The metaphysic maims them. They grasp the gravity. They'll duke it out with their demons. They'll serve a surfeit of survival skills. They won't be chronologically crucified. They'll shore up my shit. They'll radically revise it. They'll pass it along. reading writing inspiration ideas James Ellroy
98bee51 "I owe a huge debt to Anais Nin, because I fell into her diaries, essays, and collected letters in my Twenties and Thirties like a fish falling into water. She was, in some ways, a deeply flawed human being, and perhaps she makes a strange kind of hero for someone like me, committed to the ethical and spiritual dimensions of my craft as well as to the technical ones, but a hero and strong influence she remains nonetheless. reading writing inspiring Terri Windling
3e4e6ee Her Uncle Jaime felt that people never read what did not interest them and that if it interested them that meant they were sufficiently mature to read it. reading freadom intellectual-freedom Isabel Allende
3d0ad7e "We've inherited many ideas about writing that emerged in the eighteenth century, especially an interest in literature as both an expression and an exploration of the self. This development part of what distinguishes the "modern" from the "early modern" has shaped the work of many of our most celebrated authors, whose personal experiences indelibly and visibly mark their writing. It's fair to say that the fiction and poetry of many of the finest writers of the past century or so and I'm thinking here of Conrad, Proust, Lawrence, Joyce, Woolf, Kafka, Plath, Ellison, Lowell, Sexton, Roth, and Coetzee, to name but a few have been deeply autobiographical. The link between the life and the work is one of the things we're curious about and look for when we pick up the latest book by a favorite author." reading readers-and-writers James Shapiro
556693b No two readers can or will ever read the same book, because the reader builds the book in collaboration with the author. reading fiction Neil Gaiman
83bf74c "I prefer my history dead. Dead history is writ in ink, the living sort in blood." "Do you want to die old and craven in your bed?" "How else? Though not till I'm done reading." history reading life George R.R. Martin
54a0e10 There are readings--of the same text--that are dutiful, readings that map and dissect, readings that hear a rustling of unheard sounds, that count grey little pronouns for pleasure or instruction and for a time do not hear golden or apples. There are personal readings, which snatch for personal meanings, I am full of love, or disgust, or fear, I scan for love, or disgust, or fear. There are--believe it--impersonal readings--where the mind's eye sees the lines move onwards and the mind's ear hears them sing and sing. Now and then there are readings that make the hairs on the neck, the non-existent pelt, stand on end and tremble, when every word burns and shines hard and clear and infinite and exact, like stones of fire, like points of stars in the dark--readings when the knowledge that we the writing differently or better or satisfactorily, runs ahead of any capacity to say what we know, or how. In these readings, a sense that the text has appeared to be wholly new, never before seen, is followed, almost immediately, by the sense that it was , that we the readers knew it was always there, and have it was as it was, though we have now for the first time recognised, become fully cognisant of, our knowledge. reading readings subjective-readings A.S. Byatt
c90f6aa "I do lend my books, but I have to be a bit selective because my marginalia are so incriminating." --Alison Bechdel" reading humor Leah Price
802621d So long as ignorance and misery remain on earth, books like this cannot be useless. reading Victor Hugo
0a537b1 While the consequences are often quite hellish, I am absolutely and perhaps permanently against ignoring books recommended from the heart by very nice people and strangers; it is too risky and inhuman; also the consequences are often painful in a fairly charming way. reading J.D. Salinger
62dc212 She was still clutching the book. She was holding desperately on to the words who had saved her life. words reading death Markus Zusak
ae0f821 I don't mind nothing happening in a book, but nothing happening in a phony way--characters saying things people never say, doing jobs that don't fit, the whole works--is simply asking too much of a reader. Something happening in a phony way must beat nothing happening in a phony way every time, right? I mean, you could prove that, mathematically, in an equation, and you can't often apply science to literature. reading writing science Nick Hornby
4958586 I utilise all my spare moments. I've read twenty-seven of the Hundred Best Books. I collect ferns. reading self-improvement Max Beerbohm
be61a30 It must be that people who read go on more macrocosmic and microcosmic trips - biblical god trips, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Ulysses, Finnegan's Wake trips. Non-readers, what do they get? (They get the munchies.) reading Maxine Hong Kingston
