#read

But a man may then imagine in your work what he pleases, what you never meant!" Not what he pleases, but what he can. ↗

— George MacDonald

#reading #writing #imagination

To write is to carve a new path through the terrain of the imagination, or to point out new features on a familiar route. To read is to travel through that terrain with the author as a guide-- a guide one might not always agree with or trust, but who can at least be counted on to take one somewhere. ↗

— Rebecca Solnit

#writing #imagination

Without readers, an author's voice is only imagination. ↗

— Dale Amidei

#reader-appreciation #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

When my head is in the typewriter the last thing on my mind is some imaginary reader. I don’t have an audience; I have a set of standards. But when I think of my work out in the world, written and published, I like to imagine it’s being read by some stranger somewhere who doesn’t have anyone around him to talk to about books and writing—maybe a would-be writer, maybe a little lonely, who depends on a certain kind of writing to make him feel more comfortable in the world. ↗

— Don DeLillo

#loneliness #reader #readership #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

Beyond that, I seem to be compelled to write science fiction, rather than fantasy or mysteries or some other genre more likely to climb onto bestseller lists even though I enjoy reading a wide variety of literature, both fiction and nonfiction. ↗

— Joan D. Vinge

#beyond #both #climb #compelled #enjoy

I'm imagining that paper books will evolve to become something akin to candles we have them in our homes and cherish their light but don't light our homes with them. Readers of Lincoln's era would likely be surprised at how well-lit our homes are and I think it's likely that we will be surprised at how well-read future book readers will be. ↗

— Steve Leveen

#huffington-post #home