“His habit of reading isolated him: it became such a need that after being in company for some time he grew tired and restless ...”
“I hold a theory that, sooner or later, if a man but live long enough, certain books destined for his peculiar delight will find him, however obscure they or he may be.”
“Books were already a familiar refuge, after all, and they still took me in without the slightest judgment. They don’t close to you the way a person can. You might feel as though you don’t belong anywhere, least of all in your own home, you might feel bound to a person whose actions you abhor yet unable to divorce yourself, struggling to individuate in their shadow—“all these feelings you wouldn’t dare articulate to another person, no matter how highly trained—but you can bring your whole untempered self to books. You can ask them anything, and though you may need to search for the resonant lines, though the answer may come at a slant, they will always speak to you, they will always let you in.”
“It is fatal to suppose the great writer was too wise or too profound for us ever to understand him; to think of art so is not to praise but to murder it, for the next step after that tribute will be neglect of the masterpiece.”
“Fairy tales are another kind of Bible, for those who know how to read them.”
“You ll never get to the happily ever after if you don t move past the current chapter...”
“In unremarkable texts we soon trip on phrases that penetrate into us, as if a sword has thrust up to its hilt inside us.”
“When I was a child, I read books. My reading was not indiscriminate. I preferred books that were old and thick and hard. I made vocabulary lists.”
“who gets the rare opportunity of spotting a treasure of memories lying among masses, stepping back to stroke it with a secret smile as your mind wanders back to those sleepless yet ecstatic nights you had spent together? only............ a book lover.”
“I love buying books to create my sacred library.”
“Whenever we read a book we love, we change it, to some extent. We read into it our own interpretations, and the meanings which the words have taken on in our time. If a book is so rigid that it cannot lend itself to these fluctuations, it is useful only while it seems strictly true, and afterwards it is completely out of date.”
“He had learned how reading a book can take you away from anywhere, and make you feel like you re somewhere else, and someone else.. Even if only for a little while.”
“Reading brings us unknown friends.” — Honoré de Balzac”
“I read to learn from the greats but I write to compete with them.”
“We sat in his library. amidst his beloved books, whose company I knew he would rather seek than that of most of his acquaintances, did they but know it.”
“I was behind, but now I m below. Hopefully, they ll have books wherever I go...”
“Literature gives great light and great life.”