“Books are not distractions. Rather, they are, and have been, the most profound and accurate mirrors man has ever crafted.”
“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lend itself to these fluctuations, it is useful only while it seems strictly true, and afterwards it is completely out of date.”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.”
“I can escape to the blissful realms between the pages of books.”
“Arriving back home, I didn’t start to read it. I pretended I didn’t have it, in order to have, later, the shock of discovering it. I opened it hours later, had a few marvelous lines, closed it again, walked around the house, put it off even more by going to eat a piece of bread with butter, pretended I didn’t know where I had left it, found it, opened it for a few instants. I created the most false sense for that covert thing that was joy. Joy would always be covert for me.”
“I wasn t discriminating in my reading, and I m still not. I read then primarily to be entertained, as I do now. And I m not saying that apologetically: I feel that if you remove the initial gut response from reading — the delight or excitement or simply the enjoyment of being told a story — and try to concentrate on the meaning or the shape of the message first, you might as well give up, it s too much like all work and no play.”
“All this time I thought you were reading to escape the world, but now I know, you didn’t read to escape it; you read to discover it.”
“Reading is like diving into an ocean of an alternate world, away from your real world, where in spite of going though the pain and pleasure of the characters, you remain a witness, unscathed.”
“Most of us are addicted to non-active reading. The outstanding fault of the non-active or undemanding reader is his inattention to words, and his consequent failure to come to terms with the author.”
“Reading can seriously damage your Ignorance”