#reading

Fortunately, I read (the books) without knowing what I was in for, and the best thing that can ever happen to a reader happened to me: I loved something that, by conviction (or by my nature) I should not have loved ↗

— Milan Kundera

#reading #love

I love pop culture -- the Rolling Stones, the Doors, David Lynch, things like that. That's why I said I don't like elitism. ↗

— Haruki Murakami

#literary-references #pop-culture #reading #writing #love

Usually I decide on what it is I'm writing next by the books I'm reading. ↗

— Kate Mosse

#decide #i #next #reading #usually

When Benjamin Franklin, the famous inventor and publisher, was serving as the American ambassador to France, he often impressed French intellectual with the wisdom of his remarks. At one dinner, the question was raised, "What human condition deserves the most pity?" Each of the guests responded, but the answer that is still remembered is Benjamin Franklins's: "A lonesome man on a rainy day who does not know how to read. ↗

— Paul Kropp

#life

The more you read within a balanced life, the more time you have. Strange but true. ↗

— Mark O'Brien

#entertaining #fun #knowledge #passion #peace

We’re suggesting that [kids are] missing something if they don’t read but, actually, we’re condemning kids to a lesser life. If you had a sick patient, you would not try to entice them to take their medicine. You would tell them, ‘Take this or you’re going to die.’ We need to tell kids flat out: reading is not optional. ↗

— Walter Dean Myers

#life

But I too hate long books: the better, the worse. If they're bad they merely make me pant with the effort of holding them up for a few minutes. But if they're good, I turn into a social moron for days, refusing to go out of my room, scowling and growling at interruptions, ignoring weddings and funerals, and making enemies out of friends. I still bear the scars of Middlemarch. ↗

— Vikram Seth

#effort

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