fcf4067 Far and away the greatest menace to the writer--any writer, beginning or otherwise--is the reader. The reader is, after all, a kind of silent partner in this whole business of writing, and a work of fiction is surely incomplete if it is never read. The reader is, in fact, the writer's only unrelenting, genuine enemy. He has everything on his side; all he has to do, after all, is shut his eyes, and any work of fiction becomes meaningless. Moreover, a reader has an advantage over a beginning writer in not being a beginning reader; before he takes up a story to read it, he can be presumed to have read everything from Shakespeare to Jack Kerouac. No matter whether he reads a story in manuscript as a great personal favor, or opens a magazine, or--kindest of all--goes into a bookstore and pays good money for a book, he is still an enemy to be defeated with any kind of dirty fighting that comes to the writer's mind. reading writing writers-on-writing Shirley Jackson
4854038 Curiously enough, one cannot read a book: one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader, an active and creative reader is a rereader. And I shall tell you why. When we read a book for the first time the very process of laboriously moving our eyes from left to right, line after line, page after page, this complicated physical work upon the book, the very process of learning in terms of space and time what the book is about, this stands between us and artistic appreciation. When we look at a painting we do not have to move our eyes in a special way even if, as in a book, the picture contains elements of depth and development. The element of time does not really enter in a first contact with a painting. In reading a book, we must have time to acquaint ourselves with it. We have no physical organ (as we have the eye in regard to a painting) that takes in the whole picture and then can enjoy its details. But at a second, or third, or fourth reading we do, in a sense, behave towards a book as we do towards a painting. However, let us not confuse the physical eye, that monstrous masterpiece of evolution, with the mind, an even more monstrous achievement. A book, no matter what it is--a work of fiction or a work of science (the boundary line between the two is not as clear as is generally believed)--a book of fiction appeals first of all to the mind. The mind, the brain, the top of the tingling spine, is, or should be, the only instrument used upon a book. reading art reader Vladimir Nabokov
df13fb4 One thinks of nothing,' he continued; 'the hours slip by. Motionless we traverse countries we fancy we see, and your thought, blinding with the fiction, playing with the details, follows the outline of the adventures. It mingles with the characters, and it seems as if it were yourself palpitating beneath their costumes. reading feelings books madame-bovary emotions Gustave Flaubert
6a0b8bb ...to her all books were the same and, as with her subjects, she felt a duty to approach them without prejudice...Lauren Bacall, Winifred Holtby, Sylvia Plath - who were they? Only be reading could she find out. prejudice equality reading books learning celebrities information knowledge Alan Bennett
ee246c7 "An editor doesn't just read, he reads , and reading well is a creative, powerful act. The ancients knew this and it frightened them. Mesopotamian society, for instance, did not want great reading from its scribes, only great writing. Scribes had to submit to a curious ruse: they had to downplay their reading skills lest they antagonize their employer. The Attic poet Menander wrote: "those who can read see twice as well." Ancient autocrats did not want their subjects to see that well. Order relied on obedience, not knowledge and reflection. So even though he was paid to read as much as write messages, the scribe's title cautiously referred to writing alone ( = "to write"); and the symbol for Nisaba, the Mesopotamian goddess of scribes, was not a tablet but a stylus. In his excellent book , Alberto Manguel writes, "It was safer for a scribe to be seen not as one who interpreted information, but who merely recorded it for the public good." In their fear of readers, ancients understood something we have forgotten about the magnitude of readership. Reading breeds the power of an independent mind. When we read well, we are thinking hard for ourselves--this is the essence of freedom. It is also the essence of editing. Editors are scribes liberated to not simply record and disseminate information, but think hard about it, interpret, and ultimately, influence it." reading writing editing revision freedom-of-thought thought writers Susan Bell
291b907 It is not all books that are as dull as their readers. words literature reading perception Henry David Thoreau
462e53c It is not all books that are as dull as their readers. There are probably words addressed to our condition exactly, which, if we could really hear and understand, would be more salutary than the morning or the spring to our lives, and possibly put a new aspect on the face of things for us. How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book. words literature reading Henry David Thoreau
