You've read half the books in this house? This whole house?" "Well, approximately half." Sticky said. "To be more accurate, I suppose I've read more like" - his eyes went up as he calculated - "three sevenths? Yes, three sevenths." "Only three sevent...
When we discuss a novel it is only partially to hear another person's 'view', it is much more to find out what we ourselves think in order to possess the text more completely. Such a possession is then a composite one, it is the book itself and the a...
A snipit from the PR people: “A British author has revealed how he risked his life to infiltrate the Taliban while researching his new book on religious terrorism. Cal Sarwar came face-to-face with Al-Qaeda chiefs in Pakistan while posing as a terr...
A snipit from the PR people: “A British author has revealed how he risked his life to infiltrate the Taliban while researching his new book on religious terrorism. Cal Sawar came face-to-face with Al-Qaeda chiefs in Pakistan while posing as a terro...
A snipit from my PR people: “A British author has revealed how he risked his life to infiltrate the Taliban while researching his new book on religious terrorism. Cal Sawar came face-to-face with Al-Qaeda chiefs in Pakistan while posing as a terror...
It is too late for me to learn your wisdom in this matter. From the time I knew aught, I have lived with a knight and his lady whose love lit and warmed the dark hall on winter's nights. Madam, my example comes not from any book of romance. My grandp...
A library was nothing without its people. You say library and there’s this iconoclastic image of an old-lady librarian telling people to be quiet and not to run. But the thing was, that lady—that iconoclastic lady—was with us when we cleaned. S...
Every one of the world's "great" religions utterly trivializes the immensity and beauty of the cosmos. Books like the Bible and the Koran get almost every significant fact about us and our world wrong. Every scientific domain -- from cosmology to psy...
Yes, our Father has a plan, Ciminae,” he said. “But he leaves it up to his children to accept his will. It is their agency. He cannot force his will upon them. If he did, he would cease to be God. They . . . we must choose for ourselves to accept...
You are my favorite book. I immerse myself in your story and fall in love with each page. I will never be able to truly express to you how much I admire and cherish who you are. Nor will I be able to articulate the level of honor I feel to find mysel...
I have written this book to encourage women to dream big, forge a path through the obstacles, and achieve their full potential. I am hoping that each woman will set her own goals and reach for them with gusto. And I am hoping that each man will do hi...
This is the paradox of public space: even if everyone knows an unpleasant fact, saying it in public changes everything. One of the first measures taken by the new Bolshevik government in 1918 was to make public the entire corpus of tsarist secret dip...
I recently read in the book My Stroke of Insight by brain scientist Jill Bolte Taylor that the natural life span of an emotion—the average time it takes for it to move through the nervous system and body—is only a minute and a half. After that we...
Why should literature be easy? Sometimes you can do what you want to do in a simple, direct way that is absolutely right. Sometimes you can't. Reading is not a passive act. Books are not TV. Art of all kinds is an interactive challenge. The person wh...
The worst part of it has been, I think, the adverse effect on family life. It kills off family conversation. And it’s harder to get your children to read books. I became a confirmed reader when I was growing up in Glendale. I’ve loved reading all...
They lived happily ever after. It said so. In the book. They were the last words on the page. Happily ever after. Despereaux was sure that he had read exactly those words time and time again. Lying on the floor with the drum beating and the mice shou...
There are many themes found in the Book of Psalms that are generally not found in modern music. These include the fear of God, the righteousness and justice of God, the sovereignty of God, the judgement of God, the evil of sin, spiritual and physical...
I recognized the great monument from the illustration in the copy of /The Jungle Book/ that my mother kept in the top drawer of my bedside table. When I went with Sophia to the Taj Mahal for the first time, I was not as enchanted by the real mausoleu...
BERNARD. (To DONALD.) Donald, read any new libraries lately? DONALD. One or three. I did the complete works of Doris Lessing this week. I've been depressed. [. . .] BERNARD. Some people eat, some people drink, and some take dope. DONALD. I read. MICH...
Sometimes I open a book that’s so beautiful I have to shut it because it hurts me. I can’t stand it. It’s like, Oh no! Oh no! Oh no! This is going to drive me into my own heart. A day or two days later I’m saying, All right, and I just surren...
We, and I think I'm speaking for many writers, don't know what it is that sometimes comes to make our books alive. All we can do is write dutifully and day after day, every day, giving our work the very best of what we are capable. I don't that we ca...
