#literature

"That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you're not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong."

"Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisioned by the enemy, don't we consider it his duty to escape?. . .If we value the freedom of mind and soul, if we're partisans of liberty, then it's our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can!"

"What are we doing to each other? Because I know that I am doing to him exactly what he is doing to me. We are sometimes so happy, and never in our lives have we known more unhappiness."

"Reading is that fruitful miracle of a communication in the midst of solitude."

"About here, she thought, dabbling her fingers in the water, a ship had sunk, and she muttered, dreamily half asleep, how we perished, each alone."

"For books continue each other, in spite of our habit of judging them separately."

"I long ago abandoned myself to a blind lust for the written word. Literature is my sandbox. In it I play, build my forts and castles, spend glorious time."

"Being a Dream Girl is never going to be about what you look like or how much you weigh. After all, our physical appearances are just reflections of our inner worlds. What makes you a Dream Girl is your emotional sensitivity, your self-awareness, and your ability to communicate who you are effectively and compassionately in the world."

"Everybody wants to have intimate conversations, but the smart fellows don't give out only the fools. The smart fellows talk intimately about the fools, and examine them all over and give them advice."

"I'm a big believer in pairing classics with contemporary literature, so students have the opportunity to see that literature is not a cold, dead thing that happened once but instead a vibrant mode of storytelling that's been with us a long time - and will be with us, I hope, for a long time to come."

"Only the very weak-minded refuse to be influenced by literature and poetry."

"You mark and celebrate errors, transforming failures into successes."

"The world is a hellish place, and bad writing is destroying the quality of our suffering."

"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."

"Words rich in meaning can be cheap in sound effects."

"I always thought it was Mo Be Dick. I know Mo, and he is a dick."

"[novan]: bassists are very good with their fingers[novan]: and some of us sing backup vocals, so that means we're good with our mouths too...(~ IM chat with Novan Chang, 18, bassist)"

"The person who deserves most pity is a lonesome one on a rainy day who doesn't know how to read."

"Have a heart that never hardens, and a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts."

"Books are like imprisoned souls till someone takes them down from a shelf and frees them."