e805f2a The ceaseless rain is falling fast, And yonder gilded vane, Immovable for three days past, Points to the misty main, It drives me in upon myself And to the fireside gleams, To pleasant books that crowd my shelf, And still more pleasant dreams, I read whatever bards have sung Of lands beyond the sea, And the bright days when I was young Come thronging back to me. In fancy I can hear again The Alpine torrent's roar, The mule-bells on the hills of Spain, The sea at Elsinore. I see the convent's gleaming wall Rise from its groves of pine, And towers of old cathedrals tall, And castles by the Rhine. I journey on by park and spire, Beneath centennial trees, Through fields with poppies all on fire, And gleams of distant seas. I fear no more the dust and heat, No more I feel fatigue, While journeying with another's feet O'er many a lengthening league. Let others traverse sea and land, And toil through various climes, I turn the world round with my hand Reading these poets' rhymes. From them I learn whatever lies Beneath each changing zone, And see, when looking with their eyes, Better than with mine own. rain reading books traveling-through-books travels-by-the-fireside traveling weather Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
44b51fa It was a great mistake to have come. He should have stayed at home and read his book, thought Peter Walsh; should have gone to a music hall; he should have stayed at home, for he knew no one. reading introvert party Virginia Woolf
1dc7e20 For several years, while I searched for, found, and studied black women writers, I deliberately shut O'Connor out, feeling almost ashamed that she had reached me first. And yet, even when I no longer read her, I missed her, and realized that though the rest of America might not mind, having endured it so long, I would never be satisfied with a segregated literature. I would have to read Zora Hurston and Flannery O'Connor, Nella Larsen and Carson McCullers, Jean Toomer and William Faulkner, before I could begin to feel well read at all. reading well-read segregation perspective Alice Walker
2f3a6dc "I love the smell of old books," Mandy sighed, inhaling deeply with the book pressed against her face. The yellow pages smelled of wood and paper mills and mothballs." -- reading dream books mothballs paper-mill smell-of-books vintage smell old surreal nerd wood nostalgia Rebecca McNutt
e376956 This is the strange life of books that you enter along as a writer, mapping an unknown territory that arises as you travel. If you succeed in the voyage, others enter after, one at a time, also alone, but in communion with your imagination, traversing your route. Books are solitudes where we meet. reading writing books readers writers Rebecca Solnit
30aebc2 she kept sliding down, in small half-willing surrenders, till she was a heap, with the book held tiringly above her face. reading Alan Hollinghurst
95897a1 We invent fictions in order to live somehow the many lives we would like to lead when we barely have one at our disposal. reading Mario Vargas Llosa
645d456 Mr Earbrass was virtually asleep when several lines of verse passed through his mind and left it hopelessly awake. Here was the perfect epigraph for TUH: A horrid ?monster has been [something] delay'd By your/their indiff'rence in the dank brown shade Below the garden... His mind's eye sees them quoted on the bottom third of a right-hand page in a (possibly) olive-bound book he read at least five years ago. When he does find them, it will be a great nuisance if no clue is given to their authorship. reading writing Edward Gorey
6eccf8a Personally, I refuse to drive a car - I won't have anything to do with any kind of transportation in which I can't read. reading Arthur C. Clarke
35ecc5f Fictions exist because of this fact. Because we have only one life, and our desires and fantasies demand a thousand lives. Because the abyss between what we are and what we would like to be has to be bridged somehow. That was why fictions were born: so that, through living this vicarious, transient, precarious, but also passionate and fascinating life that fiction transports us to, we can incorporate the impossible into the possible and our existence can be both reality and unreality, history and fable, concrete life and marvellous adventure. words literature reading fiction Mario Vargas Llosa
0431fd0 "Louis said, "There ought to be a comic book about geeks." Dr. McNaughton said, "There are books about geeks." He said, "There are?" Dr. McNaughton said, "I'll read you some Faulkner sometime. I'll read you some Eudora Welty, some Flannery O'Connor. Geeks, midgets, anything your heart desires. Better than comic books." Louis looked at his father. He said, "You'll read to me? Really?" reading Lewis Nordan
9ecdce4 I have no cause to love Mr. Norrell- far from it. But I know this about him: he is a magician first and everything else second- and Jonathan is the same. Books and magic are all either of them really care about. magic reading Susanna Clarke
d7ee5e9 A sensible person does not read a novel as a task. He reads it as a diversion. He is prepared to interest himself in the characters and is concerned to see how they act in given circumstances, and what happens to them; he sympathizes with their troubles and is gladdened by their joys; he puts himself in their place and, to an extent, lives their lives. Their view of life, their attitude to the great subjects of human speculation, whether stated in words or shown in action, call forth in him a reaction of surprise, of pleasure or of indignation. But he knows instinctively where his interest lies and he follows it as surely as a hound follows the scent of a fox. Sometimes, through the author's failure, he loses the scent. Then he flounders about till he finds it again. He skips. reading entertainment skipping W. Somerset Maugham
