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919b146 A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say. words literature reading meaning classics Italo Calvino
626f923 For last year's words belong to last year's language And next year's words await another voice. new-year words voice T.S. Eliot
44411dd She read books as one would breathe air, to fill up and live. words literature reading Annie Dillard
40a850f I like good strong words that mean something... words louisa-may-alcott Louisa May Alcott
21ce218 He was the crazy one who had painted himself black and defeated the world. She was the book thief without the words. Trust me, though, the words were on their way, and when they arrived, Liesel would hold them in her hands like the clouds, and she would wring them out like rain. words meaning patience Markus Zusak
245f7c0 Don't gobblefunk around with words. words funny Roald Dahl
92e395d I believe that words are strong, that they can overwhelm what we fear when fear seems more awful than life is good. words depression fear life speaking Andrew Solomon
401651c "What an astonishing thing a book is. It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic." [ (1980)]" words literature reading writing Carl Sagan
0081335 He liked the mere act of reading, the magic of turning scratches on a page into words inside his head. words literature reading John Green
3f7fe4b We live and breathe words. words reading living Cassandra Clare
9212005 So Matilda's strong young mind continued to grow, nurtured by the voices of all those authors who had sent their books out into the world like ships on the sea. These books gave Matilda a hopeful and comforting message: You are not alone. words literature reading Roald Dahl
3ff49e2 I don't want just words. If that's all you have for me, you'd better go words better-go just leaving F. Scott Fitzgerald
b42eb1b Guard well your thoughts when alone and your words when accompanied. words words-of-wisdom thoughts inspiration inspirational-attitude inspirational-life inspirational-quotes inspire life-and-living life-quotes living optimistic positive-affirmation positive-life inspiring positive positive-thinking life-lessons optimism life wisdom inspirational wise Roy T. Bennett
6d1b6a0 Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o-er wrought heart and bids it break. mourning words grief loss sorrow sadness William Shakespeare
bb50ef9 I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo, and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of the hunger for life that gnaws in us all. words Richard Wright
07f4135 The books transported her into new worlds and introduced her to amazing people who lived exciting lives. She went on olden-day sailing ships with Joseph Conrad. She went to Africa with Ernest Hemingway and to India with Rudyard Kipling. She travelled all over the world while sitting in her little room in an English village. words literature reading Roald Dahl
1610ba3 There's nothing wrong with reading a book you love over and over. When you do, the words get inside you, become a part of you, in a way that words in a book you've read only once can't. words reading re-reading Gail Carson Levine
d77e186 I am a poet in deeds--not often in words. words poet Ian Fleming
92ac286 Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with shades of deeper meaning. words meaning Maya Angelou
0e7aae7 I wanted to explain that I am constantly overestimating and underestimating the human race - that rarely do I even simply estimate it. I wanted to ask her how the same thing could be so ugly and so glorious, and its words and stories so damning and brilliant...I AM HAUNTED BY HUMANS. words death the-book-thief Markus Zusak
41aae8a The words. Why did they have to exist? Without them, there wouldn't be any of this. words Markus Zusak
9864b42 It is not that the meaning cannot be explained. But there are certain meanings that are lost forever the moment they are explained in words. words Haruki Murakami
3e45173 Lovers and madmen have such seething brains, Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend More than cool reason ever comprehends. The lunatic, the lover and the poet Are of imagination all compact: One sees more devils than vast hell can hold, That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic, Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt: The poet's eye, in fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven; And as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name. lover words earth poetry reason imagination fantasy love devils egypt helen lunatic madmen poet Shakespeare William Shakespeare
83543de Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters. words time river water Norman Maclean
0a1695b Talk, talk, talk: the utter and heartbreaking stupidity of words. words silence stupidity talking William Faulkner
06ca250 A word is dead When it is said, Some say. I say it just Begins to live That day. words Emily Dickinson
5ccd084 I like libraries. It makes me feel comfortable and secure to have walls of words, beautiful and wise, all around me. I always feel better when I can see that there is something to hold back the shadows. words libraries libraries-shadows security Roger Zelazny
3ff1d76 He wanted to cry quietly but not for himself: for the words, so beautiful and sad, like music. words James Joyce
fc0598c In prayer it is better to have a heart without words than words without a heart. words prayer inspirational christian John Bunyan
3fea6f5 There is no Frigate like a Book To take us Lands away Nor any Coursers like a Page Of prancing Poetry - This Traverse may the poorest take Without oppress of Toll - How frugal is the Chariot That bears a Human soul. words literature reading poetry Emily Dickinson
