#read

We feel very strongly that our own wisdom begins where that of the author leaves off and we could like him to provide us with desires... That is the value of reading and is also its inadequacy. To make it into discipline is to give too large a role to what is only an incitement. Reading is on the threshold of the spiritual life it can introduce us to it: it does not constitute it. ↗

— Marcel Proust

#life

Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils ... - Louis Hector Berlioz ↗

— William L.K.

#kindle-books #science-fiction #short-story #worth-reading #science

Goblins burrowed in the earth, elves sang songs in the trees: Those were the obvious wonders of reading, but behind tham lay the fundamental marvel that, in stories, words could command things to be. ↗

— Francis Spufford

#life

Fiction does something unique in that it takes us out of our heads and puts us into other people's heads. And I think reading, and experiencing fiction through reading, is something that gives us empathy. And that, I think, is vital. It takes us out of our lives. Without reading, you're stuck with one life. Reading gives you more than one life. It gives you an infinite number of lives, which I think is wonderful. Or at least, not infinite, but as many as there are books on the shelves. ↗

— Neil Gaiman

#life

How are we to spend our lives, anyway? That is the real question. We read to seek the answer, and the search itself--the task of a lifetime--becomes the answer. ↗

— Lynne Sharon Schwartz

#meaning-of-life #reading #life

Read. You can always talk with another reader. ↗

— Rorke Denver

#life-lessons #reading #life

But after all we are not children, not illiterate juvenile delinquents, not English public school boys who after a night of homosexual romps have to endure the paradox of reading the Ancients in expurgated versions. ↗

— Vladimir Nabokov

#britain #life #reading #school #life

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