The books we need are of the kind that act upon us like a misfortune,that makes us suffer like the death of someone we love more than ourselves, that make us feel as though we were on the verge of suicide,lost in a forest remote from all human habita...
I did not imagine anyone reading my rambling, ranting stories. I was writing for myself, trying to shape my life outside my terrors and helplessness, to make it visible and real in a tangible way, in the way other people's seemed real -- the lives I ...
She felt just like that girl in that book with the letter A on her chest. Only her A signified Alone. She was an outcast, cast out by her own choices, an outsider with a pretty face. Like a rose, she may have been beautiful to look at, but almost eve...
RE: Kindle, iPad, et cetera: For a researcher, these new ways of accessing information are just extraordinary. I thing it introduces the possibility of a new standard of cognitive exactness and precision. ~ Rebecca Goldstein, author of Properties of ...
We have learnt a lesson: words written in books, all of them, are lies. There are no exceptions. Words written on papers are all deceitful. If we put it in a more proper manner, counting non-fiction works, then things like documents, reports, and rev...
I have the impression that our children are much more excited about going to school than children in other countries are. They think of it as a special privilege. Going to school, being with other children, getting books and pencils - all of that is ...
When you find yourself in need of courage, remember that it is your faith, not your spine, that needs strengthening! And your faith will be strengthened when you read the Bible, the only book with proven credibility to give you the courage to heal yo...
I suppose if I had to give a one-word answer to the question of why I read, that word would be pleasure. The kind of pleasure you can get from reading is like no other in the world.
I am vehemently grateful that, by whatever means, I learned to assume that loneliness should be in part pleasure, sensitizing and clarifying, and that it is even a truer bond among people than any kind of proximity.
I like to get ten pages a day, which amounts to 2,000 words. That’s 180,000 words over a three-month span, a goodish length for a book — something in which the reader can get happily lost, if the tale is done well and stays fresh.
They know that tragedy is not glamorous. They know it doesn't play out in life as it does on a stage or between the pages of a book. It is neither a punishment meted out nor a lesson conferred. Its horrors are not attributable to one single person. T...
The heroic books, even if printed in the character of our mother tongue, will always be in a language dead to degenerate times; and we must laboriously seek the meaning of each word and line, conjecturing a larger sense than common use permits out of...
My new book is going well. It’s practically writing itself! Actually, what I mean is I’m not writing it, my clone is.
Statistically, if you're reading this sentence, you're an oddball. The average American spends three minutes a day reading a book. At this moment, you and I are engaged in an essentially antiquated interaction. Welcome, fellow Neanderthal!
I was sixteen and my mother was about to throw me out of the house forever, for breaking a very big rule, even bigger than the forbidden books. The rule was not just No Sex, but definitely No Sex With Your Own Sex.
[When] he's here, he's always reading. He says books stop time. I myself think he's crazy...Don't tell anyone, but when he reads something that he likes he gets real happy, turns on the music, and dances by himself, or with a broom sometimes.
Again, if there are really no fairies, why do people believe in them, all over the world? The ancient Greeks believed, so did the old Egyptians, and the Hindoos, and the Red Indians, and is it likely, if there are no fairies, that so many different p...
Sweet are the uses of adversity, Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, Wears yet a precious jewel in his head; And this our life, exempt from public haunt, Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in every t...
. . . I feel we don’t really need scriptures. The entire life is an open book, a scripture. Read it. Learn while digging a pit or chopping some wood or cooking some food. If you can’t learn from your daily activities, how are you going to underst...
On the day my daughter was born, I started writing a book for her. The plan was that, over the course of her life, I'd fill it with advice on how to be a strong woman. But along the way, I got caught up in the stories of Amelia Earhart, Sally Ride, a...
If I had a story idea that I felt would work best in three volumes I might write a trilogy eventually. I'd very likely write it all at once, though, so I could work on it as a whole and not broken into individual volumes. I don't always write in orde...
