#ding

Despite the enormous quantity of books, how few people read! And if one reads profitably, one would realize how much stupid stuff the vulgar herd is content to swallow every day. ↗

— Voltaire

#reading #stupidity

You should never read just for "enjoyment." Read to make yourself smarter! Less judgmental. More apt to understand your friends' insane behavior, or better yet, your own. Pick "hard books." Ones you have to concentrate on while reading. And for god's sake, don't let me ever hear you say, "I can't read fiction. I only have time for the truth." Fiction is the truth, fool! Ever hear of "literature"? That means fiction, too, stupid. ↗

— John Waters

#literature #on-fiction #reading #truth #stupidity

It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it. ↗

— Upton Sinclair

#evolution #ideology #obtuseness #understanding #ideology

All I wanted to do was go back inside to the library and read a book.I used to spend all my time reading books, or watching television. It was safe. Nobody ever was hurt or teased or looked stupid while reading books or watching television. ↗

— Kathryn Magendie

#library #reading #tv #television

My youngest brother had a wonderful schtick from some time in high school, through to graduating medicine. He had a card in his wallet that read, ‘If I am found with amnesia, please give me the following books to read …’ And it listed half a dozen books where he longed to recapture that first glorious sense of needing to find out ‘what happens next’ … the feeling that keeps you up half the night. The feeling that comes before the plot’s been learned. ↗

— Guy Gavriel Kay

#reading #school

It's dreadful what little things lead people to misunderstand each other. ↗

— L.M. Montgomery

#misunderstanding #l-m-montgomery

I care not how humble your bookshelf may be, or how lonely the room which it adorns. Close the door of that room behind you, shut off with it all the cares of the outer world, plunge back into the soothing company of the great dead, and then you are through the magic portal into that fair land whither worry and vexation can follow you no more. You have left all that is vulgar and all that is sordid behind you. There stand your noble, silent comrades, waiting in their ranks. Pass your eye down their files. Choose your man. And then you have but to hold up your hand to him and away you go together into dreamland ↗

— Arthur Conan Doyle

#reading #noble

To read fiction means to play a game by which we give sense to the immensity of things that happened, are happening, or will happen in the actual world. By reading narrative, we escape the anxiety that attacks us when we try to say something true about the world. This is the consoling function of narrative — the reason people tell stories, and have told stories from the beginning of time. ↗

— Umberto Eco

#escape #escapism #fiction #interpretation #narrative

Not being understood may be taken as a sign that there is much in one to understand. ↗

— Alain de Botton

#understanding #anxiety

The odd thing about people who had many books was how they always wanted more. ↗

— Patricia A. McKillip

#book-lovers #books #readers #reading #lovers