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Link Quote Stars Tags Author
45d1026 It's because of the way you are. It's why you're happy reading novels. You're only comfortable with a piece of the world that you can hold in your hand. reading Lan Samantha Chang
f287780 Without moving, you walk through lands you imagine you can see, and your thoughts, weaving in and out of the story, delight in the details or follow the outlines of the adventures. You merge with the character; you think you're the one whose heart is beating so hard within the clothes he's wearing. reading Gustave Flaubert
bc18244 Literacy: Blessing? Or curse? reading writing reading-books literacy Charles Frazier
db3d27a "But perhaps there is another, more personal reason for my disagreement with Ramin: I cannot imagine myself feeling at home in a place that is indifferent to what has become my true home, a land with no borders and few restrictions, which I have taken to calling "the Republic of Imagination." I think of it as Nabokov's "somehow, somewhere" or Alice's backyard, a world that runs parallel to the real one, whose occupants need no passport or documentation. The only requirements for entry are an open mind, a restless desire to know and an indefinable urge to escape the mundane." reading inspiration Azar Nafisi
b0136fe Systematisches Lesen ist kaum von Nutzen. Offizielle Bucherlisten (der Klassiker, der Literaturgeschichte, der zensurierten oder empfohlenen Bucher, der Bibliothekskataloge) konnen per Zufall den einen oder anderen nutzlichen Hinweis geben. Die beste Anleitung bieten personliche Launen - das Vertrauen auf das Lustprinzip und der Glaube an den Zufall -, die uns manchmal in einen provisorischen Zustand der Gnade versetzen, uns ermoglichen, Gold aus Flachs zu spinnen. reading books Alberto Manguel
3ee5066 Anyone who's read all of Proust plus The Man withour Qualities is bound t be missing out on a few other titles. literature reading remembrance-of-things-past robert-musil the-man-without-qualities proust Lorrie Moore
10014eb "I love so many books and authors that it's hard to name just a few, but I'm always particularly excited when new books by and come out. (And, of course, books by , and , and the rest of the Bordertown crew!) I'm impatiently looking forward to reading favorites interests Terri Windling
460396e "He didn't much like reading novels - he preferred history or philosophy - or poetry, although he could read only a little poetry at a time, because when a poem "spoke to him" it was as if a brilliant, agonizing light had been turned upon some tiny, private cell of his soul." reading Claire Messud
bf5baf7 When the founding fathers conceived of this new nation, they understood that the education of its citizens would be essential to the health of their democratic enterprise. Knowledge was not just a luxury; it was essential. reading education Azar Nafisi
429e5af Reading yourself as a fiction as well as a fact is the only way to keep the narrative open - the only way to stop the story from running away under its own momentum, often towards an ending no one wants. reading fiction life end stories Jeanette Winterson
38018e4 Despereaux was reading the story out loud to himself. He was reading from the beginning so that he could get to the end... reading Kate DiCamillo
edb7157 "And will knowing what she reads make you know who she is?" "Can you think of a better way to tell?" reading Donna Leon
f6dc099 "He had gone again and, emboldened by his first successful trip, had chosen a different sort of world to enter, that of THE MONK. He had studied the book with great care and finally selected a passage that was purely descriptive. The result was the same. The instant he closed the top of the showcase, he was transported to the world described in the open pages. He found himself standing - and shivering - in a dank corridor that, he knew, was far underground. Feeble candlelight flickered in the distance, off to his left. Water dripped down the gleaming walls and startled rats scurried past his feet. The air was stale and unpleasant. Down the corridor to his left, he could hear singing but could not make out the words. Then suddenly, from his right, he heard a woman's high-pitched scream, its sound caroming off the wet, stone walls of the passageway. He jumped, his skin crawling at the back of his neck. And found himself back in his warm and familiar room. ("I Shall Not Leave England Now")" reading matthew-gregory-lewis the-monk gothic Alan Ryan
5ac1a8e Library science was the foundation of all sciences. reading literacy Robert A. Heinlein
8b23332 And so, there in the penitentiary, Juan's education began. He didn't want to be a puto weakling, so he worked hard at learning to read. His earthly body was locked up, but his mind was set free as a young eagle soaring through the heavens. reading freedom inspirational reading-motivation Victor Villaseñor
542bfd8 "I was reading. reading humor -Tamora Pierce Briar s Book via fictionalheroine
c54e764 Depression can be due to a low endocrine function, nutritional deficiencies, blood sugar problems, food allergies, or systemic yeast infection. Depression can also result from medical illnesses such as stroke, heart attack, cancer, Parkinson's disease, and hormonal disorder. It can also be caused by a serious loss, a difficult relationship, a financial problem, or any stressful, unwelcome life change. reading depression sadness cause-of-depression passages-ventura passages-malibu addiction-treatment addiction-treatment-center chris-prentiss quotes Chris Prentiss
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
ec388df It was pretty silly quoting poetry around free and easy like that. It was the act of a silly damn snob. Give man a few lines of verse and he thinks he's the Lord of all Creation. You think you can walk on water with all your books. Well, the world can get by just fine without them. literature reading poetry Ray Bradbury
b969c38 Fiction allows us to slide into these other heads, these other places, and look out through other eyes. And then in the tale we stop before we die, or we die vicariously and unharmed, and in the world beyond the tale we turn the page or close the book, and we resume our lives reading Neil Gaiman
e8f9b69 "Do you read them? Faulkner, Hemingway, Fitzgerald?" "Only if I have to. I try to avoid old dead white men." reading faulkner camino-island john-grisham old-dead-white-men hemingway fitzgerald John Grisham
7e29ddb Bean felt a rush of sweet nostalgia for the woman who had introduced us to E. Nesbit and Edward Eager and Laura Ingalls Wilder... reading Eleanor Brown
bdc4da2 She had come to letters late in her life, and though she had mastered them, they had never become her good friends. reading Robin Hobb
7e61195 I asked my mother why we couldn't have books and she said, 'The trouble with a book is that you never know what's in it until it's too late.' I thought to myself, 'Too late for what? reading sedition danger censorship Jeanette Winterson
