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Quote by J.M. Coetzee

“You have a false understanding of what it means to read. Reading is not just turning printed signs into sounds. Reading is something deeper. True reading means hearing what the book has to say and pondering it— perhaps even having a conversation in your mind with the author. It means learning about the world— the world as it really is, not as you wish it to be.”

Quote by J.M. Coetzee

Book:The Death of Jesus
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The Death of Jesus

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J.M. Coetzee

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“Sometimes, in the rue de Seine for instance, I go past little shops. Vendors of second-hand goods, or small-time antiquarian booksellers, or dealers in engravings, all of them with overcrowded windows. No one ever goes inside them, they don’t look as if they do any business. But look inside and you can see them sitting there and reading, completely at ease, with no thought to the morrow, or of making a success of things; they have a dog that sits cheerfully by their feet, or a cat that makes the silence even greater as it brushes along the rows of books as if it were wiping the names off the spines. Ah, if only that would do: sometimes I could wish I could buy myself a crowded shop-window like that and sit down behind it with a dog for twenty years.”

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Book:The notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge
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“Do I like being alone so much? Yes—sometimes! Nonsense! I like it very well. So delightful to shut one’s eyes and recite aloud without fear of being overheard, or dream golden dreams without the dread of being disturbed; or better still, write page after page with none to cry “Put down that pen before you kill yourself” or read some favorite author as long as one chooses, without having the extinguisher placed over the candle as a night cap.”

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Book:Sarah Morgan: The Civil War Diary Of A Southern Woman
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