But if you read Jane Austen, you know that she had a wicked sense of humor. Not only was she funny, but her early writing was very dark and had a gothic tone to it.
Reading about nature is fine, but if a person walks in the woods and listens carefully, he can learn more than what is in books, for they speak with the voice of God.
The Southern slave would obey God in respect to marriage, and also to the reading and studying of His word. But this, as we have seen, is forbidden him.
It is hardly fair to accuse us of ignorance when it was made a crime under the former order of things to learn enough about letters to even read the Word of God.
And God knows I needed to be forgiven. So I had to forgive everybody. And then God - as I read in the word, you're supposed to pray for your enemies. Try that one on.
I do believe that Israel is covenant land. That's very controversial, but I read the Bible literally, and I believe that God gave them that land, all the way back to Deuteronomy.
Politicians read the polls that show 85 or 90 percent of the voters profess a belief in God, so they identify themselves with religion, often only to the degree necessary to reach the constituency they are targeting.
With land-roaming animals, I've just read so much about the sophistication of their emotional lives and their intelligence and the way they process information that betrays a greater intelligence.
Let us tenderly and kindly cherish, therefore, the means of knowledge. Let us dare to read, think, speak, and write.
I think my dyslexia was a vital part of my development because my inability to read and write meant that I had to find knowledge elsewhere so I looked to the cinema.
Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is 'The Book of British Birds,' and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology.
Every man who knows how to read has it in his power to magnify himself, to multiply the ways in which he exists, to make his life full, significant and interesting.
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.