e1456ef "...there is a saying used in twelve-step programs and in most treatment centers that "Relapse is part of recovery." It's another dangerous slogan that is based on a myth, and it only gives people permission to relapse because that think that when they do, they are on the road to recovery." reading books relapse alcoholics-anonymous passages-malibu addiction-cure addiction-treatment addiction-treatment-center alcohol-abuse chris-prentiss drug-abuse alcoholism recovery Chris Prentiss
b5ddfee "Silence. Montag sat like a carved white stone. The echo of the final hammer on his skull died slowly away into the black cavern where Faber waited for the echoes to subside. And then when the startled dust had settled down about Montag's mind, Faber began, softly, "All right, he's had his say. You must take it in. I'll say my say, too, in the next hours. And you'll take it in. And you'll try to judge them and make your decisions as to which way to jump, or fall. But I want it to be your decision, not mine, and not the Captain's. But remember that the Captain belongs to the most dangerous enemy to truth and freedom, the solid unmoving cattle of the majority. We all have our harps to play. And it's up to you now to know with which ear you'll listen." reading freedom independent-thought Ray Bradbury
02122ff They were...no ordinary group, gathering together to kill an evening, to seek refuge from critical husbands and demanding children while idly discussing their new best-seller. They met because literature was their shared passion. Books were as important to them as breath itself. They shared the ability to immerse themselves in the lives of fictional characters, to argue passionately about the development of plots, about decisions taken, dilemmas resolved. literature reading Gloria Goldreich
27ed6d0 My father never put a book into my hands and never forbade a book. Instead, he let me roam and graze, making my own more or less appropriate selections. I read gory tales of historic heroism that nine-teenth century parents were suitable for children, and gothic ghost stories that were surely not; I read accounts of arduous travel through treacherous lands undertaken by spinsters in crinolines, and I read handbooks on decorum and etiquette intended for young ladies of good family; I read books with pictures and books without; books in English, books in French, books in languages I didn't understand where I could make up stories in my head on the basis of a handful of guessed-at words. Books. Books. And books. reading censorship-of-books Diane Setterfield
ca7637d "What we mean when speaking of "myth" in general is story, the ability of story to explain ourselves to ourselves in ways that physics, philosophy, mathematics, chemistry--all very highly useful and informative in their own right--can't." myth story literature reading education analysis professor Thomas C. Foster
b71ad32 I refilled the wineglass and took it with me for a nice long bubble bath, where I settled in with Ambrose's guide for low-voltage outdoor lighting. It wasn't thrilling bubble-bath reading material, but I was impressed by his imagination. You wouldn't know from the writing that he'd never actually seen a low-voltage lighting system in someone's yard, much less installed one himself. His descriptions were clear, colorful, and written with authority. The inscription wasn't bad either: To Natalie, You're a high-voltage system as far as I am concerned. reading fraudulence inscription instruction-manual instructions manual signed user-guide fake Lee Goldberg
fec9a6b In high school, we barely brushed against Ogden Nash, Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, or any of the other so-unserious writers who delight everyone they touch. This was, after all, a very expensive and important school. Instead, I was force-fed a few of Shakespeare's Greatest Hits, although the English needed translation, the broad comedy and wrenching drama were lost, and none of the magnificently dirty jokes were ever explained. (Incidentally, Romeo and Juliet, fully appreciated, might be banned in some U.S. states.) This was the Concordance again, and little more. So we'd read all the lines aloud, resign ourselves to a ponderous struggle, and soon give up the plot completely. shakespeare reading learning trivia romeo-and-juliet Bob Harris
bba631a You want to avoid at all costs drawing your characters on those that already exist in other works of fiction. You must learn about people from people, not from what you read. Your reading should confirm what you've observed in the world. reading writing Anne Lamott
5db8e5c Gone are the days when you took Henry James on the train and read it in front of cute guys to impress them. reading henry-james Amy Poehler
77aa610 How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book! reading life new-era Henry David Thoreau
ef23425 "He couldn't have known it, but among the original run of The History of Love, at least one copy was destined to change a life. This particular book was one of the last of the two thousand to be printed, and sat for longer than the rest in a warehouse in the outskirts of Santiago, absorbing the humidity. From there it was finally sent to a bookstore in Buenos Aires. The careless owner hardly noticed it, and for some years it languished on the shelves, acquiring a pattern of mildew across the cover. It was a slim volume, and its position on the shelf wasn't exactly prime: crowded on the left by an overweight biography of a minor actress, and on the right by the once-bestselling novel of an author that everyone had since forgotten, it hardly left its spine visible to even the most rigorous browser. When the store changed owners it fell victim to a massive clearance, and was trucked off to another warehouse, foul, dingy, crawling with daddy longlegs, where it remained in the dark and damp before finally being sent to a small secondhand bookstore not far from the home of the writer Jorge Luis Borges. The owner took her time unpacking the books she'd bought cheaply and in bulk from the warehouse. One morning, going through the boxes, she discovered the mildewed copy of The History of Love. She'd never heard of it, but the title caught her eye. She put it aside, and during a slow hour in the shop she read the opening chapter, called 'The Age of Silence.' The owner of the secondhand bookstore lowered the volume of the radio. She flipped to the back flap of the book to find out more about the author, but all it said was that Zvi Litvinoff had been born in Poland and moved to Chile in 1941, where he still lived today. There was no photograph. That day, in between helping customers, she finished the book. Before locking up the shop that evening, she placed it in the window, a little wistful about having to part with it. The next morning, the first rays of the rising sun fell across the cover of The History of Love. The first of many flies alighted on its jacket. Its mildewed pages began to dry out in the heat as the blue-gray Persian cat who lorded over the shop brushed past it to lay claim to a pool of sunlight. A few hours later, the first of many passersby gave it a cursory glance as they went by the window. The shop owner did not try to push the book on any of her customers. She knew that in the wrong hands such a book could easily be dismissed or, worse, go unread. Instead she let it sit where it was in the hope that the right reader might discover it. And that's what happened. One afternoon a tall young man saw the book in the window. He came into the shop, picked it up, read a few pages, and brought it to the register. When he spoke to the owner, she couldn't place his accent. She asked where he was from, curious about the person who was taking the book away. Israel, he told her, explaining that he'd recently finished his time in the army and was traveling around South America for a few months. The owner was about to put the book in a bag, but the young man said he didn't need one, and slipped it into his backpack. The door chimes were still tinkling as she watched him disappear, his sandals slapping against the hot, bright street. reading Nicole Krauss
