If I have a talent for making some fourth-grader who hates school and reading to hate it a little less, then I have to do the most with what I've been issued.
In my office, I have a very beautiful marble bust of Seneca. I always have my eye on him when I'm taking phone calls. He's one of the many philosophers I've always read and admired.
Wellesley's president, Nannerl Overholser Keohane, approved a broad rule with a specific application: The senior thesis of every Wellesley alumna is available in the college archives for anyone to read - except for those written by either a 'presiden...
I grew up listening to my father argue politics into the night and taking trips every Saturday to the Hood River library where my mother maintained her interest in reading and encouraged the same from her sons.
When I traveled as secretary of state, I was deluged with thick briefing books full of information about the politics, economy, and culture of each destination, so those took up most of my reading time.
There's an old joke that politics is Hollywood for ugly people. An awful lot of the press coverage about Washington reads like coverage of Hollywood. Madonna is having some spat with Sean Penn. Who cares? And who cares which politician is mad at that...
I don't personally try to balance my work because I operate under the assumption that anyone reading or watching my stuff isn't having a particularly balanced day anyway. But negative attitudes just amuse me more than positive ones.
What I write, if you have to label it, is crossover, and I think that much of the stuff that is called children's or YA is in fact crossover and is equally valid for anyone who likes to read fantasy.
History was my favourite subject at school and in my spare time I read historical novels voraciously from Heidi to the Scarlet Pimpernel and from Georgette Heyer to Agatha Christie.
How can you want to marry a man or woman of God but you don't read your Playbook? You can’t be in sync with your potential spouse if they are studying the Bible and you aren't.
It's always so cool to think you are looking at today is something other people have been looking at for centuries. It's the closest I've come to touching immortality, by reading the words of dead people.
To me, reading through old letters and journals is like treasure hunting. Somewhere in those faded, handwritten lines there is a story that has been packed away in a dusty old box for years.
The media is too concentrated, too few people own too much. There's really five companies that control 90 percent of what we read, see and hear. It's not healthy.
I've read probably 25 or 30 books by Balzac, all of Tolstoy - the novels and letters - and all of Dickens. I learned my craft from these guys.
I get a lot of moral guidance from reading novels, so I guess I expect my novels to offer some moral guidance, but they're not blueprints for action, ever.
While we read a novel, we are insane—bonkers. We believe in the existence of people who aren't there, we hear their voices... Sanity returns (in most cases) when the book is closed.
Just imagine if you took all the money you've spent on these things and traveled around the world with it, instead, or bought books and read them. Think about how much you would know about life.
One of the most egregiously stupid books I've ever come across. I would recommend reading this only because it's the epitome of all that is moronic, superficial, contrived, hollow, false and utterly laughable in publishing today.
Have you ever read a wonderful quote that you want to post on your twitter/facebook/blog/whatever but you feel like it may come off as “not Christian enough” or just a little theologically lacking?
Reading words puts them in your mind. You never forget. Even when you don't get a chance to dwell on the music, you can hear it in your head.
Life is limited, but by writing, and reading, we can live in different worlds, get inside the skins and minds of other people, and, in this way, push out the boundaries of our own lifes.