7decfc8 At one magical instant in your early childhood, the page of a book--that string of confused, alien ciphers--shivered into meaning. Words spoke to you, gave up their secrets; at that moment, whole universes opened. You became, irrevocably, a reader. words literature reading Alberto Manguel
6a990dc When I cannot see words curling like rings of smoke round me I am in darkness--I am nothing. words Virginia Woolf
c4224ec Oh phosphorescence. Now there's a word to lift your hat to... To find that phosphorescence, that light within -- is the genius behind poetry. words light poetry William Luce
89907a1 " Sometimes the notes are ferocious, skirmishes against the author raging along the borders of every page in tiny black script. If I could just get my hands on you, Kierkegaard, or Conor Cruise O'Brien, they seem to say, I would bolt the door and beat some logic into your head. Other comments are more offhand, dismissive - Nonsense." "Please!" "HA!!" - that kind of thing. I remember once looking up from my reading, my thumb as a bookmark, trying to imagine what the person must look like who wrote "Don't be a ninny" alongside a paragraph in The Life of Emily Dickinson. Students are more modest needing to leave only their splayed footprints along the shore of the page. One scrawls "Metaphor" next to a stanza of Eliot's. Another notes the presence of "Irony" fifty times outside the paragraphs of A Modest Proposal. Or they are fans who cheer from the empty bleachers, Hands cupped around their mouths. Absolutely," they shout to Duns Scotus and James Baldwin. Yes." "Bull's-eye." "My man!" Check marks, asterisks, and exclamation points rain down along the sidelines. And if you have managed to graduate from college without ever having written "Man vs. Nature" in a margin, perhaps now is the time to take one step forward. We have all seized the white perimeter as our own and reached for a pen if only to show we did not just laze in an armchair turning pages; we pressed a thought into the wayside, planted an impression along the verge. Even Irish monks in their cold scriptoria jotted along the borders of the Gospels brief asides about the pains of copying, a bird singing near their window, or the sunlight that illuminated their page- anonymous men catching a ride into the future on a vessel more lasting than themselves. And you have not read Joshua Reynolds, they say, until you have read him enwreathed with Blake's furious scribbling. Yet the one I think of most often, the one that dangles from me like a locket, was written in the copy of Catcher in the Rye I borrowed from the local library one slow, hot summer. I was just beginning high school then, reading books on a davenport in my parents' living room, and I cannot tell you how vastly my loneliness was deepened, how poignant and amplified the world before me seemed, when I found on one page A few greasy looking smears and next to them, written in soft pencil- by a beautiful girl, I could tell, whom I would never meet- Pardon the egg salad stains, but I'm in love." -- words literature reading poetry Billy Collins
9da932f " Sometimes the notes are ferocious, skirmishes against the author raging along the borders of every page in tiny black script. If I could just get my hands on you, Kierkegaard, or Conor Cruise O'Brien, they seem to say, I would bolt the door and beat some logic into your head. Other comments are more offhand, dismissive - Nonsense." "Please!" "HA!!" - that kind of thing. I remember once looking up from my reading, my thumb as a bookmark, trying to imagine what the person must look like who wrote "Don't be a ninny" alongside a paragraph in The Life of Emily Dickinson. Students are more modest needing to leave only their splayed footprints along the shore of the page. One scrawls "Metaphor" next to a stanza of Eliot's. Another notes the presence of "Irony" fifty times outside the paragraphs of A Modest Proposal. Or they are fans who cheer from the empty bleachers, Hands cupped around their mouths. Absolutely," they shout to Duns Scotus and James Baldwin. Yes." "Bull's-eye." "My man!" Check marks, asterisks, and exclamation points rain down along the sidelines. And if you have managed to graduate from college without ever having written "Man vs. Nature" in a margin, perhaps now is the time to take one step forward. We have all seized the white perimeter as our own and reached for a pen if only to show we did not just laze in an armchair turning pages; we pressed a thought into the wayside, planted an impression along the verge. Even Irish monks in their cold scriptoria jotted along the borders of the Gospels brief asides about the pains of copying, a bird singing near their window, or the sunlight that illuminated their page- anonymous men catching a ride into the future on a vessel more lasting than themselves. And you have not read Joshua Reynolds, they say, until you have read him enwreathed with Blake's furious scribbling. Yet the one I think of most often, the one that dangles from me like a locket, was written in the copy of Catcher in the Rye I borrowed from the local library one slow, hot summer. I was just beginning high school then, reading books on a davenport in my parents' living room, and I cannot tell you how vastly my loneliness was deepened, how poignant and amplified the world before me seemed, when I found on one page A few greasy looking smears and next to them, written in soft pencil- by a beautiful girl, I could tell, whom I would never meet- Pardon the egg salad stains, but I'm in love." words literature reading poetry Billy Collins
ec4c9a3 words are like nets - we hope they'll cover what we mean, but we know they can't possibly hold that much joy, or grief, or wonder. words joy wonder limits Jodi Picoult