91b3956 "Thank you," he said. "I'm glad you enjoyed it. If there is anyone here this afternoon whom I have convinced that books are meant to be enjoyed, that English is nothing to do with duty, that it has nothing to do with school - with exercises and homework and ticks and crosses - then I am a happy man." He turned away but then he turned back again and he suddenly simply shouted, he bellowed "To hell with school," he cried. "To hell with school. English is what matters. ENGLISH IS LIFE." The Head grabbed him and led him off to her sitting-room for tea, not looking too thrilled, and we were let out and I went flying home." reading english school Jane Gardam
661de21 A book won't move your eyes for you like TV or a movie does. A book won't move your mind unless you give it your mind, or your heart unless you put your heart in it. It won't do the work for you. To read a good novel well is to follow it, to act it, to feel it, to become it--everything short of writing it, in fact. Reading is a collaboration, an act of participation. No wonder not everybody is up to it. reading books Ursula K. Le Guin
607de80 The constrained body knows and values the freedom of the mind. reading science-fiction Ursula K. Le Guin
1d2adc4 "I believe that every one of us here tonight has as clear and vital a vocation as anyone in a religious order. We have the vocation of keeping alive Mr. Melcher's excitement in leading young people into an expanding imagination. Because of the very nature of the world as it is today our children receive in school a heavy load of scientific and analytic subjects, so it is in their reading for fun, for pleasure, that they must be guided into creativity. These are forces working in the world as never before in the history of mankind for standardization, for the regimentation of us all, or what I like to call making muffins of us, muffins all like every other muffin in the muffin tin. reading imagination newbery-award-acceptance-speech Madeleine L'Engle
8a82584 "I wish I had a dollar for every hour I've spent in the library," he always says. I have to agree- we'd probably never have to worry about money again." reading humor truth Gary Paulsen
b706307 But there is another possible attitude towards the records of the past, and I have never been able to understand why it has not been more often adopted. To put it in its curtest form, my proposal is this: That we should not read historians, but history. Let us read the actual text of the times. Let us, for a year, or a month, or a fortnight, refuse to read anything about Oliver Cromwell except what was written while he was alive. There is plenty of material; from my own memory (which is all I have to rely on in the place where I write) I could mention offhand many long and famous efforts of English literature that cover the period. Clarendon's History, Evelyn's Diary, the Life of Colonel Hutchinson. Above all let us read all Cromwell's own letters and speeches, as Carlyle published them. But before we read them let us carefully paste pieces of stamp-paper over every sentence written by Carlyle. Let us blot out in every memoir every critical note and every modern paragraph. For a time let us cease altogether to read the living men on their dead topics. Let us read only the dead men on their living topics. reading learning G.K. Chesterton
a2bbe29 "You really love to gossip, don't you?" he asked, wishing she had brought him a glass of wine. "Yes, I suppose I do," she answered, sounding surprised at the realization. "You think that's why I love reading novels so much?" reading Donna Leon
55558da The totally alive, totally conscious, and totally aware Universe takes care of itself completely. It is totally self-reliant and totally self- sufficient. it is perfect. universe reading inspiration inspire passages-treatment conscious-awareness holistic-health passages-rehab passages-ventura passages-malibu consciousness quotes Chris Prentiss
cd3f6bc A black boy brought Wilson's gin and he sipped it very slowly because he had nothing else to do except to return to his hot and squalid room and read a novel - or a poem. Wilson liked poetry, but he absorbed it secretly, like a drug. The Golden Treasury accompanied him wherever he went, but it was taken at night in small doses - a finger of Longfellow, Macaulay, Mangan: 'Go on to tell how, with genius wasted, Betrayed in friendship, befooled in love...' His taste was romantic. For public exhibition he has his Wallace. He wanted passionately to be indistinguishable on the surface from other men: he wore his moustache like a club tie - it was his highest common factor, but his eyes betrayed him - brown dog's eyes, a setter's eyes, pointing mournfully towards Bond Street. reading poetry mustache Graham Greene
21eebfe I'd hoped for someone who was remarkably intelligent, but disadvantaged by home circumstance, someone who only needed an hour's extra tuition a week to become some kind of working-class prodigy. I wanted my hour a week to make the difference between a future addicted to heroin and a future studying English at Oxford. That was the sort of kid I wanted, and instead they'd given me someone whose chief interest was in eating fruit. I mean, what did he need to read for? There's an international symbol for the gents' toilets, and he could always get his mother to tell him what was on television. reading disadvantaged gents-toilets martin-sharpe pacino telly learning-to-read oxford prodigy intelligent symbol tutoring english fruit heroin Nick Hornby
3e14608 I don't recall that when I was in high school or college, any novel was ever presented to me to study as a novel. In fact, I was well on the way to getting a Master's degree in English before I really knew what fiction was, and I doubt if I would ever have learned then, had I not been trying to write it. I believe that it's perfectly possible to run a course of academic degrees in English and to emerge a seemingly respectable Ph.D. and still not know how to read fiction. reading fiction english-classes english-degrees college Flannery O'Connor
215e539 Surely we all occasionally buy books because of a daydream we're having--a little fantasy about the people we might turn into one day, when our lives are different, quieter, more introspective, and when all the urgent reading, whatever that might be, has been done. We never arrive at that point, needless to say.... reading Nick Hornby
