Books Quotes - Page 55

Well-wrought poems and works of imaginative literature can do for us what stone-cold prose can never do. They can help us grasp the full dimension of ways of life other than our own.

Reading well is one of the great pleasures that solitude can afford you.

Remember, the past need not become our future as well.

I'll live to be one year younger, because I can't stand the idea of a world without you in it, and die buried beneath an avalanche of my own books.

And the non-reading of books, you will object, should be characteristic of all collectors? This is news to me, you may say. It is not news at all. experts will bear me out when I say that it is the oldest thing in the world. Suffice it to quote the answer which Anatole France gave to a philistine who admired his library and then finished with the standard question, “And you have read all these books, Monsieur France?” “Not one-tenth of them. I don’t suppose you use your Sevres china every day?

...stories want to be told. Stories have a power of their own ... you can't write a story until you've felt it. Breathed it in. Walked with your characters. Talked with them.

He felt as if he had left a stage behind and many actors. He felt as if he had left the great seance and all the murmuring ghosts. He was moving from an unreality that was frightening into a reality that was unreal because it was new.

Sometimes I reread my favorite books from back to front. I start with the last chapter and read backward until I get to the beginning. When you read this way, characters go from hope to despair, from self-knowledge to doubt. In love stories, couples start out as lovers and end as strangers. Coming-of-age books become stories of losing your way. Your favorite characters come back to life.

Reading opens up other pockets of the mind.

Where should one turn for guidance in an appraisal of of the essence of justice, morality, ethics, religion, science, literaturem, and the like? Not to the past, for history is willfully misinterpreted; and not to the church, which is ineffective because of the cowardice of its leaders. Even science cannot be helpful beccause its exponents have succeeded only in destroying the harmony of life. It is therefore the duty of literature to rediscover the truth and beauty of life that other means have failed to find.

What man is able to do that, that thou should ask such things of me?

I am simply a 'book drunkard.' Books have the same irresistible temptation for me that liquor has for its devotee. I cannot withstand them.

We're all entitled to our different likes and dislikes. Imagine the world if we all liked the same things.

You Can't Change Your Life... Until You Change Your Heart, and You Can't Change Your Heart... Until You Change Your Mind!

Right now, we're living in an ugly chapter of our lives, but books always get better!

A book is no mere book anymore than man can be mere man. A book was like an individual man, unmatched and with no cause of existence beyond himself.

Fiction was a way for me to escape into another world. I would lose myself and all my shame, insecurity, and fear in those books. I would let time slip away in the pages of other worlds. Reading was a life long gift I grew to cherish.

Quote from “FUTURE GONE”:“…I set the house on fire. It’s dark outside. The fire tears down the darkness. I turn my back to the place and leave, not knowing where. And suddenly I understand…All dreams are dead now”.

And when his head slumped forward into his book, she giggled, for she knew that he was hers.

We travel to ancient times by reading history books.

Almost every time I speak to teenagers, particularly young female students who want to talk to me about feminism, I find myself staggered by how much they have read, how creatively they think and how curiously bullshit-resistant they are. Because of the subjects I write about, I am often contacted by young people and I see it as a part of my job to reply to all of them - and doing so has confirmed a suspicions I’ve had for some time. I think that the generation about to hit adulthood is going to be rather brilliant.Young people getting older is not, in itself, a fascinating new cultural trend. Nonetheless the encroaching adulthood and the people who grew up in a world where expanding technological access collided with the collapse of the neoliberal economic consensus is worth paying attention to. Because these kids are smart, cynical and resilient, and I don’t mind saying that they scare me a little.

Bookish people, who are often maladroit people, persist in thinking they can master any subtlety so long as it's been shaped into acceptable expository prose.

I don't want to write about real things, I would rather write about an uncontrollable parasitic twin.

School children, who have enjoyed reading a romance or a detective thriller or a novel about terror and conquest, make the invariable mistake of studying literature in the college. They make the mistake of learning theory in place of art; they acquire impediments in their own enjoyment of the books by allowing a set of theories to govern their own reading.

You learn almost as much about a thinker from what he reads—in particular, what he likes and what he disdains—as from what he writes himself.

‎He often envied people who hadn't read his favourite books. They had such happiness before them.

This book is a treasure; I did not suspect it would be so good when I picked it up, but now I can feel the printed words seeping through my skin and into my veins, rushing to my heart and marking it forever.I want to savor this wonder, this happening of loving a book and reading it for the first time, because the first time is always the best, and I will never read this book for the first time ever again.

It is often much harder to get rid of books than to acquire them. They stick to us in that pact of need and oblivion we make with them, witnesses to a moment in our lives we will never see again. While they are still there, it is part of us.

The books [poetry collections] may not sell, but neither are they given away or thrown away. They tend, more than other books, to fall apart in their owners’ hands. Not I suppose good news in a culture and economy built on obsolescence. But for a book to be loved this way and turned to this way for consolation and intense renewable excitement seems to me a marvel.

But after all we are not children, not illiterate juvenile delinquents, not English public school boys who after a night of homosexual romps have to endure the paradox of reading the Ancients in expurgated versions.

Thou art sore troubled in mind for the people in the world’s sake: loves thou that people better than he that made them?

The evils arising from the loss of her uncle were neither trifling nor likely to lessen; and when thought had been freely indulged, in contrasting the past and the present, the employment of mind and dissipation of unpleasant ideas which only reading could produce made her thankfully turn to a book.