743d1e1 There are times when the world is rearranging itself, and at times like that, the right words can change the world. words greatness control power Orson Scott Card
42e59a1 Me, poor man, my library Was dukedom large enough. words library literature reading William Shakespeare
1a03482 Words are like eggs dropped from great heights; you can no more call them back than ignore the mess they leave when they fall. words truth salem-falls Jodi Picoult
163d2a7 How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book. words literature reading Henry David Thoreau
a8ded2a There are perhaps no days of our childhood we lived so fully as those we believe we left without having lived them, those we spent with a favorite book. words literature reading Marcel Proust
8d478cb Fiction is like a spider's web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners. words literature reading fiction Virginia Woolf
60ad2ea In the library I felt better, words you could trust and look at till you understood them, they couldn't change half way through a sentence like people, so it was easier to spot a lie. words lies library reading people Jeanette Winterson
78f0f20 Words are wind. words George R.R. Martin
2baa7d1 We wrapped our dreams in words and patterned the words so that they would live forever, unforgettable. words Neil Gaiman
27c31a4 In a world where vows are worthless.Where making a pledge means nothing. Where promises are made to be broken, it would be nice to see words come back into power. words Chuck Palahniuk
cc6c26d How it is that animals understand things I do not know, but it is certain that they do understand. Perhaps there is a language which is not made of words and everything in the world understands it. Perhaps there is a soul hidden in everything and it can always speak, without even making a sound, to another soul. words little-princess frances-hodgson-burnett communication language soul Frances Hodgson Burnett
e5d3a1f Words are loneliness. words Henry Miller
ec46126 I believe that today more than ever a book should be sought after even if it has only one great page in it. We must search for fragments, splinters, toenails, anything that has ore in it, anything that is capable of resuscitating the body and the soul. words literature reading Henry Miller
665261b I ate them like salad, books were my sandwich for lunch, my tiffin and dinner and midnight munch. I tore out the pages, ate them with salt, doused them with relish, gnawed on the bindings, turned the chapters with my tongue! Books by the dozen, the score and the billion. I carried so many home I was hunchbacked for years. Philosophy, art history, politics, social science, the poem, the essay, the grandiose play, you name 'em, I ate 'em. words literature reading ray-bradbury Ray Bradbury
866e7cf My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you. But for every real word spoken, for every attempt I had ever made to speak those truths for which I am still seeking, I had made contact with other women while we examined the words to fit a world in which we all believed, bridging our differences. illness words silence feminism women truth speaking-out differences Audre Lorde
95176f7 The Yogic sages say that all the pain of a human life is caused by words, as is all the joy. We create words to define our experience and those words bring attendant emotions that jerk us around like dogs on a leash. We get seduced by our own mantras (I'm a failure... I'm lonely... I'm a failure... I'm lonely...) and we become monuments to them. To stop talking for a while, then, is to attempt to strip away the power of words, to stop choking ourselves with words, to liberate ourselves from our suffocating mantras. words thoughts Elizabeth Gilbert
ef72939 Insensibly he formed the most delightful habit in the world, the habit of reading: he did not know that thus he was providing himself with a refuge from all the distress of life; he did not know either that he was creating for himself an unreal world which would make the real world of every day a source of bitter disappointment. words literature reading W. Somerset Maugham
9073eed Do actions agree with words? There's your measure of reliability. Never confine yourself to the words. words deception Frank Herbert
4076d14 There are metaphors more real than the people who walk in the street. There are images tucked away in books that live more vividly than many men and women. There are phrases from literary works that have a positively human personality. There are passages from my own writing that chill me with fright, so distinctly do I feel them as people, so sharply outlined do they appear against the walls of my room, at night, in shadows... I've written sentences whose sound, read out loud or silently (impossible to hide their sound), can only be of something that acquired absolute exteriority and a full-fledged soul. words literature reading metaphors Pessoa Fernando
c078448 Actions are the first tragedy in life, words are the second. Words are perhaps the worst. Words are merciless. . . words tragedy Oscar Wilde
5c42fb4 I am not imposed upon by fine words; I can see what actions mean. words George Eliot
dfa1222 I had found my religion: nothing seemed more important to me than a book. I saw the library as a temple. words library literature reading Jean-Paul Sartre
e70c876 WORDS IN THE HEART CANNOT BE TAKEN. words Terry Pratchett
c0febe6 I wanted to crawl in between those black lines of print, the way you crawl through a fence, and go to sleep under that beautiful big green fig-tree. words literature reading Sylvia Plath
e4e6841 Freedom is...the right to write the wrong words. words freedom inspirational Patti Smith
18e31c7 Words, he decided, were inadequate at best, impossible at worst. They meant too many things. Or they meant nothing at all. words meaning language Patricia A. McKillip