ee0fe07 Even if readers claim that they 'take it all with a grain of salt', they do not really. They yearn to believe, and they believe, because believing is easier than disbelieving, and because anything which is written down is likely to be 'true in a way'. reading fiction writing façades readers Iris Murdoch
99c0580 Back at home they drew the curtains and read, with disapproval, with relish, with avidity and glee - even the ones who'd never thought of opening a novel before. There's nothing like a shovelful of dirt to encourage literacy. reading Margaret Atwood
cda2f60 Because the struggle continues, I retire frequently to the solitude of my own inner self to recommit to win my battles privately, to get my motives straight. reading Stephen R. Covey
6afff51 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. With such a book the impact isn't necessarily obvious at first...but the more you read it and re-read it, and live with it, and travel with it, the more it speaks to you, and the more you realize that you cannot live without that book. It's then that the wisdom hidden inside, the seed, is passed on. travel reading wisdom Tahir Shah
5558bfa When I am about to embark on a difficult journey, I comfort myself by reading the accounts of the great nineteenth-century travellers, men like Stanley, Burton, Speke, Burckhardt and Barth. reading travel-writers journey Tahir Shah
03ba70d Great land of sublimated things, thou World of Books, happy asyluum, refreshment and refuge from the world of everyday! . . . reading H.G. Wells
3070722 A neighbor once told me he had trouble with Garcia Marquez's novel because he likes to drink while he reads, and 'The Autumn of the Patriarch' gave him no space in which to take a sip of his beer. reading reading-habits Francine Prose
abc4d93 Because we are human we have a long childhood, and one of the jobs of that childhood is to sculpt our brains. We have years--about twelve of them--to draw outlines of the shape we want our sculpted brain to take. Some of the parts must be sculpted at critical times. One cannot, after all, carve out toes unless he knows where the foot will go. We need tools to do some of the fine work. The tools are our childhood experiences. And I'm convinced that one of those experiences must be children's books. And they must be experienced within the early years of our long childhood. experiences literature reading life children-s-lit life-experiences children-s-literature development brains children childhood children-s-books E.L. Konigsburg
a242160 I had a serious library at my disposal, because my Popo believed that culture entered by osmosis and it was better to start early, but my favorite books were fairy tales. reading Isabel Allende
cc95860 "The more you read, the better you get at it; the better you get at it, the more you like it; and the more you like it, the more you do it. reading learning inspirational Jim Trelease
acffbd6 "The modern idea of testing a reader's "comprehension," as distinct from something else a reader may be doing, would have seemed an absurdity in 1790 or 1830 or 1860. What else was reading but comprehending?" reading Neil Postman
95ff34c Great literature will insist upon its self-sufficiency in the face of the worthiest causes reading politics continuity timelessness Harold Bloom
767590c "Samuel Johnson said Alexander Pope's translation of the Iliad, "tuned the English tongue." reading inspiration word-choice rhetoric maturation vocabulary Harold Bloom
37e8add We read not only because we cannot know enough people, but because friendship is so vulnerable, so likely to diminish or disappear, overcome by space, time, imperfect sympathies and all the sorrows of familial and passional life. words literature loss reading relationships Harold Bloom
c837676 It is not just bookstores and libraries that are disappearing but museums, theaters, performing arts centers, art and music schools-- all those places where I felt at home have joined the list of endangered species. The San Francisco Chronicle, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe and my own hometown paper, The Washington Post, have all closed their weekend book review sections, leaving books orphaned and stranded, poor cousins to television and the movies. In a sign of the times, the Bloomberg News website recently transferred its book coverage to the Luxury section, alongside yachts, sports clubs and wine, as if to signal that books are an idle indulgence of the super-rich. But if there is one thing that should not be denied to anyone rich or poor it is the opportunity to dream. reading Azar Nafisi
ada172e One mark of originality that can win canonical status for a literary work is strangeness that we either never altogether assimilate, or that becomes such a given that we are blinded to its idiosyncrasies. reading bias conventional-wisdom perspective culture Harold Bloom
fa1b661 Reviewing bad books is bad for the character - WH Auden influence reading culture Harold Bloom
b124c01 I thought of all the summer evenings I'd spent sitting in the chairs under the trees beside the trailer, reading books that helped me escape Creek View, at least for a little while. Magical kingdoms, Russian love triangles, and the March sisters couldn't have been further away from the trailer park. escape reading books trailer trailer-park louisa-may-alcott little-women reading-quotes escape-from-reality love-of-reading books-reading love-of-books read Heather Demetrios
67c56e3 It is winter proper; the cold weather, such as it is, has come to stay. I bloom indoors in the winter like a forced forsythia; I come in to come out. At night I read and write, and things I have never understood become clear; I reap the harvest of the rest of the year's planting. The woods are acres of sticks: I could walk to the Gulf of Mexico in a straight line. When the leaves fall, the striptease is over; things stand mute and revealed. Everywhere skies extend, vistas deepen, walls become windows, doors open. winter reading writing spirit wonder philosophy philosopher-s-stone walking soul Annie Dillard
a5a17ac The books on my shelves do not know me until I open them, yet I am certain that they address me -- me and every other reader -- by name; they await our comments and opinions. I am presumed in Plato as I am presumed in every book, even in those I'll never read. reading known-reader readers Alberto Manguel
5540892 My library was to me an utterly private space that both enclosed and mirrored me. library reading Alberto Manguel
709c976 If I say I don't want to read the book, I don't want to read the book. reading respecting-others Gillian Flynn
a86f0ce I read. The more you read, the more the world opens up to you... and the happier you are and more comforted you feel. It's up to you. No you is educated who cannot educate himself. reading happiness reading-books Mark Helprin
