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Quote by Lisa Papp

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Madeline Finn and the Library Dog

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Lisa Papp

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“...we receive so much from other writers when they show us how it’s done. When they position a character’s heart directly on the page for us, when they’re inventive in form or structure, or emotionally true in a way that feels radical in its familiarity. Or when their sentences are so crisp as to be nearly audible, like a piece of paper torn in two—all of this shows us how to do it ourselves, how it’s possible, but also it emboldens us, releases us from our fears about our own work. An encouragement by example. We learn from them, but also, they tell us we can. Without even knowing it. Enter here. Start here. Begin now. This is why it’s always important to be reading. This is why we must always chew on the words of others. It’s nutrition. Eat your dinner.”

“There is also an imaginative communal aspect of reading. Built into the experience of engaging with a text is the experience of thinking about other readers. As an individual reads, he positions himself in a relationship to other possible responses to the text, the differences allowing an assertion of identity in terms of taste, preference, and even values. As much as reading allows you to imagine what it is like to be someone else, it also allows you to imagine what it is like to be yourself, though distinguished from others. who are also imagined.”

“Tracking what you've read is in itself another process that turns you away from the actual experience of reading (...) the only experience that you should really concern yourself with is understanding the text, you know, getting a really great experience out of the text (...) in the case of fiction it's about really enjoying the plot and letting this plot want to transform you in some way. Whereas if you set yourself these artificial reading goals per year or how many books I'm going to dig through per year it sort like deviates you away from the very first person experience of immersing yourself in the text...”