5cfa96e Not a wall in the building lacked books. Books even occupied the space above doorways. reading repository-of-learning Brandon Mull
681ca3c A good vocabulary is not acquired by reading books written according to some notion of the vocabulary of one's age group. It comes from reading books above one. reading learning vocabulary school J.R.R. Tolkien
d0faff2 What's the point of a houseful of books you've already read? reading Cory Doctorow
d2bb2a6 How can you be happy in this world? You have a hole in your heart. You have a gateway inside you to lands beyond the world you know. They will call you, as you grow. There can never be a time when you forget them, when you are not, in your heart, questing after something you cannot have, something you cannot even properly imagine, the lack of which will spoil your sleep and your day and your life, until you close your eyes for the final time... reading other-worlds Neil Gaiman
d09905d "What happened to the classics?" you may ask. "Don't you believe in reading great literature to children?" Nothing happened to the classics-but something happened to children: their imaginations went to sleep in front of the television set twenty-five years ago. Reading a classic to a child whose imagination is in a state of retarded development will not foster a love of literature in that child." reading read-aloud literacy-children Jim Trelease
3efd05c No, no, it's not the books you are looking for! Take it where you can find it, in old phonograph records, in old motion pictures, and in old friends; look for it in nature and look for it in yourself. Books were only one type of receptacle where we stored a lot of things we were afraid we might forget. There is nothing magical in them at all. The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us. reading meaning language Ray Bradbury
bf1aaec A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the weapon. Breach man's mind. Who knows who might be the target of a well-read man? reading dangerous oppression Ray Bradbury
246bae0 The good news is that I read the book, and because of its fantasy nature, I could not pretend that I was in the book. That way I could participate and still read. reading wallflower Stephen Chbosky
ecf60e6 'n 'Hdan l yqr' Gyr m yhtWm bh reading Isabel Allende
97bc351 You know what pulp is, Mr. Tallis? It's the flesh of a luscious fruit, mashed down into an incredible, half liquid richness. so saturated with flavor that it fills your whole body, not just your mouth. reading writing pop-culture pulp-fiction stories Mike Carey & Peter Gross
715b65e "I had read four thousand pages of letters by Lawrence and I wanted thousands of pages more... I wanted them not to end. And yet, at the same time that I was wishing they would not come to an end, I was hurrying through these books because however much you are enjoying a book, however much you want it never to end, you are always eager for it end. However much you are enjoying a book you are always flicking to the end, counting to see how many pages are left, looking forward to the time when you can put the book down and have done with it. At the back of our minds, however much we are enjoying a book, we come to the end of it and some little voice is always saying, "Thank Christ for that!" reading Geoff Dyer
1b5f450 Books do pretend ...but squeezed in between is even more that is true--without what you may call the lies, the pages would be too light for the truth, you see? literature reading fiction truth Matthew Pearl
4f21411 "Appalling things can happen to children. And even a happy childhood is filled with sadnesses. Is there any other period in your life when you hate your best friend on Monday and love them again on Tuesday? But at eight, 10, 12, you don't realise you're going to die. There is always the possibility of escape. There is always somewhere else and far away, a fact I had never really appreciated until I read Gitta Sereny's profoundly unsettling Cries Unheard about child-killer Mary Bell. reading literary-fiction Mark Haddon
0d61157 Perhaps reading and writing books is one of the last defences human dignity has left, because in the end they remind us of what God once reminded us before He too evaporated in this age of relentless humiliations--that we are more than ourselves; that we have souls. words literature reading writing Richard Flanagan
9307d5c Is there a better method of departure by night than this quiet bon voyage with an open book, the sole companion who has come to see you off, to wave you into the dark waters beyond language? words reading poetry language Billy Collins
a4af8e2 Reading relaxes me. reading relaxation school Elizabeth Newton
74cf69b gana kit`xva uxilavis sakut`ari t`valit` danaxvis xelovneba ar aris? gana kit`xvis silamaze im sich`umeshi araa, shen garshemo rom isadgurebs, sanam ambavshi mt`lianad xar ch`az'iruli? gana am dros shenshi avtoris xma ar icqebs zhg'eras, rat`a sxva danarch`eni xma da xmauri gadap`aros? reading Paul Auster
