#ding

All great leaders find a sense of balance through their levels of reception. For instance, those who support a leader may soften him, those who ignore him may challenge him, and those who oppose him may stroke his ego. ↗

— Criss Jami

#being-ignored #challenge #ego #good-leader #great-men

Writing is an escape from life reading is living a different life. ↗

— Sofia Kennedy

#writing #life

A lot of the people who read a bestselling novel, for example, do not read much other fiction. By contrast, the audience for an obscure novel is largely composed of people who read a lot. That means the least popular books are judged by people who have the highest standards, while the most popular are judged by people who literally do not know any better. An American who read just one book this year was disproportionately likely to have read ‘The Lost Symbol’, by Dan Brown. He almost certainly liked it. ↗

— The Economist

#literature #reading #novel

Tucking my nose into a book makes me completely oblivious to my surroundings. I would have made a terrible spy in the army--the first person to hand me a novel would have been able to shoot my head clean off without me noticing. ↗

— Alyxandra Harvey

#novel

Oh, magic hour, when a child first knows she can read printed words. ↗

— Betty Smith

#magic

[Harry] had always suffered from a vague restlessness, a longing for adventure that she told herself severely was the result of reading too many novels when she was a small child. ↗

— Robin McKinley

#novel

Imogen was a bright girl naturally, but she had read so many novels that her brain was completely turned. ↗

— Susan Coolidge

#reading #family

I have made the best and happiest ending that I can in this world, made it out of the flax and netting and leftover trim of someone else's life, I know, but made it to keep the innocent safe and the guilty punished, and I have made it as the world should be and not as I have found it. ↗

— Amy Bloom

#happy-endings #life

It was well said—by Jean Tarrou in The Plague, I think—that attendance at lectures in an unknown language will help to hone one's awareness of the exceedingly slow passage of time. I once had the experience of being 'waterboarded' and can now dimly appreciate how much every second counts in the experience of the torture victim, forced to go on enduring what is unendurable. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#torture #waterboarding #experience

Literature duplicates the experience of living in a way that nothing else can, drawing you so fully into another life that you temporarily forget you have one of your own. That is why you read it, and might even sit up in bed till early dawn, trowing your whole tomorrow out of whack, simply to find out what happens to some people who, you know perfectly well, are made up. ↗

— Barbara Kingsolve

#literature #reading #experience