d8bae8f "So I find words I never thought to speak words travel poetry fantasy little-gidding visit shore streets mystery timelessness T.S. Eliot
66d6185 The taste for books was an early one. As a child he was sometimes found at midnight by a page still reading. They took his taper away, and he bred glow-worms to serve his purpose. They took the glow-worms away and he almost burnt the house down with a tinder. words literature reading Virginia Woolf
704622a One of the great tragedies of life is that men seldom bridge the gulf between practice and profession, between doing and saying. A persistent schizophrenia leaves so many of us tragically divided against ourselves. On the one hand, we proudly profess certain sublime and noble principles, but on the other hand, we sadly practise the very antithesis of these principles. How often are our lives characterised by a high blood pressure of creeds and an anaemia of deeds! We talk eloquently about our commitment to the principles of Christianity, and yet our lives are saturated with the practices of paganism. We proclaim our devotion to democracy, but we sadly practise the very opposite of the democratic creed. We talk passionately about peace, and at the same time we assiduously prepare for war. We make our fervent pleas for the high road of justice, and then we tread unflinchingly the low road of injustice. This strange dichotomy, this agonising gulf between the and the , represents the tragic theme of man's earthly pilgrimage. words war love-in-action martin-luther-king-jr peace Martin Luther King Jr.
503f538 No word matters. But man forgets reality and remembers words. words story history humanity reality semiotics truthful narrative memory Roger Zelazny
2a9d78f A written word is the choicest of relics. It is something at once more intimate with us and more universal than any other work of art. It is the work of art nearest to life itself. It may be translated into every language, and not only be read but actually breathed from all human lips; -- not be represented on canvas or in marble only, but be carved out of the breath of life itself. words reading books life language Henry David Thoreau
557f46e "I know how you are with your words, and, Will- I love all of them. Every word you say. The silly ones, the mad ones, the beautiful ones, and the ones that are only for me. I love them, and I love you." - Tessa Gray" words love tessa Cassandra Clare
666b142 "I will write in words of fire. I will write them on your skin. I will write about desire. Write beginnings, write of sin. You're the book I love the best, your skin only holds my truth, you will be a palimpsest lines of age rewriting youth. You will not burn upon the pyre. Or be buried on the shelf. You're my letter to desire: And you'll never read yourself. I will trace each word and comma As the final dusk descends, words passion love Neil Gaiman
26bdb14 I've developed a great reputation for wisdom by ordering more books than I ever had time to read, and reading more books, by far, than I learned anything useful from, except, of course, that some very tedious gentlemen have written books. words literature reading Marilynne Robinson
4065dda When you read a great book, you don't escape from life, you plunge deeper into it. There may be a superficial escape - into different countries, mores, speech patterns - but what you are essentially doing is furthering your understanding of life's subtleties, paradoxes, joys, pains and truths. Reading and life are not separate but symbiotic. words literature reading Julian Barnes
5fbfc0f Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them; but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents. words literature reading Arthur Schopenhauer
21f880d His library was a fine dark place bricked with books, so anything could happen there and always did. All you had to do was pull a book from the shelf and open it and suddenly the darkness was not so dark anymore. words library Ray Bradbury
722a5ef I tried to discover, in the rumor of forests and waves, words that other men could not hear, and I pricked up my ears to listen to the revelation of their harmony. words nature waves language listening harmony Gustave Flaubert
c79e963 At times I feel as if I had lived all this before and that I have already written these very words, but I know it was not I: it was another woman, who kept her notebooks so that one day I could use them. I write, she wrote, that memory is fragile and the space of a single life is brief, passing so quickly that we never get a chance to see the relationship between events; we cannot gauge the consequences of our acts, and we believe in the fiction of past, present, and future, but it may also be true that everything happens simultaneously. ... That's why my Grandmother Clara wrote in her notebooks, in order to see things in their true dimension and to defy her own poor memory. words time space perception memory Isabel Allende
0e95b59 Words have weight. words writing truth Stephen King
d8439c2 It is true that words have power, and one of the things they are able to do is get out of someone's mouth before the speaker has the chance to stop them. words Terry Pratchett
3ac01ff Thinking of the stars night after night I begin to realize 'The stars are words' and all the innumerable worlds in the Milky Way are words, and so is this world too. And I realize that no matter where I am, whether in a little room full of thought, or in this endless universe of stars and mountains, it's all in my mind. words Jack Kerouac
508c33a He was a writer and words were his weapons. words writer Christopher Moore
e57a47c What is wonderful about great literature is that it transforms the man who reads it towards the condition of the man who wrote. words literature reading E. M. Forster