86311c9 Teras entao de ler doutra maneira, Como, Nao serve a mesma para todos, cada um inventa a sua, a que lhe for propria, ha quem leve a vida inteira a ler sem nunca ter conseguido ir mais alem da leitura, ficam pegados a pagina, nao percebem que as palavras sao apenas pedras postas a atravessar a corrente de um rio, se estao ali e para que possamos chegar a outra margem, a outra margem e que importa, A nao ser, A nao ser, que, A nao ser que esses tais rios nao tenham duas margens, mas muitas, que cada pessoa que le seja, ela, a sua propria margem, e que seja sua, e apenas sua, a margem a que tera de chegar, reading José Saramago
fa347a4 It was a pity that most people didn't actually go to libraries anymore, not when they could sit in the comfort of their own quarters and access files electronically. Want to read the new hot interstellar caper novel, or the latest issue of holozine? Input the name, touch a control, and - it's in your datapad. . . . There were, of course, old-fashioned beings who would still actually trundle down to where the files were. On some worlds the most ancient libraries kept books - actual bound volumes of printed matter - lined up neatly on shelves, and readers would walk the aisles, take a volume down, sniff the musty-dusty odor of it, and then carry it to a table to leisurely peruse. There weren't many of those readers left, and they were growing rarer all the time . . . But there were some who still knew how to actually turn a page - and for those who were willing to do so, the rewards could be great indeed. reading books e-readers Michael Reaves and Steve Perry
0a38aaf correlation between the growing lack of respect for ideas and the imagination and the increasing gap between rich and poor in America, reflected not just in the gulf between the salaries of CEOs and their employees but also in the high cost of education, the incredible divide between private and public schools that makes all of the fine speeches by our policy makers-- most of whom send their children to private schools anyway, just as they enjoy the benefits and perks of their jobs as servants of the people-- all the more insidious and insincere. reading imagination education art culture Azar Nafisi
c27ad05 Hinter dem westlichen Konzept einer Idealstadt verbirgt sich die Idee der Privilegierung. Moreau hatte ihm ohne Zweifel zugestimmt. reading privilege Alberto Manguel
8a9e418 And it is no true wisdom that you offer your disciples, but only its semblance, for by telling them of many things without teaching them anything, you will make them seem to know much, while for the most part they will know nothing. And as men filled not with wisdom but with the conceit of wisdom, they will be a burden to their fellow-men. reading conceit-of-wisdom dangers-of-reading semblance-of-wisdom readers Alberto Manguel
319da68 However readers make a book theirs, the end is that book and reader become one. The world that is a book is devoured by a reader who is a letter in the world's text; thus a circular metaphor is created for the endlessness of reading. We are what we read. The process by which the circle is completed is not, Whitman argued, merely an intellectual one; we read intellectually on a superficial level, grasping certain meanings and conscious of certain facts, but at the same time, invisibly, unconsciously, text and reader become intertwined, creating new levels of meaning, so that every time we cause the text to yield something by ingesting it, simultaneously something else is born beneath it that we haven't yet grasped. That is why - as Whitman believed, rewriting and re-editing his poems over and over again - no reading can ever be definitive. reading Alberto Manguel
b1e65ec Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul. When writers make us shake our heads with the exactness of their prose and their truths, and even make us laugh about ourselves or life, our buoyancy is restored. We are given a shot at dancing with, or at least clapping along with, the absurdity of life, instead of being squashed by it over and over again. It's like singing on a boat during a terrible storm at sea. You can't stop the raging storm, but singing can change the hearts and spirits of the people who are together on that ship. words literature reading writing Anne Lamott
96e4160 ...the space which [books] occupied was itself an expectation. reading Cormac McCarthy
4803c43 Reading is useful,' Pyrlig said. reading Bernard Cornwell
a18cde6 Until writing was invented, man lived in acoustic space: boundless, directionless, horizonless, in the dark of the mind, in the world of emotion, by primordial intuition, by terror. Speech is a social chart of this bog. reading writing sound language speech Marshall McLuhan
dc35793 Learning is rooted in repetition and convexity, meaning that the reading of a single text twice is more profitable than reading two different things once. reading learning Nassim Nicholas Taleb
447fa52 Cio che un libro avrebbe potuto raccontarle non l'aveva mai intimorita. Anzi, di solito non vedeva l'ora di lasciarsi trasportare in un mondo nuovo, inesplorato, e la sua curiosita era tale che si metteva a leggere nei momenti meno opportuni. reading Cornelia Funke
ebc9679 You just read your books and go on a hundred miles away, You ignore me. reading books Barbara Kingsolver
4df18fe "I glare at him and sigh. "Don't you understand what a book is?" "Obviously." emmahart reading romance quote reality life love standalone novel Emma Hart
5e3060f Understand something people, we will be hated by many in the name of Christ, ridiculed, mocked, stoned, slaughtered. We will be fined, jailed and killed for our love for Christ. You are supposed to see better with your eyes today, how close this is happening, just prepare your heart and soul to be braver than Peter and not deny Christ in the moment your life might be in jeopardy for Him and what you believe. Apostle Pauls says to live is Christ to die is gain. money words time pain love-quotes literature marriage mind grief feminism loss history reading prayer nature world depression people women freedom dream joy future politics friends leadership quote work inspirational-quotes life-quotes living motivation family destiny imagination fantasy dreams sadness positive-thinking strength music friendship motivational spiritual heart endtime fiction-food-for-though humanity-humour intelligence-is-attractive life-and-living-life-philosophy magic-spirit meditation-men passion-peace patience-johnson pentecost reality-relationship trust-war earning motivational-quotes repentance wisdom-quotes society purpose quotes forgiveness self-improvement power self-help soul patience psychology Patience Johnson
fac752f Like many writers, I lived inside of books as a child. reading childhood writers Roxane Gay
7e5567d In essence , games are the only universally serious activity . They leave no room for skepticism , wouldn't you agree ? However incredulous or doubting you might be , if you want to play , you have no choice but to follow the rules . Only the person who respects the rules , or at least knows and applies them , can win . Reading a book is the same : you have to accept the plot and the characters to enjoy the story . reading Arturo Pérez-Reverte
24f9047 That's what books are for, to travel without moving an inch. travel reading Jhumpa Lahiri
