My idea of a delicious time is to read a book that is wonderful. But the ruling passion of my life is being a seeker after truth and the divine.
Don't ask me who's influenced me. A lion is made up of the lambs he's digested, and I've been reading all my life.
That was one of the reasons I became a writer - I never really had that many friends. I would read a lot, and listen to music. And that was my life.
For several decades, I believed it was necessary to be extraordinary if you wanted to write, and since I wasn't, I gave up my ambition and settled down to a life of reading.
Autobiographies are only useful as the lives you read about and analyze may suggest to you something that you may find useful in your own journey through life.
I do reread, kind of obsessively, partly for the surprise of how the same book reads at a different point in life, and partly to have the sense of returning to an old friend.
I love the comfort of daily life's routines: things like being able to read a paper on the subway. It's no accident that my favourite word is 'quotidian.'
I would say the secret is to be enthusiastic about everything that comes into your life. To care, to care about people. To be excited about everything that comes close to you. I love to read. And I love to write, mostly.
Don't ask who's influenced me. A lion is made up of the lambs he's digested, and I've been reading all my life.
Some books I've kept because the binding is beautiful - I'm unlikely ever to read my grandmother's copy of 'The Life of Lord Nelson.' I'm addicted to secondhand bookshops.
I have resolved to pick one novel and just read it over and over again for the rest of my life, because I cannot remember anything anymore.
I wrote some bad poetry that I published in North African journals, but even as I withdrew into this reading, I also led the life of a kind of young hooligan.
Presidents and prime ministers, whether they live in the rich or the poor world, are insulated and isolated from the devastating impact of global poverty. They read the statistics, but they rarely witness at first hand the misery and degradation of l...
Reading, solitude, idleness, a soft and sedentary life, intercourse with women and young people, these are perilous paths for a young man, and these lead him constantly into danger.
Fortunately, I don't spend too much time reading or worrying about what people have to say, but the goal for me throughout this whole process - throughout my whole life - is to try to be happy.
I really went back through a lot of the dark corridors of my life in this. I wanted people to know who I am based on my music, not on what they read in the tabloids.
When I read profiles of myself, I sometimes think: 'I have spent my whole life struggling to understand my motivations and impulses, and I've never quite sorted them out.'
A fine book, in the perfect setting, when there's all the time in the world to read it: Life holds greater joys, but none come to mind just now.
I have known Farley Mowat all of my life, from reading his books as a child to becoming a close friend of his over the last three decades.
If I could offer but one helpful hint to young Hoosiers hoping to better their odds for success in life, I would simply note the importance of thoughtful reading.
I learned very early on in life that not everyone wants to hear every fact in the world, even if you want to tell them everything you've ever read.