7cc533f "He ate and drank the precious words, His spirit grew robust; He knew no more that he was poor, Nor that his frame was dust. He danced along the dingy days, And this bequest of wings words literature poetry Emily Dickinson
9757e96 [Words] cling to the very core of our memories and lie there in silence until a new desire reawakens them and recharges them with loving energy. That is one of the qualities of love that moves me most, their capacity for transmitting love. Like water, words are a wonderful conductor of energy. And the most powerful, transforming energy is the energy of love. words Laura Esquivel
e8efcb4 Only write to me, write to me, I love to see the hop and skip and sudden starts of your ink. words A.S. Byatt
71a69b2 The only advice, indeed, that one person can give another about reading is to take no advice, to follow your own instincts, to use your own reason, to come to your own conclusions. If this is agreed between us, then I feel at liberty to put forward a few ideas and suggestions because you will not allow them to fetter that independence which is the most important quality that a reader can possess. After all, what laws can be laid down about books? The battle of Waterloo was certainly fought on a certain day; but is Hamlet a better play than Lear? Nobody can say. Each must decide that question for himself. To admit authorities, however heavily furred and gowned, into our libraries and let them tell us how to read, what to read, what value to place upon what we read, is to destroy the spirit of freedom which is the breath of those sanctuaries. Everywhere else we may be bound by laws and conventions-there we have none. words library literature reading freedom Virginia Woolf
07012be The flower bloomed and faded. The sun rose and sank. The lover loved and went. And what the poets said in rhyme, the young translated into practice. words poetry living transience Virginia Woolf
4714433 "Men of few words are the best men." (3.2.41)" words speaking taciturnity expression William Shakespeare
8cd7449 My head is full of fire and grief and my tongue runs wild, pierced with shards of glass. words poetry Federico García Lorca
09bd24f Never before had I known the sudden quiver of understanding that travels from word to brain to heart, the way a new language can move, coil, swim into life under the eyes, the almost savage leap of comprehension, the instantaneous, joyful release of meaning, the way the words shed their printed bodies in a flash of heat and light. words language Elizabeth Kostova
633f9f6 There are words and words and none mean anything. And then one sentence means everything. words literature reading Richard Flanagan
2cee4a6 From that time on, the world was hers for the reading. She would never be lonely again, never miss the lack of intimate friends. Books became her friends and there was one for every mood. solitude words literature reading lonliness Betty Smith
e7c14ba It's strange how a word, a phrase, a sentence, can feel like a blow to the head. words phrases sentences Veronica Roth
0f52444 Now begins to rise in me the familiar rhythm; words that have lain dormant now lift, now toss their crests, and fall and rise, and falls again. I am a poet, yes. Surely I am a great poet. words poetry Virginia Woolf
3f3d576 Second-hand books are wild books, homeless books; they have come together in vast flocks of variegated feather, and have a charm which the domesticated volumes of the library lack. Besides, in this random miscellaneous company we may rub against some complete stranger who will, with luck, turn into the best friend we have in the world. words literature reading Virginia Woolf
078d646 Literature, real literature, must not be gulped down like some potion which may be good for the heart or good for the brain -- the brain, that stomach of the soul. Literature must be taken and broken to bits, pulled apart, squashed -- then its lovely reek will be smelt in the hollow of the palm, it will be munched and rolled upon the tongue with relish; then, and only then, its rare flavor will be appreciated at its true worth and the broken and crushed parts will again come together in your mind and disclose the beauty of a unity to which you have contributed something of your own blood. words literature reading Vladimir Nabokov
e4b6863 M is for magic. All the letters are, if you put them together properly. You can make magic with them, and dreams, and, I hope, even a few surprises... words magic writing neil-gaiman Neil Gaiman
4b53216 I'm all these words, all these strangers, this dust of words, with no ground for their settling, no sky for their dispersing, coming together to say, fleeing one another to say, that I am they, all of them, those that merge, those that part, those that never meet, and nothing else, yes, something else, that I'm something quite different, a quite different thing, a wordless thing in an empty place, a hard shut dry cold black place, where nothing stirs, nothing speaks, and that I listen, and that I seek, like a caged beast born of caged beasts born of caged beasts born of caged beasts born in a cage and dead in a cage, born and then dead, born in a cage and then dead in a cage, in a word like a beast, in one of their words, like such a beast, and that I seek, like such a beast, with my little strength, such a beast, with nothing of its species left but fear and fury, no, the fury is past, nothing but fear, nothing of all its due but fear centupled, fear of its shadow, no, blind from birth, of sound then, if you like, we'll have that, one must have something, it's a pity, but there it is, fear of sound, fear of sounds, the sounds of beasts, the sounds of men, sounds