I do not think I ever opened a book in my life which had not something to say upon woman's inconstancy. Songs and proverbs, all talk of woman's fickleness. But perhaps you will say, these were all written by men." "Perhaps I shall. Yes, yes, if you p...
Eva walked along the wall that held all of Michael's books. Shelves of science texts - physics, astronomy, a full set of Darwin's writings, new works in biomedical genetics - these were at the bottom, and books on philosophy and religion at the top. ...
When it's summer, people sit a lot. Or lie. Lie in the sense of recumbency. A good heavy book holds you down. It's an anchor that keeps you from getting up and having another gin and tonic. Many a person has been saved from summer alcoholism, not to ...
The times do not call for grassroots political activism, as if the next election might be enough to reverse a massive cultural earthquake. They do not call for working a few more speeches, another letter to the editor, another fundraiser, the next vo...
The act of true reading is in its very essence democratic. Consider the nature of what happens when we read a book - and I mean, of course, a work of literature, not an instruction manual or a textbook - in private, unsupervised, un-spied-on, alone. ...
[a torpedo is racing toward them] Capt. Vasili Borodin: Torpedo impact, 20 seconds. Captain Ramius: [to Ryan] What books? Jack Ryan: Pardon me? Captain Ramius: What books did you write? Jack Ryan: I wrote a biography of, of Admiral Halsey, called "Th...
The book itself is a curious artifact, not showy in its technology but complex and extremely efficient: a really neat little device, compact, often very pleasant to look at and handle, that can last decades, even centuries. It doesn't have to be plug...
The noise around us determines how we speak. And how we listen. Just as a conversation suffers in a war zone, art suffers in a culture built on noise. So does our enjoyment of it.
The Fourteenth Book is entitled, "What can a Thoughtful Man Hope for Mankind on Earth, Given the Experience of the Past Million Years?" It doesn't take long to read The Fourteenth Book. It consists of one word and a period. This is it: "Nothing.
The only way I can keep clear of force is by justice. Far from being willing to execute his enemies, a real king must be willing to execute his friends.
Goblins burrowed in the earth, elves sang songs in the trees: Those were the obvious wonders of reading, but behind them lay the fundamental marvel that, in stories, words could command things to be.
Be careful what you're doing, because no one is ever who you want them to be. And the less you really know them, the more likely you are to confuse them with the girl or boy in your head.
It looks like Animal and Miss piggy had sex," I said. "And this was the spawn." "My eyes!" Boomer cried. "My eyes! I can't stop seeing it now that you've said it!
...Newspapers, popular fiction, and magazines churned out words by the million, and the worn coins of everyday speech were less and less able to communicate anything more than the most commonplace meanings....
I prefer physical books to eBooks, because an eBook can’t be the solution to a wobbly chair like a real book can.
Surrealism also refuses the representation of reality: reality can only be; its existence proves its reality. Fiction thereby becomes impossible or is, by definition, false.
We can sum up the surrealist distinction between 'literature' and 'poetry' by saying where the former is artificial, fictive and elusive, the latter is natural, real, direct and spontaneous.
...two different kinds of Japanese psychotherapies, one based on getting people to stop using feelings as an excuse for their actions and the other based on getting people to practice gratitude.
Alone is just another word for love.
I dig art. With a shovel. In the cemetery.
If I had to believe, I would. But I don’t, and I do.