30a7fd1 I stress the expansion and elaboration of language. In simplifying it, reducing it, we reduce the power of our expression and our power to communicate. Standardization, the use of worn-out formulas, impedes communication because it does not match the subtlety of our minds or emotions, the multimedia of our unconscious life. words literature reading writing language Anaïs Nin
dea86e0 Thanks for being the kind of person who likes to pick up a book. That's a genuinely great thing. I met a librarian recently who said she doesn't read because books are her job and when she goes home, she just wants to switch off. I think we can agree that that's creepy as hell. gratitude reading thanks readers librarians Max Barry
c1bdd10 Once in a very long time you come across a book that is far, far more than the ink, the glue and the paper, a book that seeps into your blood. reading Tahir Shah
c76512f Don't wait for writers to be dead to be read; the living ones can use the money. reading fame writers Thomas C. Foster
16eb3af His habit of reading isolated him: it became such a need that after being in company for some time he grew tired and restless ... reading W. Somerset Maugham
3e2d5e5 "A twisted spine condemned him to walk with a limp, but as he said famously, "I do not limp when I read, nor when I write." reading writing capable limp fire-and-blood wit George R.R. Martin
6b727bb Oh? And what's so stinking about it?. literature reading Anthony Burgess
f52eb27 I generally read every night befi=ore I fall asleep: Brad does too. I find it comforting to lie beside my husband, each of us with a book in our hands. I see it as a period of calm and intimacy, and as the perfect metaphor-together, yet individual-for our marriage. reading marriage-husbands Debbie Macomber
82075a1 Meggie thought this first whisper sounded a little different from one book to another, depending on weather or not she already knew the story it was going to tell her. reading reading-books Cornelia Funke
3a30084 Shakespeare's exquisite imagining belies our total inability to live in the present moment. reading Harold Bloom
91d5b34 Motionless we traverse countries we fancy we see, and your thought, blending with the fiction, playing with the details, follows the outline of the adventures. It mingles with the characters, and it seems as if it were yourself palpitating beneath their costumes. reading fiction imagination reading-experience madame-bovary characters Gustave Flaubert
a3c8ad6 A person should read a book because it speaks to something in his heart. reading Julia Quinn
1eb8d62 People disappear when they die. Their voice, their laughter, the warmth of their breath. Their flesh. Eventually their bones. All living memory of them ceases. This is both dreadful and natural. Yet for some there is an exception to this annihilation. For in the books they write they continue to exist. reading death writers Diane Setterfield
a72baf9 Douglas has more books- and comic books- than anyone I know. Still, if you wanted to borrow one, and took it down off the shelf and forgot to mention it to him, Douglas would notice right away it was missing, even though there are maybe a thousand other ones that look exactly like it right on the shelf beside it. Douglas is one of those books people reading order Meg Cabot
a702efb We haven't remained idle, twiddling our thumbs while you were off having a good time. Through books Cathy and I have lived a zillion lives . . . our vicarious way to feel alive. live reading books book-reading lived vicarious abandonement good-time thumbs alive idle away read experience lives children V.C. Andrews
04cc68b Sitting in the brightly lit library, surrounded by books, in total silence, that was ma personal zenith. solitude library literature reading books bookish irvine-welsh skagboys zenith heroine reading-books read introversion introvert reader Irvine Welsh
41be089 Read what you find interesting, and then follow your interests. You'll find that in doing so you always generate enough to illuminate the next step. reading reading-habits reading-books Mark Helprin
26a5631 I knew that now, reading it in the oversensitized state of my mind after too much brandy, I would remember it somewhere, and afterward it would seem as though it had really happened to me. reading Ernest Hemingway
b419cf1 The influence of early books is profound. So much of the future lies on the shelves. Early reading has more influence than any religious teaching. reading imagination Graham Greene
27d1aab "Only after a writer lets literature shape her can she perhaps shape literature. In working-class France, when an apprentice got hurt, or when he got tired, the experienced workers said, "It is the trade entering his body." The art must enter the body, too." literature reading writer writing the-writing-life art writing-advice write artistry read discipline reader artist Annie Dillard
acd5f30 I could not give up either of these worlds, neither the book I am holding nor the gleaming forest, though I have told you almost nothing of what is said here on these grim pages, from the sentences of which I've conjured images of a bleak site years ago. Here in this room, I suppose, is to be found the interior world of the book; but it opens upon a world beyond the windows, where no event has been collapsed into syntax, where the vocabulary, it seems, is infinite. The indispensable connection for me lies with the open space (of the open window ajar year round, never closed) that lets the breath of every winter storm, the ripping wind and its pelting rain, enter the room. reading nature writing breathing meditation Barry Lopez
