#reading

"Associate with the noblest people you can find; read the best books; live with the mighty; but learn to be happy alone."

"Every reader exists to ensure for a certain book a modest immortality. Reading is, in this sense, a ritual of rebirth."

"In a bookstore you can find me in the romance section, because I’m not a lover, I’m a reader."

"Books can be dangerous. The best ones should be labeled "This could change your life."

"For once the disease of reading has laid upon the system it weakens so that it falls an easy prey to that other scourge which dwells in the ink pot and festers in the quill. The wretch takes to writing."

"One day I would have all the books in the world, shelves and shelves of them. I would live my life in a tower of books. I would read all day long and eat peaches. And if any young knights in armor dared to come calling on their white chargers and plead with me to let down my hair, I would pelt them with peach pits until they went home."

"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."

"A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one."

"I hope everyone that is reading this is having a really good day. And if you are not, just know that in every new minute that passes you have an opportunity to change that."

"People don't read any more. It's a sad state of affairs. Reading's the only thing that allows you to use your imagination. When you watch films it's someone else's vision, isn't it?"[Interview in The Independent, 15 October 2005]"

"There is something wonderful about a book. We can pick it up. We can heft it. We can read it. We can set it down. We can think of what we have read. It does something for us. We can share great minds, great actions, and great undertakings in the pages of a book."

"Sometimes they would sit in the parlor together, both reading – in entirely separate worlds, to be sure, but joined somehow. When this happened, other people in the family couldn't bring themselves to disturb them. All that could be heard in the parlor was the sound of pages, turning."

"Books are not about passing time. They're about other lives. Other worlds. Far from wanting time to pass, one just wishes one had more of it. If one wanted to pass the time one could go to New Zealand."

"Books wrote our life story, and as they accumulated on our shelves (and on our windowsills, and underneath our sofa, and on top of our refrigerator), they became chapters in it themselves."

"Never did she find anything so difficult as to keep herself from losing her temper when she was suddenly disturbed while absorbed in a book."

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

"Reading was not a fallback position for her but an ideal state of being."

"A good book will pull you in from the beginning and take you on a journey you'll never forget."

"It is a good rule after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between."

"A homeless man visited my store today. The few quarters that he had in his pocket he invested on books. I offered him free books, but he insisted on giving me his quarters. He walked away filled with joy as if he possessed the world's riches in his hands. In a way, he did. He left me smiling and knowing that he was wealthier than many others... (01-21-10)"