#era

I was glad my father was an eye-smiler. It meant he never gave me a fake smile because it's impossible to make your eyes twinkle if you aren't feeling twinkly yourself. A mouth-smile is different. You can fake a mouth-smile any time you want, simply by moving your lips. I've also learned that a real mouth-smile always has an eye-smile to go with it. So watch out, I say, when someone smiles at you but his eyes stay the same. It's sure to be a phony. ↗

— Roald Dahl

#dahl #danny-the-champion-of-the-world #fiction #father

Medicine is my lawful wife, and literature is my mistress. When I get fed up with one, I spend the night with the other ↗

— Anton Chekhov

#medicine #medicine

Ideas improve. The meaning of words participates in the improvement. Plagiarism is necessary. Progress implies it. It embraces an author's phrase, makes use of his expressions, erases a false idea, and replaces it with the right idea. ↗

— Guy Debord

#embraces #erases #expressions #false #his

She was widely read enough to appreciate my literary wit but not so widely read that she knew my sources. I like that in a woman. ↗

— David Mitchell

#wit #women #appreciation

I would like to see anyone, prophet, king or God, convince a thousand cats to do the same thing at the same time. ↗

— Neil Gaiman

#chaos #cooperation #organization #persuasion #pets

While we are looking for the antidote or the medicine to cure us, that is, the 'new', which can only be found by plunging deep into the Unknown, we have to go on exploring sex, books, and travel, although we know that they lead us to the abyss, which, as it happens, is the only place where the antidote can be found. ↗

— Roberto Bolaño

#bolano #books #literature-and-illness #sex #travel

All sentient beings should have at least one right—the right not to be treated as property ↗

— Gary L. Francione

#abolitionist #ahimsa #ethical #francione #moral-imperative

As long as you have any floor space at all, you have room for books! Just make two stacks of books the same height, place them three or four feet apart, lay a board across them, and repeat. Viola! Bookshelves! ↗

— Jan Karon

#books #literacy #reading #space

If the word doesn't exist, invent it; but first be sure it doesn't exist. ↗

— Charles Baudelaire

#words #writing #literature

Don’t just teach your children to read… Teach them to question what they read. Teach them to question everything. ↗

— George Carlin

#children-s-literature #literature