28cb9ec "Why is it that if you say you don't enjoy using an e-reader, or that you aren't going to get one till the technology is mature, you get reported as "loathing" it? reading e-reading e-books digital Ursula K. Le Guin
dffff1f "Look at your daughter,' she whispered. 'As brave as...as.." She wanted to compare Meggie to a hero in some story but all the heroes she could think of were men, and anyway none of them seemed to her brave enough for comparison to the girl standing there, perfectly straight, scrutinizing Capricorn's Black Jackets, with her chin jutting out defiantly." reading meggie inkheart Cornelia Funke
bcefdaa And did the distress I was feeling derive from some internal sickness of the soul, or was it imposed on me by the sickness of society? That someone besides me had suffered from these ambiguities and had seen light on their far side... that I could find company and consolation and hope in an object pulled almost at random from a bookshelf--felt akin to an instance of religious grace. words literature reading books Jonathan Franzen
571926d Mice: But reading all the good writers might discourage you. Y.C.: Then you ought to be discouraged. literature reading writing writers-on-reading encouragement skill writers Ernest Hemingway
4838597 Plato laments the decline of the oral tradition and the atrophy of memory which writing induces, I at the other end of the Age of the Written Word am impressed by the sturdiness and reliability of words on paper... The will to record indelibly, to set down stories in permanent words, seems to me akin to the conviction that we are larger than our biologies. words literature reading writing Jonathan Franzen
34a969a Because of literature we can decipher, at least partially, the hieroglyphic that existence tends to be for the great majority of human beings. literature reading Mario Vargas Llosa
d7edb7c Living is worth the effort if only because without life we could not read or imagine stories. reading Mario Vargas Llosa
b94bc82 To read in the service of any ideology is not to read at all. The mind's dialogue with itself is not primarily a social reality. All that the Western canon can bring one is the proper use of one's own solitude. reading thought-life Harold Bloom
8f95991 Reading things that are relevant to the facts of your life is of limited value. The facts are, after all, only the facts, and the yearning passionate part of you will not be met there. That is why reading ourselves as a fiction as well as fact is so liberating. The wider we read the freer we become. Emily Dickinson barely left her homestead in Amherst, Massachusetts, but when we read 'My life stood -- a loaded gun' we know we have met an imagination that will detonate life, not decorate it. reading Jeanette Winterson
9071175 The genres, it is thought, have other designs on us. They want to entertain, as opposed to rubbing our noses in the daily grit produced by the daily grind. Unhappily for realistic novelists, the larger reading public likes being entertained. reading genre-snobbery nonfiction popularity Margaret Atwood
672e66e We were all serious readers, sitting on wooden chairs at rows of lecterns, turning the pages, united in mutual love of isolation. library reading readers Michael Moorcock
b461c72 Each spine was an encapsulated memory, each book represented hours, days of pleasure, of immersion into words. reading memory Audrey Niffenegger
e6f71d5 Dust off that Bible. It has the answers you are looking for, and its delights await you. woman reading bible god love daily christian searching delight looking Elizabeth George
472d1dd He had no ideal world of dead heroes; he knew little of the life of men in the past; he must find the beings to whom he could cling with loving admiration among those who came within speech of him. history reading myopia perspective George Eliot
df3776a "People with Books. What, in 2007, could be more incongruous than that? It makes me want to laugh." [ ]" reading books modern-society modern-life Michael Chabon
81b5535 "I've been very influenced by folklore, fairy tales, and folk ballads, so I love all the classic works based on these things -- like 's 19th century fairy stories, the fairy poetry of , and 's splendid book . (I think that particular book of hers wasn't published until the 1970s, not long before her death, but she was an English writer popular in the middle decades of the 20th century.) I'm also a big Pre-Raphaelite fan, so I love early fantasy novels. Oh, and " " by fairy-tales reading folk-ballads folklore influences pre-raphaelite Terri Windling
48d34db To engage the written word means to follow a line of thought, which requires considerable powers of classifying, inference-making and reasoning. It means to uncover lies, confusions, and overgeneralizations, to detect abuses of logic and common sense. It also means to weigh ideas, to compare and contrast assertions, to connect one generalization to another. To accomplish this, one must achieve a certain distance from the words themselves, which is, in fact, encouraged by the isolated and impersonal text. That is why a good reader does not cheer an apt sentence or pause to applaud even an inspired paragraph. Analytic thought is too busy for that, and too detached. reading deduction inference Neil Postman
