...what books meant, the possibility they presented: you could protect them forever, store them up like engineers store water, endless resources of time and knowledge snared in ink, tied down to paper, layered on shelves...Moments made physical, unto...
I learned very early on not to speak to my folk from on high, but to get down with them, beside them, showing them how to act rather than telling them. And I suggested that they should do the same with one another: that they didn't need a book of rul...
Code is not like other how-computers-work books. It doesn't have big color illustrations of disk drives with arrows showing how the data sweeps into the computer. Code has no drawings of trains carrying a cargo of zeros and ones. Metaphors and simile...
Miss Lasqueti consumed mostly crime thrillers, which constantly seemed to disappoint her. I suspect that for her the world was more accidental than any book’s plot. Twice I saw her so irritated by a mystery that she half rose from the shadow of her...
Through books I discovered everything to be loved, explored, visited, communed with. I was enriched and given all the blueprints to a marvelous life, I was consoled in adversity, I was prepared for both joys and sorrows, I acquired one of the most pr...
It is right that you should read according to your temperament, occupations, hobbies, and vocations. But it is a sign of great inner insecurity to be hostile to the unfamiliar, unwilling to explore the unfamiliar. In science, we respect the research ...
Joan spoke kindly, explaining patiently, as he always patiently explained things to her. “It’s like in that book you gave me, Jane Eyre. Jane says she isn’t a bird caught in a net. Instead she’s a human being with an independent will and that...
Daja doesn't exactly need to be tested on whether she's honorable or not." "Doesn't she? Don't all of you? This is your first taste of the things which may come from your being powerful mages. People will offer you gold, status, even love. I want to ...
If toes had eyes, then I could see how my feet know where to go, but toes are blind. And how is it that my tongue speaks words it cannot hear? Because for all its eloquence, the tongue itself is deaf, and flaps in soundlessness.
The Bible did not arrive by fax from heaven. The Bible is the product of man, my dear. Not of God. The Bible did not fall magically from the clouds. Man created it as a historical record of tumultuous times, and it has evolved through countless trans...
No singer would ever make a song about that battle. No maester would ever write down an account for one of the Reader's beloved books. No banners flew, no warhorns moaned, no great lord called his men about him to hear his final ringing words. They f...
Why does Alexander the Great never tell us about the exact location of his tomb, Fermat about his Last Theorem, John Wilkes Booth about the Lincoln assassination conspiracy, Hermann Göring about the Reichstag fire? Why don’t Sophocles, Democritus,...
Although she was a logical, practical person, she believed that in books there existed a kind of magic. Between the aging covers on these shelves, contained in tiny, abstract black marks on sheets of paper, were voices from the past. Voices that reac...
I feel guilty when I feed them unhealthy food they like. I feel guilty when I feed them healthy food they don’t like. I feel guilty when I drop them off at school. I feel guilty when I pick them up at school. I feel guilty mostly for writing this b...
There be many gurus, and some good ones whom it is no great task to differentiate, seeing that those who make the loudest claim are least entitled to respect. They who are the true guides into Knowledge know that nothing can be taught, although the l...
In all memory there is a degree of fallenness; we are all exiles from our own pasts, just as, on looking up from a book, we discover anew our banishment from the bright worlds of imagination and fantasy. A cross-channel ferry, with its overfilled ash...
Book-club night stopped abruptly when Caleb died. For almost a year and a half, as if by some type of tacit agreement, they all knew they couldn’t be in the same room at the same time. It was as if their collective grief would multiply, rebounding ...
How does it happen that a writer who's not even very good - and I can say that, I've read four or five of his books - gets to be in charge of the world's destiny? Or of the entire universe's?" If he's not very good, why didn't you stop at one?" Mrs. ...
My book was not written in hate for Christians or disdain for the principles often associated with Jesus Christ—instead it was inspired by the ignorance that faith and religion often breed in humanity; the type of ignorance that allows people to se...
Those old hypocrites. They talk about killing witches but the Good Book’s full of magic. Turning the Nile to blood and parting the Red Sea. What’s that if it’s not good old-fashioned magic? Want a little water into wine? No trouble! How about r...
The art of reading is a very important one. It consists in not taking an interest in whatever may be engaging the attention of the general public at any particular time. When some political or ecclesiastical pamphlet, or novel, or poem is making a gr...
