#books

I had always turned to books, to knowledge, to help me get through everything in my life—and, sometimes, to escape it. But grief was a journey through a forest of razor blades. I walked through every painful inch of it—no shortcuts and no anesthesia. ↗

— Michele Bardsley

#grief #journey #life #life

...some people might think our lives dull and uneventful, but it does not seem so to us. ...it is not travel and adventure that make a full life. There are adventures of the spirit and one can travel in books and interest oneself in people and affairs. One need ever be dull as long as one has friends to help, gardens to enjoy and books in the long winter evenings. ↗

— D.E. Stevenson

#life

A book is a physical object in a world of physical objects. It is a set of dead symbols. And then the right reader comes along, and the words—or rather the poetry behind the words, for the words themselves are mere symbols—spring to life, and we have a resurrection of the word. ↗

— Jorge Luis Borges

#reading #life

This was the time in her life that she fell upon books as the only door out of her cell. They became half her world. ↗

— Michael Ondaatje

#escape #literature #reading #words #life

We human being build houses because we`re alive but we write books because we` re mortal. We live in groups because we`re sociable but we read because we know we`re alone. Reading offers a kind of companionship that takes no one`s place but that no one can replace either. It offers no definitive explanation of our destiny but links us inextricably to life. Its tiny secret links remind us of how paradoxically happy we are to be alive while illuminating how tragically absurd life is.” p.174 ↗

— Daniel Pennac

#literature #reading #life

Associate with the noblest people you can find; read the best books; live with the mighty; but learn to be happy alone. ↗

— Saul Bellow

#happiness #life #reading #self-sufficiency #life

Why does everyone think a girl who prefers books to people must be in want of a life? ↗

— Lauren Morrill

#bookworms #people #reading #life

This is what reading is like to me. It's finding a spring in the midst of a barren land. Just when I think I might up and die of thirst, I stumble onto this fresh, cold water, and I'm suddenly given this new life because I can-and do-drink to my heart's content. ↗

— Beverly Lewis

#reading #life

I have done what people do, my life makes a reasonable showing. Can I go back to my books now? ↗

— Lynne Sharon Schwartz

#reading #work #life

Books are for those without real lives, he thought. And they are no real replacement. ↗

— Jonathan Safran Foer

#life #life