in the daytime and sounds at night, that's enough, fear of sounds all sounds, more or less, more or less fear, all sounds, there's only one, continuous, day and night, what is it, it's steps coming and going, it's voices speaking for a moment, it's bodies groping their way, it's the air, it's things, it's the air among the things, that's enough, that I seek, like it, no, not like it, like me, in my own way, what am I saying, after my fashion, that I seek, what do I seek now, what it is, it must be that, it can only be that, what it is, what it can be, what what can be, what I seek, no, what I hear, I hear them, now it comes back to me, they say I seek what it is I hear, I hear them, now it comes back to me, what it can possibly be, and where it can possibly come from, since all is silent here, and the walls thick, and how I manage, without feeling an ear on me, or a head, or a body, or a soul, how I manage, to do what, how I manage, it's not clear, dear dear, you say it's not clear, something is wanting to make it clear, I'll seek, what is wanting, to make everything clear, I'm always seeking something, it's tiring in the end, and it's only the beginning. words silence fear sound insanity Samuel Beckett
bbd9de0 I had lines inside me, a string of guiding lights. I had language. Fiction and poetry are doses, medicines. What they heal is the rupture reality makes on the imagination. I had been damaged, and a very important part of me had been destroyed - that was my reality, the facts of my life. But on the other side of the facts was who I could be, how I could feel. And as long as I had words for that, images for that, stories for that, then I wasn't lost. words literature reading healing hurt language Jeanette Winterson
1829337 Words aren't made -- they grow,' said Anne. words L.M. Montgomery
7f32c90 When you are writing laws you are testing words to find their utmost power. Like spells, they have to make things happen in the real world, and like spells, they only work if people believe in them. words magic spells laws Hilary Mantel
268557a Hold a book in your hand and you're a pilgrim at the gates of a new city. words literature reading Anne Michaels
93181af We are absurdly accustomed to the miracle of a few written signs being able to contain immortal imagery, involutions of thought, new worlds with live people, speaking, weeping, laughing. We take it for granted so simply that in a sense, by the very act of brutish routine acceptance, we undo the work of the ages, the history of the gradual elaboration of poetical description and construction, from the treeman to Browning, from the caveman to Keats. What if we awake one day, all of us, and find ourselves utterly unable to read? I wish you to gasp not only at what you read but at the miracle of its being readable. words literature reading language Vladimir Nabokov
af3df2e The words emerge from her body without her realizing it, as if she were being visited by the memory of a language long forsaken. words Marguerite Duras
1dc1fe1 Just remember, when someone has an accent, it means that he knows one more language than you do. words tongue language Sidney Sheldon
a3c58a6 No man is exempt from saying silly things; the mischief is to say them deliberately. words silly Michel de Montaigne
22355ac I see all of us reading ourselves away from ourselves, straining in circles of light to find more light until the line of words becomes a trail of crumbs that we follow across a page of fresh snow words literature reading poetry Billy Collins
731d697 But if you have big ideas you have to use big words to express them, haven't you? words ideas L.M. Montgomery
65fe099 Like flies in amber, like corpses frozen in ice, that which according to the laws of nature should pass away is, by the miracle of ink on paper, preserved. It is a kind of magic. As one tends the graves of the dead, so I tend the books. And every day I open a volume or two, read a few lines or pages, allow the voices of the forgotten dead to resonate inside my head. words literature reading Diane Setterfield
cffeb75 I didn't know how to say goodbye. Words were stupid. They said so little. Yet they opened up holes you could fall into and never climb out of again. words war ann-rinaldi inadequate goodbye Ann Rinaldi
2ed18ed "TELL THE WORLD WHAT YOU INTEND TO DO, BUT FIRST SHOW IT.This is the equivalent of saying "deeds, and not words, are what count most." words dreams success life inspirational plans Napoleon Hill
2dd7b14 "Emotions, in my experience, aren't covered by single words. I don't believe in "sadness", "joy", or "regret". Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that is oversimplifies feeling. I'd like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions." words patriarchal language Jeffrey Eugenides
3de0c20 It has always been a happy thought to me that the creek runs on all night, new every minute, whether I wish it or know it or care, as a closed book on a shelf continues to whisper to itself its own inexhaustible tale. words literature reading nature Annie Dillard
26c261a The orange flames waved at the crowd as paper and print dissolved inside them. Burning words were torn from their sentences. words meanings Markus Zusak
7960aff I find it ridiculous to assign a gender to an inanimate object incapable of disrobing and making an occasional fool of itself. words language David Sedaris
ef8977b Among the many worlds which man did not receive as a gift of nature, but which he created with his own mind, the world of books is the greatest. Every child, scrawling his first letters on his slate and attempting to read for the first time, in so doing, enters an artificial and complicated world; to know the laws and rules of this world completely and to practice them perfectly, no single human life is long enough. Without words, without writing, and without books there would be no history, there could be no concept of humanity. And if anyone wants to try to enclose in a small space in a single house or single room, the history of the human spirit and to make it his own, he can only do this in the form of a collection of books. words literature history reading Hermann Hesse
