The willingness to undertake such action cannot be based on certainties, but on those possibilities glimpsed in a reading of history different from the customary painful recounting of human cruelties. In such a reading we can find not only war but re...
I had to go back and reread the page a few times. As I read it, I kept drifting out of the book, out of the booth, and coasting on the green crest of the song, to the momentary idea that any point on Earth was mine for the visiting, that I'd lucked o...
Whether he chooses a 'scholarly' or a 'popular' edition the modern reader is likely to have his judgement influenced in advance. Almost invariably he will be offered an assisted passage. Footnotes, Forewords, Afterwords serve notice that a given text...
Here's what I want from a book, what I demand, what I pray for when I take up a novel and begin to read the first sentence: I want everything and nothing less, the full measure of a writer's heart. I want a novel so poetic that I do not have to turn ...
I have always regarded as one of the greatest of all Americans. ... It was my good fortune to encounter 's works in my boyhood ... it was, indeed, a revelation to me to read that great thinker's views on political and theological subjects. Paine educ...
I grew up listening to my mother scoff at all the T.V shows and books that I watched or read. She told me how it was all 'rubbish' and 'garbage'. But the thing is, I think somehow, watching along the show I also grew up. I know everyone says that, li...
It is commonly said to my little friend Legion: Read the great writers for style. But I say to him: Read the great dead masters for ideas. Devour them, Fletcherize them, digest, assimilate, make them part of your blood; let the enriched blood visit y...
The American critic Dale Peck, author of Hatchet Jobs (2004), argues that reviewing finds its true character in critical GBH such as Fischer's [review of Martin Amis's Yellow Dog]. It represents a return to the prehistoric origins of reviewing in Zoi...
The Babar the Elephant book is sitting in front of me. I pick it up and start reading it. I remember reading it as a small Boy and enjoying it and imagining that I was friends with Babar, his constant Companion during all of his adventures. He went t...
Henry,' at last said one, again dipping the spoon into the flaming spirit, 'hast thou read Hoffman?' 'I should think so,' said Henry. 'What think you of him?' 'Why, that he writes admirably; and, moreover, what is more admirable - in such a manner th...
Jack Walsh: Oh Marvin, you did it this time! Marvin Dorfler: What the fuck are you talking about? Jack Walsh: Those were hired killers back there! Marvin Dorfler: Hired to kill who? Jack Walsh: [pointing to Mardukas] Hired to kill this guy! Jonathan ...
[first lines] Luke: Echo Three to Echo Seven. Han, old buddy, do you read me? Han Solo: Loud and clear, kid. What's up? Luke: Well, I finished my circle. I don't pick up any life readings. Han Solo: There isn't enough life on this ice cube to fill a ...
Alejandro 'Jano' Montes de Oca: I didn't know you want to be a writer. What are you going to write about, "fine boys"? Tenoch: No, about faggots like you. Alejandro 'Jano' Montes de Oca: Well, let me tell you that there is a big difference between wr...
Few pleasures, for the true reader, rival the pleasure of browsing unhurriedly among books: old books, new books, library books, other people's books, one's own books - it does not matter whose or where. Simply to be among books, glancing at one here...
What's the matter?" asked the teacher, seeing her bewildered fact. "Why—why," said Elizabeth Ann, "I don't know what I am at all. If I'm second-grade arithmetic and seventh-grade reading and third-grade spelling, what grade am I?" The teacher laugh...
I'm talking to a journalist and I really have nothing to say anymore, this is already uncomfortable. I feel the pain coming already. The brutal pain, when one day I should read your edit of whatever I say, because no matter what I say, no matter how ...
One day, you will be old enough to start reading fairytales again.
I have never experienced a sorrow that was not relieved by an hour of reading.
Who else but me is ever going to read these letters?
It's not the amount of Bible you read, it's the amount of Bible you believe.
Take no heed of her.... She reads a lot of books.