It is easy to see the glow but hard to recognize the awakening of silence.

It's not all bad. Heightened self-consciousness, apartness, an inability to join in, physical shame and self-loathing—they are not all bad. Those devils have been my angels. Without them I would never have disappeared into language, literature, the mind, laughter and all the mad intensities that made and unmade me.

We knew the difference between that which cannot be expressed and that which must. We understood that while words are a path taking us only so far, they are a requisite to the journey. They are like road maps that show us which way to go.

No furniture is so charming as books.

Truth is hard-hearted and unrelenting, too clear, precise; a lie is much more imaginative.

But her grandmother had never suggested she could think the same of Scarlet. You'll be fine, she always said, after a skinned knee, after a broken arm, after her first youthfull heartbreak. You'll be fine, because you're strong, like me.

It is a dangerous thing to substitute reading or writing for living. Live first, then write.

A book is much more than a delivery vehicle for its contents.

Why the law of our forefathers are brought to nought, and the written covenants come to none effect-

These sciences are camel stallions — use books to line them up these couplets are runaways — use books for them as halters.

Good fiction often gives us characters in extremity, which ironically gives us a clearer mirror in which to see ourselves.

When we read, we decide when, where, how long, and about what. One of the few places on earth that it is still possible to experience an instant sense of freedom and privacy is anywhere you open up a good book and begin to read. When we read silently, we are alone with our own thoughts and one other voice. We can take our time, consider, evaluate, and digest what we read—with no commercial interruptions, no emotional music or special effects manipulation. And in spite of the advances in electronic information exchange, the book is still the most important medium for presenting ideas of substance and value, still the only real home of literature.

Life without books, chocolate & coffee is just useless.

You're a hopeless romantic," said Faber. "It would be funny if it were not serious. It's not books you need, it's some of the things that once were in books. The same things could be in the 'parlor families' today. The same infinite detail and awareness could be projected through the radios, and televisors, but are not. No,no it's not books at all you're looking for! Take it where you can find it, in old phonograph records, old motion pictures, and in old friends; look for it in nature and look for it in yourself. Books were only one type or receptacle where we stored a lot of things we were afraid we might forget. There is nothing magical in them at all. The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us. Of course you couldn't know this, of course you still can't understand what I mean when i say all this. You are intuitively right, that's what counts.

She breathed deeply of the scent of decaying fiction, disintegrating history, and forgotten verse, and she observed for the first time that a room full of books smelled like dessert: a sweet snack made of figs, vanilla, glue, and cleverness.

Books were a safe place, a world apart from my own. No matter what had happened that day, that year, there was always a story in which someone overcame their darkest hour. I wasn't alone.

I picked up one of the books and flipped through it. Don't get me wrong, I like reading. But some books should come with warning labels: Caution: contains characters and plots guaranteed to induce sleepiness. Do not attempt to operate heavy machinery after ingesting more than one chapter. Has been known to cause blindness, seizures and a terminal loathing of literature. Should only be taken under the supervision of a highly trained English teacher. Preferably one who grades on the curve.

Books should not be loved selfishly. Neither books nor anything else, in fact.

To all the readers,whom despitethe attraction of tv,of internet,of family troubles,of video games,of sport,of night clubs,have found some hoursso we can all dream together.

Klaus sighed, and opened a book, and as at so many other times when the middle Baudelaire child did not want to think about his circumstances, he began to read.

You don't have to feel grateful in order to be grateful.

I like ethics." The question of morality, how and why do people behave in certain ways. "And the principle of knowledge." I continue, "I've read this one." I show him On Certainty (book) by Ludwig Wittgenstein wrapped in my hand."An intelligent one, that is, though, modern mind rarely appreciates such kind of writing. Not any more. I studied philosophy myself, and you know what I think? Every branch of knowledge needs philosophy for it helps to organise the flow of ideas and articulate meanings.I could not agree more to that. "Do you think it will be deserted one day?""Probably. Nobody will bother about it any more, just like history. What is the only thing people become more interested in nowadays?" he asks. "Making money." His thumb rubs repeatedly over the tip of the index finger. "Philosophy and history are considered as eccentric. They don't usually offer people high income, and that's the inexorable reality. We've got to deal with it anyhow.

We read novels because we need stories; we crave them; we can’t live without telling them and hearing them. Stories are how we make sense of our lives and of the world. When we’re distressed and go to therapy, our therapist’s job is to help us tell our story. Life doesn’t come with plots; it’s messy and chaotic; life is one damn, inexplicable thing after another. And we can’t have that. We insist on meaning. And so we tell stories so that our lives make sense.

Even a book can be dangerous in the wrong hands, and when that happens, you blame the hands, but you also read the book.

The covers of this book are too far apart.

Another thing I need to do, when I'm near the end of the book, is sleep in the same room with it...Somehow the book doesn't leave you when you're asleep right next to it.

Wahrscheinlich werde ich jede Nacht von dir träumen", sagte er. "Und wenn ich aufwache, weiß ich, dass der beste Teil des Tages schon vorbei ist.""Das hast du irgendwo gelesen.""Hab ich nicht.

Because sometimes I have a need for human warmth, I answered honestly. Sometimes, if I can't feel something like the warmth of a woman's skin, I get so lonely I can't stand it.