5016ade If you're reading to find friends, you're in deep trouble. We read to find life, in all its possibilities. reading life Roxane Gay
0089706 Depose sul tavolo la cartella in cui teneva i risguardi da inserire prima del frontespizio e prese a sfogliarli con aria assente. <> aveva detto una volta a Meggie. <> reading Cornelia Funke
c9e8d60 "Tyrena did not laugh again but her smile slashed upward in a twist of green lips. "Martin, Martin, Martin," she said, "the population of literate people has been declining steadily since Gutenberg's day. By the twentieth century, less than two percent of the people in the so-called industrialized democracies read even one book a year. And that was before the smart machines, dataspheres, and user-friendly environments." reading humor social-commentary satire Dan Simmons
d2fec5e When I was a child I read books for entertainment and information; I now think of books as lifeboats. reading Alice Walker
f7b6411 Read Emily Dickinson. Read Graham Greene. Read Italo Calvino. Read Maya Angelou. Read anything you want. Just read. Books are possibilities. They are Escape Routes. They give you options when you have none. Each one can be a home for an uprooted mind. reading reasons-to-stay-alive possibilities escapism Matt Haig
1814f07 I libri la rincuoravano quando era triste e scacciavano la noia mentre Mo tagliava, rilegava, incollava pagine ormai logore, rese fragili da anni e anni d'uso sotto le innumerevoli dita che le avevano sfogliate. reading Cornelia Funke
7d7df70 In the meantime, there is not an hour to lose. I am about to visit the public library. library travel reading professor-hardwigg public-library jules-verne hour hurry Jules Verne
cb45abb The minutes ticked past. This is why peelers need a book. A wee paperback to stick in your pocket. time reading police Adrian McKinty
c9831d7 Don't you think it's better to continue reading than to just close the book? reading death life close Rebecca McNutt
4fe5d09 In great thick dusty books he read And hardly ever went to bed Before it was eleven. - reading reading-habits Mervyn Peake
fab6132 They were readers for whom literature was a drug, each complex plot line delivering a new high, suspending them above reality, allowing them a magical crossover...They had spoken often, with rueful honesty, of how the books they read represented escape, offered pathways to literary landscapes that intrigued and engrossed...From childhood on, books had been the hot air balloons that carried them above the angry mutterings of quarreling parents, schoolyard rejections, academic boredom...They were of a kind, readers from birth. literature reading Gloria Goldreich
76ee1e6 I wish to deal only with the masterpieces which the consensus of opinion for a long time has accepted as supreme. We are all supposed to have read them; it is a pity that so few of us have. reading W. Somerset Maugham
6ef74cc We like to take credit when we get a new idea, as if we originated the idea in our brain, but what we actually did was no less extraordinary: we channeled the idea. creative reading writing inspiration life new-ideas read ideas Chris Prentiss
7a3a3ae "They met in the library searching for old Sidney Sheldon books. Her silence and calmness drew her to him. His brooding nature drew him to her. Conversations flowed like the waters of a water-fall! And every time they met their conversations sparked flames like the forest caught in a wild fire! reading eyes Avijeet Das
bb6211b Novels are what I know, and the novel door in my personality is always open. personality reading novels Zadie Smith
984f880 By degrees they spoke of education , and the book-learning that forms one part of it; and the result was that Ruth determined to get up early all throughout the bright summer mornings, to acquire the knowledge hereafter to be give to her child. Her mind was uncultivated, her reading scant; beyond the mere mechanical arts of education she knew nothing; but she had a refined taste, and excellent sense and judgment to separate the true from the false. reading learning wisdom knowledge teaching Elizabeth Gaskell
b128450 Almost any book was better than life, Audrey thought. Or rather, life as she was living it. Of course, life would soon change, open out, become quite different. You couldn't go on if you didn't hope that, could you? But for the time being there was no doubt that it was pleasant to get away from it. And books could take her away. reading hope despair Jean Rhys
73aa49e At my most precarious, I balanced on a book, and the books rafted me over the tides of feelings that left me soaked and shattered. literature reading feelings books safety Jeanette Winterson
0048c88 The wider we read the freer we become. reading Jeanette Winterson
6dde416 Instead of filling in the blanks, I wanted to be blank and be filled in. reading books Walter Kirn
cfc4578 If the ability to read carries the average man no higher than the gossip of his neighbours, if he asks nothing more nourishing out of books and the theatre than he gets hanging about the store, the bar and the street-corner, then culture is bound to be dragged down to him instead of his being lifted up by culture. literature reading Edith Wharton
6a923f4 Go ahead, and fear not. You will have a full library at your service. reading learning confidence curiosity Doris Kearns Goodwin
ddc3336 "Boswell, like Lecky (to get back to the point of this footnote), and Gibbon before him, loved footnotes. They knew that the outer surface of truth is not smooth, welling and gathering from paragraph to shapely paragraph, but is encrusted with a rough protective bark of citations, quotations marks, italics, and foreign languages, a whole variorum crust of "ibid.'s" and "compare's" and "see's" that are the shield for the pure flow of argument as it lives for a moment in one mind. They knew the anticipatory pleasure of sensing with peripheral vision, as they turned the page, gray silt of further example and qualification waiting in tiny type at the bottom. (They were aware, more generally, of the usefulness of tiny type in enhancing the glee of reading works of obscure scholarship: typographical density forces you to crouch like Robert Hooke or Henry Gray over the busyness and intricacy of recorded truth.) They liked deciding as they read whether they would bother to consult a certain footnote or not, and whether they would read it in context, or read it before the text it hung from, as an hors d'oeuvre. The muscles of the eye, they knew, want vertical itineraries; the rectus externus and internus grow dazed waggling back and forth in the Zs taught in grade school: the footnote functions as a switch, offering the model-railroader's satisfaction of catching the march of thought with a superscripted "1" and routing it, sometimes at length, through abandoned stations and submerged, leaching tunnels. Digression--a movement away from the gradus, or upward escalation, of the argument--is sometimes the only way to be thorough, and footnotes are the only form of graphic digression sanctioned by centuries of typesetters. And yet the MLA Style Sheet I owned in college warned against lengthy, "essay-like" footnotes. Were they nuts? Where is scholarship going?" reading Nicholson Baker
