#reading

"Books are a uniquely portable magic."

"You learn almost as much about a thinker from what he reads—in particular, what he likes and what he disdains—as from what he writes himself."

"If you surround yourself with the good and righteous, they can only raise you up. If you surround yourself with the others, they will drag you down into the doldrums of mediocrity, and they will keep you there, but only as long as you permit it."

"I read anything that’s going to be interesting. But you don’t know what it is until you’ve read it. Somewhere in a book on the history of false teeth there’ll be the making of a novel."

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

"I think it’s the books that you read when you’re young that live with you forever."

"The world exists to end up in a book."

"Indeed, learning to write may be part of learning to read. For all I know, writing comes out of a superior devotion to reading."

"When at last I came upon the right book, the feeling was violent: it blew open a hole in me that made life more dangerous because I couldn't control what came through it."

"Some of these things are true and some of them lies. But they are all good stories."

"Passion for books is pleasurable."

"If I could offer but one helpful hint to young Hoosiers hoping to better their odds for success in life, I would simply note the importance of thoughtful reading."

"God is not a thief. That which steals, kills and destroys is the devil - not God!"

"A tough life needs a tough language—and that is what poetry is. That is what literature offers—a language powerful enough to say how it is."

"Literature is strewn with the wreckage of those who have minded beyond reason the opinion of others."

"We can imagine the books we'd like to read, even if they have not yet been written, and we can imagine libraries full of books we would like to possess, even if they are well beyond our reach, because we enjoy dreaming up a library that reflects every one of our interests and every one of our foibles--a library that, in its variety and complexity, fully reflects the reader we are."

"I'm pretty sure my addiction to reading has just reached a whole new level."

"Get books, sit yourself down anywhere, and go to reading them yourself."

"A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading."

"Digestion of words as well; I often read aloud to myself in my writing corner in the library, where no one can hear me, for the sake of better savouring the text, so as to make it all the more mine."