books

When we buy books we're fooling ourselves into thinking we buy the time to read them.

I'm the same way about the bookshop. You know, I walk around and I feel the whole world is in there, the most important stories of all time.

We encounter many sacred souls while reading.

Can a book make such a difference? Can it change you utterly?I know it can.(First essay from The Book That Changed My Life, edited by Roxanne J. Coady & Joy Johannessen)

I don__ know when reading books became the most essential thing about me, but it happened over the years and I found myself the most willing servant of what I considered a rich habit.

School children, who have enjoyed reading a romance or a detective thriller or a novel about terror and conquest, make the invariable mistake of studying literature in the college. They make the mistake of learning theory in place of art; they acquire impediments in their own enjoyment of the books by allowing a set of theories to govern their own reading.

To tidy up takes time, and she wants all her time for wolfing books...

Read what you find interesting, and then follow your interests. You'll find that in doing so you always generate enough to illuminate the next step.

The synopsis looked good, the cover looked nice, you opened the book and began a new life. You found a new home, you met some new friends, you kept on reading, hoping it ould never end. You danced through the pages, you sang out the words you felt all their joy, and all their pain and hurt. The pages cut your fingers, and the words cut your heart, like the author had a knife, and was tearing your soul apart. You laughed with the characters, and with them, you cried, you fell in love with them, too but with them, you died, and when the book reached its end, and your broken heart couldn't heal, you suddenly realized that its not real.

I feel that the care of libraries and the use of books, and the knowledge of books, is a tremendously vital thing, and that we who deal with books and who love books have a great opportunity to bring about something in this country which is more vital here than anywhere else, because we have the chance to make a democracy that will be a real democrac.

There is more than one way not to read, the most radical of which is not to open a book at all. For any given reader, however dedicated he might be, such total abstention necessarily holds true for virtually everything that has been published, and thus in fact this constitutes our primary way of relating to books. We must not forget that even a prodigious reader never has access to more than an infinitesimal fraction of the books that exist.

When you read a book, and who you are when you read it, makes it matter or not.

There was a universe inside every human being every bit as big as the universe outside them. Books were the best way Nina knew - apart from, sometimes, music - to breach the barrier; to connect the internal universe with the external, the words acting merely as a conduct between the two worlds.

The rest of my room is book shelves. I hoard books. They are people who do not leave.

Great books help you understand and they help you feel understood.

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention. Some books also may be read by deputy, and extracts made of them by others; but that would be only in the less important arguments, and the meaner sort of books, else distilled books are like common distilled waters, flashy things. Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man. And therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he confer little, he had need have a present wit: and if he read little, he had need have much cunning, to seem to know, that he doth not. Histories make men wise; poets witty; the mathematics subtile; natural philosophy deep; moral grave; logic and rhetoric able to contend.----Alcuni libri devono essere gustati, altri masticati e digeriti, vale a dire che alcuni libri vanno letti solo in parte, altri senza curiosit_, e altri per intero, con diligenza ed attenzione. Alcuni libri possono essere letti da altri e se ne possono fare degli estratti, ma ciò riguarderebbe solo argomenti di scarsa importanza o di libri secondari perché altrimenti i libri sintetizzati sono come l__cqua distillata, evanescente. La lettura completa la formazione di un uomo; il parlare lo fa abile, e la scrittura lo trasforma in un uomo preciso. E, pertanto, se un uomo scrive poco, deve avere una grande memoria, se parla poco ha bisogno di uno spirito arguto; se legge poco deve avere bisogno di molta astuzia in modo da far sembrare di sapere quello che non sa. Le storie fanno gli uomini saggi; i poeti arguti; la matematica sottile; la filosofia naturale profondi; la logica e la retorica abili nella discussione.

The counsellor who never reads a novel or never opens a book of poetry is neglecting an important resource for empathic development.

But when I read, I am completely alone. I have privacy from her and from everyone.