748ad10 "I think this story-writing business is the foolishest yet," scoffed Marilla. "You'll get a pack of nonsense into your heads and waste time that should be put to your lessons. Reading stories is bad enough but writing them is worse." reading writing marilla-cuthbert L. M. Montgomery
7ccd62c ...nothing from the summer carries more lasting allure for me than the memory of sitting with Ruth on the bank of a stream on campus, taking turns reading aloud from the books we held on our laps, while the wind wet leaves gossiping in the old trees above us and the creek rustled in its stony bed. reading Scott Russell Sanders
eeb5046 Nobody steals books except kleptomaniacs and university students. In most places you can leave a book on the street and come back for in the next day. reading theft bookstores Mark Helprin
cebf25a ..he read whatever came his way, as if it had been ordained by fate,.. reading read Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez
889e550 Read liberal and conservative news sources; business, history, religion. All of this creates a renaissance persona that can stand toe-to-toe with any Fortune 500 executive. Get a nice suit and wear it; don't see yourself as a blown-in hayseed. View yourself as a modern Jeffersonian intellectual agrarian. What's on your bookshelf? How many hours a week do you read? Readers are leaders. Cultivate friendships across disciplines, politics, and religion. Entertain guests often; that's a cheap way to receive cosmopolitan information without having to travel. reading Joel Salatin
cfd8cfa The fine and varied literature that I read was almost all in translation: from classic works by Jack London, Victor Hugo and Charles Dickens, to detective stories by Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie and Georges Simenon, not to mention fascinating pornographic books. I also appreciated the biblical stories that contained all three genres. reading Shlomo Sand
b3545ff Times change and discoveries are made that render earlier techniques and approaches less effective. Change is inevitable. To remain rigid when the whole world is changing and advancing is to invite misfortune. The AA program in particular is challenged with an opportunity of unprecedented magnitude. opportunity reading writing change alcoholics-anonymous addiction addiction-cure addiction-treatment chris-prentiss challenge Chris Prentiss
be97c00 Turner had never met a kid like Elwood before. was the word he returned to, even though the Tallahassee boy looked soft, conducted himself like a goody-goody, and had an irritating tendency to preach. Wore eyeglasses you wanted to grind underfoot like a butterfly. He talked like a white college boy, read books when he didn't have to, and mined them for uranium to power his own personal A-bomb. Still--sturdy. reading books intelligence softness sturdiness nerds Colson Whitehead
0e22102 Reading is a full contact sport; we crash up against the wave of words with all of our intellectual, imaginative, and emotional resources. What results can sometimes be as much our creation as the novelist's or playwright's. literature reading reading-life Thomas C. Foster
311cc4d They had started one of those wish-fulfillment kids' adventure books, where the boy hero has exactly the qualities he needs to triumph, at every moment... She'd been bored and annoyed, and at one point she tried to explain to Sebastian why it wasn't her favor-ite of his books. But Sebastian had loved the book unreservedly. Why hadn't she just read the fucking thing with gusto and relished every moment with her son? Why had she brought her adult judgment and professional story opinions to a book her kid loved? Of course the child hero should always triumph! Who wanted a kids' book to feel like real life? Real life was fucking intolerable. reading life kid judgment hero child childhood Maile Meloy
eac4a31 I regretted my human form briefly; it would be so much easier to drag and rope information into the brain as neatly as one dragged and dropped information on the computer. Perhaps I was suffering from a touch of information sickness? If I could weed out my thoughts...There was one reliable cure I've found, a bit of the hair of the dog--the release in reading. Not a manual: something with a narrative, a chute built by a writer and waxed until the reader fell into it and skittered right to the end without stopping. The relief of being in someone else's hands. Yes, exactly: I needed to be under a spell....it didn't matter who I was, or what I did, or where I paid taxes, or how long I stayed. I'm sure it didn't matter if the book had RFID tags or a checkout card with a ladder of scrawled names, though tags were neat. I knew the librarians would help me figure out anything I needed to know later--I was under the librarians' protection. Civil servants and servants of civility, they had my back. They would be whatever they needed to be that day: information professionals, teachers, police, community organizers, computer technicians, historians, confidantes, clerks, social workers, storytellers, or in this case, guardians of my peace. They were the authors of this opportunity--diversion from the economy and distraction from snow, protectors of the bubble of concentration I'd found in the maddening world. And I knew they wouldn't disturb me until closing time. reading peace Marilyn Johnson
4291881 {...} I was okay with things the way they were. No, not okay: I longed and suffered and pined with the rest of humanity. Sometimes I was happy enough with the book I was reading or the book I was writing, and the life I was stuck inside felt like a house on a rainy day. But most of the time I was just plain dying to get out. All I needed--all I have ever needed--was someone to challenge me, to serve as a goad, an instigator, a stirrer of the pot. I hated trouble, but I loved troublemakers. I hated chance and uncertainty, but I was drawn to those who showed up on your doorstep with their own pair of dice. reading Michael Chabon
323aa4e I began by making assumptions about the stories Borges chose for me -- that Kipling's prose would be stilted, Stevenson's childish, Joyce's unintelligible -- buy very soon prejudice gave way to experience, and the discovery of one story gave way to another. prejudice reading Alberto Manguel
653f31f I did, however, vow to stop reading books that I didn't enjoy. I used to pride myself on finishing every book I started--no longer. reading Gretchen Rubin
cbabddd I don't know what to say about it, except that it moved me in a way one hopes to be moved each time he begins a book. reading books history-of-love nicole-krauss book Nicole Krauss
576d556 Cosa c'e di meglio, in realta, che starsene la sera accanto al fuoco con un bel libro in mano, mentre il vento sbatte contro le persiane e arde il lume della lampada? reading books Gustave Flaubert