51efa3c Life happened because I turned the pages. words literature reading Alberto Manguel
359c36a Books, for me, are a home. Books don't make a home - they are one, in the sense that just as you do with a door, you open a book, and you go inside. Inside there is a different kind of time and space. There is warmth there too - a hearth. I sit down with a book and I am warm. words literature reading Jeanette Winterson
a337aa3 The object we call a book is not the real book, but its potential, like a musical score or seed. It exists fully only in the act of being read; and its real home is inside the head of the reader, where the symphony resounds, the seed germinates. A book is a heart that only beats in the chest of another. words literature reading Rebecca Solnit
eb270b0 For this quiet, unprepossessing, passive man who has no garden in front of his subsidised flat, books are like flowers. He loves to line them up on the shelf in multicoloured rows: he watches over each of them with an old-fashioned gardener's delight, holds them like fragile objects in his thin, bloodless hands. words literature reading Stefan Zweig
7527e0f "I never knew words could be so confusing," Milo said to Tock as he bent down to scratch the dog's ear. "Only when you use a lot to say a little," answered Tock. Milo thought this was quite the wisest thing he'd heard all day." words wisdom tock Norton Juster
aba94ed He was intrigued by the power of words, not the literary words that filled the books in the library but the sharp, staccato words that went into the writing of news stories. Words that went for the jugular. Active verbs that danced and raced on the page. words power-of-words news Robert Cormier
f9cd08e Read sometimes for the story, Bobby. Don't be like the book-snobs who won't do that. Read sometimes for the words - the language. Don't be like the play-it-safers that won't do that. But when you find a book that has both good story and good words, treasure that book. words story literature language Stephen King
7c101e7 I believe in fiction and the power of stories because that way we speak in tongues. We are not silenced. All of us, when in deep trauma, find we hesitate, we stammer; there are long pauses in our speech. The thing is stuck. We get our language back through the language of others. We can turn to the poem. We can open the book. Somebody has been there for us and deep-dived the words. words literature reading poetry healing language trauma Jeanette Winterson
47988cf The thought of these vast stacks of books would drive him mad: the more he read, the less he seemed to know -- the greater the number of the books he read, the greater the immense uncountable number of those which he could never read would seem to be.... The thought that other books were waiting for him tore at his heart forever. words literature reading Thomas Wolfe
9592e1e I'd developed an inability to demonstrate much negative emotion at all. It was another thing that made me seem like a dick - my stomach could be all oiled eels, and you would get nothing from my face and less from my words. It was a constant problem: too much control or no control at all. words truth dick judging-by-appearance jumping-to-conclusions outer-appearance what-s-inside-that-counts stoic emotional judging heartless mean control emotions panic judgemental Gillian Flynn
01ee0a4 The book was in her lap; she had read no further. The power to change one's life comes from a paragraph, a lone remark. The lines that penetrate us are slender, like the flukes that live in river water and enter the bodies of swimmers. She was excited, filled with strength. The polished sentences had arrived, it seemed, like so many other things, at just the right time. How can we imagine what our lives should be without the illumination of the lives of others? words literature reading James Salter
f5cc777 For the time being Words scatter Are they fallen leaves? words leaves Ruth Ozeki
4154763 Do you know the feeling when you start reading a new book before the membrane of the last one has had time to close behind you? You leave the previous book with ideas and themes-characters even-caught in the fibers of your clothes, and when you open the new book, they are still with you words literature reading Diane Setterfield
ba8f8e3 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 shall know 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 always there, that we the readers, knew it was always there, and have always known it was as it was, though we have now for the first time recognised, become fully cognisant of, our knowledge. words literature reading A.S. Byatt
6475d5f Where do the words go when we have said them? words Margaret Atwood
50b9256 The problem in our country isn't with books being banned, but with people no longer reading. You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them. words literature reading Ray Bradbury
83b6dd6 Then at certain moments I remember one of his words and I suddenly feel the sensual woman flaring up, as if violently caressed. I say the word to myself, with joy. It is at such a moment that my true body lives. words passion sensuality Anaïs Nin