7384370 Exposition is a mode of thought, a method of learning, and a means of expression. Almost all of the characteristics we associate with mature discourse were amplified by typography, which has the strongest possible bias toward exposition: a sophisticated ability to think conceptually, deductively and sequentially; a high valuation of reason and order; an abhorrence of contradiction; a large capacity for detachment and objectivity; and a tolerance for delayed response. reading reason exposition typography logic Neil Postman
b05f51a "A book is a beautiful, paper mausoleum, or tomb, in which to store ideas...to keep the bones of your thoughts in one place, for all time. I just want to say..."Hello. We can hear you. The words survived." reading writing inspirational Caitlin Moran
ab33c47 That, incidentally, gives me the greatest possible pleasure--the knowledge that we are all linked by our friendship with a group of fictional people. What a pleasant club of which to be a member! [from the preface; on writing for people around the world] reading writing Alexander McCall Smith
aca0ad9 So I ask you: whose job is it in this country to wake up comatose parents? Someone better do it soon because knowing television's potential for harm and keeping that knowledge to ourselves instead of sharing it with parents amounts to covering up a land mine on a busy street. television reading Jim Trelease
2c4297f Dave and Serge...played the Fiddler's Elbow as if it were Giants Stadium, and even though it was acoustic, they just about blew the place up. They were standing on chairs adn lying on the floor, they were funny, they charmed everyone in the pub apart from an old drunk ditting next to the drum kit...who put his fingers firmly in his ears during Serge's extended harmonica solo. It was utterly bizarre and very moving: most musicians wouldn't have bothered turning up, let alone almost killing themselves. And I was reminded...how rarely one feels included in a live show. Usually you watch, and listen, and drift off, and the band plays well or doesn't and it doesn't matter much either way. It can actually be a very lonely experience. But I felt a part of the music, and a part of the people I'd gone with, and, to cut this short before the encores, I didn't want to read for about a fortnight afterward. I wanted to write, but I didn't want to read no book. I was too itchy, too energized, and if young people feel like that every night of the week, then, yes, literature 's dead as a dodo. (Nick's thoughts after seeing Marah at a little pub called Fiddler's Elbow.) reading passion music live-band performance Nick Hornby
aee1b72 I was always reading books when I should have been doing math and the rest of it. reading math Markus Zusak
a64b251 ""I always read everything when I was a kid-and I do mean everything, from Nancy Drew to Dickens to my dad's John D. MacDonald-but then I went to regular school and the English teachers started telling me to read 'real' books, so I tried. And you know, I kinda went off reading for a while. I had already been reading literary novels and the classics mixed in with whatever else, but-" She waved a hand. "So I went back to reading whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted to-reading had been my greatest pleasure in all the world. I mean I never really watched all that much television, because we were moving around, never really had solid digs until I was thirteen, so reading was everything." reading truth Barbara O'Neal
4b703a4 Surely it is better, thought Domenica, that forty-five should buy the book and actually read it, than should many thousands, indeed millions, buy it and put it on their shelves, like...Professor Hawking's Brief History of Time. That was a book that had been bought by millions, but had been demonstrated to have been read by only a minute proportion of those who had acquired it. For do we not all have a copy of that on our shelves, and who amongst us can claim to have read beyond the first page, in spite of the pellucid prose of its author and his evident desire to share with us his knowledge of...of whatever it is that the book is about? reading Alexander McCall Smith
96222f6 Doch am Ende sind Bucher kein Luxus, sondern eine Notwendigkeit, und Lesen ist eine Sucht, von der er keinesfalls geheilt werden mochte. reading Paul Auster