93f7104 Holding a precious book meant to Mendel what an assignment with a woman might to another man. These moments were his platonic nights of love. Books had power over him; money never did. Great collectors, including the founder of a collection in Princeton University Library, tried in vain to recruit him as an adviser and buyer for their libraries--Jakob Mendel declined; no one could imagine him anywhere but in the Cafe Gluck. Thirty-three years ago, when his beard was still soft and black and he had ringlets over his forehead, he had come from the east to Vienna, a crook-backed lad, to study for the rabbinate, but he had soon abandoned Jehovah the harsh One God to give himself up to idolatry in the form of the brilliant, thousand-fold polytheism of books. That was when he had first found his way to the Cafe Gluck, and gradually it became his workplace, his headquarters, his post office, his world. Like an astronomer alone in his observatory, studying myriads of stars every night through the tiny round lens of the telescope, observing their mysterious courses, their wandering multitude as they are extinguished and then appear again, so Jakob Mendel looked through his glasses out from that rectangular table into the other universe of books, also eternally circling and being reborn in that world above our own. reading books love collecting-books knowledge obsession Stefan Zweig
ecd81d0 I sit, tired of reading. I am sick of books. I can't tell where I leave off and the books begin. I'm nobody. I'm a polluted nothing. A confessed sin, an open door, the clutterer in the clutter. reading books burnout ennui Katherine Dunn
31e04c6 Don't let me get sappy on you, but when you get right down to it, every collection of letters is a magic spell, even if it's a moronic proclamation by the Emperor. Words have their impact, girl. Mind your manners. I may not know how to fly but I know how to read, and that's almost the same thing. words reading Gregory Maguire
b3e8aa7 The more I read the more I fought against the assumption that literature is for the minority - of a particular education or class. Books were my birthright too. reading education class Jeanette Winterson
249074c "My interest in reading novels of various fiction was roused at a very early age. And the thought-provoking storylines of the great Donald Goines had been included in my very first library collection. ("Reviews by Cat Ellington: The Complete Anthology, Vol. 1," 2018)" reading cat-ellington donald-goines reviews-by-cat-ellington reading-books quotes Cat Ellington
39717ce Marie-Laure lee a Julio Verne en la conserjeria, en el bano, en los corredores. Lee en los bancos que hay en la galeria central y en cualquiera de los cientos de senderos de grava que hay en los ajrdines. Lee tantas veces la primera parte de Veinte mil leguas de viaje submarino qu epracticamente se la acaba sabiendo de memoria reading Anthony Doerr
af28fac It'll be dark soon, Rudy.' He walked on. 'So what?' 'I'm going back.' Rudy stopped and watched her now as if she were betraying him. 'That's right, book thief. Leave me now. I bet if there was a lousy book at the end of this road, you'd keep walking. Wouldn't you? reading Markus Zusak
aaee389 The shelves were supposed to be loaded with books--but they were, of course, really doors: each book-lid opened as exciting as Alice putting her gold key in the lock. I spent days running in and out of other worlds like a time bandit, or a spy. I was as excited as I've ever been in my life, in that library: scoring new books the minute they came in; ordering books I'd heard of--then waiting, fevered, for them to arrive, like they were the word Christmas. libraries library reading library-books Caitlin Moran
799e843 I know you read very widely. Almost like cultural foraging. reading Clifford Ross
1845069 Il senso di calore che avvertii la prima volta che tenni un libro in mano, prima ancora di aprirlo, non mi ha mai abbandonato. Cominciai a leggere voracemente, tutto e di tutto, e poco dopo aver finito un libro ne iniziavo un altro. Passavo da Beatrix Potter a A.A. Milne e a J.D. Salinger; da Harold Robbins a Hemingway e Dostoevskij; da Anna Frank a John Steinbeck e Proust; da Leon Uris a Isaac Bashevis Singer e Gertrude Stein, ad infinitum. Ero entrata in una compagnia di sconosciuti, e da allora ho sempre seguito il cammino che hanno tracciato per me. I loro pensieri mi hanno condotto a scoprire altri significati nei miei. Mi ha sempre colpito come un libro parli all'altro, ampliandone il significato. reading libri Bernice Eisenstein
bca19fe Reading has not gone out of fashion in the last number of years, nor in the ones while you slept in the asteroid belt. Your relatives do not wish to expose themselves to deep thought, lest they be affected by it. reading critical-thinking thought Anne McCaffrey
e502cdc He was halfway to the house, thinking to set the cabbage inside the kitchen door,when a brown blur thundered past him. Joanna Robbins tore out of the barn astride a magnificent chestnut quarter horse. She leaned forward in the saddle,hat flopping against her back, hair streaming out behind her in a wild curly mass as she urged her mount to a full-out gallop. Unable to do anything but stare, Crockett stood dumbstruck as she raced past. She was the most amazing horsewoman he'd ever seen. Joanna Robbins. The shy creature who claimed painting and reading were her favorite pastimes had just bolted across the yard like a seasoned jockey atop Thoroughbred. She might have inherited her mother's grace and manners, but the woman rode like her outlaw father.Maybe better. reading jockey horseback-riding shy-people joanna-robbins painting Karen Witemeyer
377651d He lost his appetite for reading. He was afraid of being overwhelmed again. In mystery novels people died like dolls being discarded; in science fiction enormities of space and time conspired to crush the humans ; and even in P.G. Wodehouse he felt a hollowness, a turning away from reality that was implicitly bitter, and became explicit in the comic figures of futile parsons. reading p-g-wodehouse parsons science-fiction John Updike
edbd365 Muhammad's numerous wives have occasioned a good deal of prurient interest in the West, but it would be a mistake to imagine the Prophet basking decadently in sensual delight, like some of the later Islamic rulers. In Mecca, Muhammad had remained monogamous, married only to Khadija, even though polygamy was common in Arabia. Khadija was a good deal older than he, but bore him at least six children, of whom only four daughters survived. In Medina, Muhammad became a great sayyid (chief), and was expected to have a large harem, but most of these marriages were politically motivated. reading Karen Armstrong
7aed1c5 My reading might be pointless in terms of the history of literary criticism; but it's not pointless in terms of pleasure. reading Julian Barnes
2c919e5 If he could not go out into the world, the world could come to him. reading disability social-networking media technology Doris Kearns Goodwin
6929140 People who can read and write expertly, as you can, are miracles and, in my opinion, entitle us to suspect we might be civilized after all. reading writing miracles Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
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