#ding

The imaginary is not formed in opposition to reality as its denial or compensation; it grows among signs, from book to book, in the interstice of repetitions and commentaries; it is born and takes shape in the interval between books. It is the phenomena of the library. ↗

— Michel Foucault

#fantastic #fantasy #imagination #reading #imagination

What occurs to people when they read Kurt [Vonnegut] is that things are much more up for grabs than they thought they were. The world is a slightly different place just because they read a damn book. Imagine that. ↗

— Mark Vonnegut

#reality #imagination

There must be something in books, things we can't imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house, there must be something there. You don't stay for nothing. I don't know what it is. I'm so damned unhappy, I'm so mad, and I don't know why I feel like I'm putting on weight, I feel fat. I feel like I've been saving up a lot of things, and don't konw what. I might even start reading books. ↗

— Ray Bradbury

#imagination

It’s always encouraging to be told that it is intellectually acceptable to read the sorts of things that you like to read anyway. ↗

— Margaret Atwood

#imagination

The rain thundered down so heavily that Pritam could imagine that space itself was made of water and was pouring through rents in the sky's tired fabric. ↗

— Stephen M. Irwin

#firmament #flooding #rain #storm #weather

My wandering imagination never gives up on me and always finds ways to explore what my emotions entail. ↗

— Chimnese Davids

#reflective #words #imagination

Doom is nigh. I am in acute distress, desperately trying to coax sleep, opening my eyes every few seconds to check their faded gleam, and imagining paradise as a place where a sleepless neighbor reads an endless book by the light of an eternal candle. ↗

— Vladimir Nabokov

#paradise #reading #imagination

In all memory there is a degree of fallenness; we are all exiles from our own pasts, just as, on looking up from a book, we discover anew our banishment from the bright worlds of imagination and fantasy. A cross-channel ferry, with its overfilled ashtrays and vomiting children, is as good a place as any to reflect on the angel who stands with a flaming sword in front of the gateway to all our yesterdays. ↗

— John Lanchester

#exile #memory #past #reading #imagination

She's a woman, you're a dude. You're not supposed to understand her. That's not what she's after.... She doesn't want you to understand her. She knows that's impossible. She just wants you to understand yourself. Everything else is negotiable. ↗

— Neal Stephenson

#inspirational #men-and-women #understanding #understanding-oneself-and-others #inspirational

Maybe this is why we read, and why in moments of darkness we return to books: to find words for what we already know. ↗

— Alberto Manguel

#readers #readers-and-writers #reading #reading-books #reasons-for-reading