a50f21c "Her gaze wavered towards one of the books on the sales counter beside the register, a hardcover copy of Shakespeare's Hamlet with many of the pages dog-eared and stained with coffee and tea. The store owner caught her looking at it and slid it across the counter towards her. "You ever read Hamlet?" he questioned. "I tried to when I was in high school," said Mandy, picking up the book and flipping it over to read the back. "I mean, it's expected that everyone should like Shakespeare's books and plays, but I just...." her words faltered when she noticed him laughing to himself. "What's so funny, Sir?" she added, slightly offended. "...Oh, I'm not laughing at you, just with you," said the store owner. "Most people who say they love Shakespeare only pretend to love his work. You're honest Ma'am, that's all. You see, the reason you and so many others are put-off by reading Shakespeare is because reading his words on paper, and seeing his words in action, in a play as they were meant to be seen, are two separate things... and if you can find a way to relate his plays to yourself, you'll enjoy them so much more because you'll feel connected to them. Take Hamlet for example - Hamlet himself is grieving over a loss in his life, and everyone is telling him to move on but no matter how hard he tries to, in the end all he can do is to get even with the ones who betrayed him." "...Wow, when you put it that way... sure, I think I'll buy a copy just to try reading, why not?" Mandy replied with a smile." revenge shakespeare grief loss reading diffcult dog-eared bookstore coffee tea geek nerd hamlet classic Rebecca McNutt
c766f94 "Jefferson, who spent his life collecting books, many of which he donated to the Library of Congress, boasted that America was the only country whose farmers read Homer. "A native of America who cannot read or write," said John Adams, "is as rare an appearance . . . as a Comet or an Earthquake." reading Azar Nafisi
5c25876 Here was the South Side--a million in captivity--stretching from this doorstep as far as the eye could see. And they didn't even read; depressed populations don't have the time or energy to spare. The affluent populations, which should have their help, didn't as far as could be discovered, read, either--they merely bought books and devoured them, but not in order to learn: in order to learn new attitudes. reading James Baldwin
2509858 I went on writing reviews for the newspaper, and critical articles crying out for a different approach to culture, as even the most inattentive reader could hardly fail to notice if he scratched the surface a little, critical articles crying out, indeed begging, for a return to the Greek and Latin greats, to the Troubadours, to the dolce stil nuovo and the classics of Spain, France and England, more culture! more culture! read Whitman and Pound and Eliot, read Neruda and Borges and Vallejo, read Victor Hugo, for God's sake, and Tolstoy, and proudly I cried myself hoarse in the desert, but my vociferations and on occasions my howling could only be heard by those who were able to scratch the surface of my writings with the nails of their index fingers, and they were not many, but enough for me, and life went on and on and on, like a necklace of rice grains, on each grain of which a landscape had been painted, tiny grains and microscopic landscapes, and I knew that everyone was putting that necklace on and wearing it, but no one had the patience or the strength or the courage to take it off and look at it closely and decipher each landscape grain by grain, partly because to do so required the vision of a lynx or an eagle, and partly because the landscapes usually turned out to contain unpleasant surprises like coffins, makeshift cemeteries, ghost towns, the void and the horror, the smallness of being and its ridiculous will, people watching television, people going to football matches, boredom navigating the Chilean imagination like an enormous aircraft carrier. And that's the truth. We were bored. We intellectuals. Because you can't read all day and all night. You can't write all day and all night. Splendid isolation has never been our style... criticism reading writing intellectual intellectualism Roberto Bolaño
f33318a Would it be possible, he wondered, to stand up before the world and with the utmost conviction spew out lies and nonsense? To say that windmills were knights, that a barber's basin was a helmet, that puppets were real people? Would it be possible to persuade others to agree with what he said, even though they did not believe him? In other words, to what extent would people tolerate blasphemies if they gave them amusement? The answer is obvious, isn't it? To any extent. For the proof is that we still read the book. It remains highly amusing to us. And that's finally all anyone wants out of a book--to be amused. reading fiction Paul Auster
75419d9 I repeat here what you will find in my first chapter, that the only thing that signifies to you in a book is what it means to you, and if your opinion is at variance with that of everyone else in the world it is of no consequence. Your opinion is valid for you. In matters of art people, especially, I think, in America, are apt to accept willingly from professors and critics a tyranny which in matters of government they would rebel against. But in these questions there is no right and wrong. The relation between the reader and his book is as free and intimate as that between the mystic and his God. Of all forms of snobbishness the literary is perhaps the most detestable, and there is no excuse for the fool who despises his fellow-man because he does not share his opinion of the value of a certain book. Pretence in literary appreciation is odious, and no one should be ashamed if a book that the best critics think highly of means nothing to him. On the other hand it is better not to speak ill of such books if you have not read them. reading W. Somerset Maugham
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