e549e46 I don't know: perhaps it's a dream, all a dream. (That would surprise me.) I'll wake, in the silence, and never sleep again. (It will be I?) Or dream (dream again), dream of a silence, a dream silence, full of murmurs (I don't know, that's all words), never wake (all words, there's nothing else). You must go on, that's all I know. They're going to stop, I know that well: I can feel it. They're going to abandon me. It will be the silence, for a moment (a good few moments). Or it will be mine? The lasting one, that didn't last, that still lasts? It will be I? You must go on. I can't go on. You must go on. I'll go on. You must say words, as long as there are any - until they find me, until they say me. (Strange pain, strange sin!) You must go on. Perhaps it's done already. Perhaps they have said me already. Perhaps they have carried me to the threshold of my story, before the door that opens on my story. (That would surprise me, if it opens.) It will be I? It will be the silence, where I am? I don't know, I'll never know: in the silence you don't know. You must go on. I can't go on. I'll go on. suicide words story silence Samuel Beckett
7878ef7 The phrase and the day and the scene harmonized in a chord. Words. Was it their colours? He allowed them to glow and fade, hue after hue: sunrise gold, the russet and green of apple orchards, azure of waves, the greyfringed fleece of clouds. No it was not their colours: it was the poise and balance of the period itself. Did he then love the rhythmic rise and fall of words better than their associations of legend and colour? Or was it that, being as weak of sight as he was shy of mind, he drew less pleasure from the reflection of the glowing sensible world through the prism of a language manycoloured and richly storied than from the contemplation of an inner world of individual emotions mirrored perfectly in a lucid supple periodic prose? words inspirational colour James Joyce
624890d There is nothing I detest so much as the contortions of these great time-and-lip servers, these affable dispensers of meaningless embraces, these obliging utterers of empty words, who view every one in civilities stereotypes words relationships people dishonesty misanthropy society hypocrisy Molière
03aeab5 A good book, he had concluded, leaves you wanting to reread the book. A great book compels you to reread your own soul. Such books were for him rare and, as he aged, rarer. Still he searched, one more Ithaca for which he was forever bound. words literature reading Richard Flanagan
7a06a8b Art's cruel. You can get away with murder with words. But a picture is like a window straight through to your inmost heart. words murder John Fowles
27ad08d Words, too, have genuine substance -- mass and weight and specific gravity. words science Tim O'Brien
cd00c9c I am often described to my irritation as a 'contrarian' and even had the title inflicted on me by the publisher of one of my early books. (At least on that occasion I lived up to the title by ridiculing the word in my introduction to the book's first chapter.) It is actually a pity that our culture doesn't have a good vernacular word for an oppositionist or even for someone who tries to do his own thinking: the word 'dissident' can't be self-conferred because it is really a title of honor that has to be won or earned, while terms like 'gadfly' or 'maverick' are somehow trivial and condescending as well as over-full of self-regard. And I've lost count of the number of memoirs by old comrades or ex-comrades that have titles like 'Against the Stream,' 'Against the Current,' 'Minority of One,' 'Breaking Ranks' and so forth--all of them lending point to Harold Rosenberg's withering remark about 'the herd of independent minds.' Even when I was quite young I disliked being called a 'rebel': it seemed to make the patronizing suggestion that 'questioning authority' was part of a 'phase' through which I would naturally go. On the contrary, I was a relatively well-behaved and well-mannered boy, and chose my battles with some deliberation rather than just thinking with my hormones. rebellion words independence youth contrarianism dissidents harold-rosenberg honorifics hormones oppositionism memoirs free-thought dissent Christopher Hitchens
02dc879 We have an odd relationship with words. We learn a few when we are small, throughout our lives we collect others through education, conversation, our contact with books, and yet, in comparison, there are only a tiny number about whose meaning, sense, and denotation we would have absolutely no doubts, if one day, we were to ask ourselves seriously what they meant. Thus we affirm and deny, thus we convince and are convinced, thus we argue, deduce, and conclude, wandering fearlessly over the surface of concepts about which we only have the vaguest of ideas, and, despite the false air of confidence that we generally affect as we feel our way along the road in verbal darkness, we manage, more or less, to understand each other and even, sometimes, to find each other. words José Saramago
1ef911e What we needed were not words and promises but the steady accumulation of small realities. words promises Haruki Murakami
168ef41 What a blessing it is to love books. Everybody must love something, and I know of no objects of love that give such substantial and unfailing returns as books and a garden. words literature reading Elizabeth von Arnim
29fa383 We learn words by rote, but not their meaning; that must be paid for with our life-blood, and printed in the subtle fibres of our nerves. words literature feeling growth experience George Eliot
4f4f5df When you showed someone how you felt, it was fresh and honest. When you told someone how you felt, there might be nothing behind the words but habit or expectation. words feelings love truth show habit Jodi Picoult
1297c4d She had to find her own story, and she could make it whatever shape she thought best. words Tad Williams
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