#ok

In a library we are surrounded by many hundreds of dear friends imprisoned by an enchanter in paper and leathern boxes. ↗

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

#library

Rule number one: Don't fuck with librarians. ↗

— Neil Gaiman

#fact #libraries #library

Books should go where they will be most appreciated, and not sit unread, gathering dust on a forgotten shelf, don't you agree? ↗

— Christopher Paolini

#reading #appreciation

When asked, "How do you write?" I invariably answer, "One word at a time," and the answer is invariably dismissed. But that is all it is. It sounds too simple to be true, but consider the Great Wall of China, if you will: one stone at a time, man. That's all. One stone at a time. But I've read you can see that motherfucker from space without a telescope. ↗

— Stephen King

#writing #space

Your book is a springboard and integral strategic part of your overall game plan. Being an author positions you strongly upon your platform. It is the passport which will start you on your journey to becoming the recognized authority in the niche or space that you work in or aspire to work in. ↗

— Kytka Hilmar-Jezek

#book-power #book-strategy #platform #write-a-book #niche

A man should be just cultured enough to be able to look with suspicion upon culture at first, not second hand. ↗

— Samuel Butler

#culture #cultured #enough #first #hand

The last time that I consciously wrote anything to 'save the honor of the Left', as I rather pompously put it, was my little book on the crookedness and cowardice and corruption (to put it no higher) of Clinton. I used leftist categories to measure him, in other words, and to show how idiotic was the belief that he was a liberal's champion. Again, more leftists than you might think were on my side or in my corner, and the book was published by Verso, which is the publishing arm of the New Left Review. However, if a near-majority of leftists and liberals choose to think that Clinton was the target of a witch-hunt and the victim of 'sexual McCarthyism', an Arkansan Alger Hiss in other words, you become weary of debating on their terms and leave them to make the best of it. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#arkansas #bill-clinton #corruption #cowardice #debate

A joker is a little fool who is different from everyone else. He's not a club, diamond, heart, or spade. He's not an eight or a nine, a king or a jack. He is an outsider. He is placed in the same pack as the other cards, but he doesn't belong there. Therefore, he can be removed without anybody missing him. ↗

— Jostein Gaarder

#joker #loneliness #stranger #king

Reading well is one of the great pleasures that solitude can afford you. ↗

— Harold Bloom

#solitude #pleasure

For the survivor who chooses to testify, it is clear: his duty is to bear witness for the dead and for the living. He has no right to deprive future generations of a past that belongs to our collective memory. To forget would be not only dangerous but offensive; to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time. ↗

— Elie Wiesel

#history #philosophy #duty