Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Catherynne M. Valente

Quote by Catherynne M. Valente

“How dare they speak so unkindly of stories? Stories never did anything to them! Stories are only here to love you and look after you and show you a good time… Stories don’t even ask anything in return but not to have grape juice spilled on them, and, every once in a while, to be thought of fondly, years and years after you shut their covers.”

Quote by Catherynne M. Valente

Book:Osmo Unknown and the Eightpenny Woods
Create image

Work

Osmo Unknown and the Eightpenny Woods

Browse quotes and source details for this work. more

Author

Catherynne M. Valente
Catherynne M. Valente

Catherynne M. Valente is an American novelist known for her works in fantasy and science fiction. Born on May 5, 1979, she has made a name for herself with her imaginative storytelling and poetic prose. Valente's writing frequently delves into themes of love, loss, and the human experience within fantastical settings. more

You May Also Like

“My definition of “reading” may be different from the average person’s definition. I know people who “read” all the time— book after book, word for word—but I would not call them well-read. They do have a mass of knowledge, but their brain does not know how to divide it up and catalog the material they have read. They cannot separate a book and identify what is valuable and what is worthless for them. They retain some in their mind forever, but cannot see or understand the other parts at all. Reading is not an end in itself, but a means to an end. In the first place, it should help to fulfill an individual’s personal framework and give each person the tools and materials a man needs in his job or profession, whether it is for daily necessity, simple physical fulfillment, or higher destiny. In the second place, reading should give a man a general picture of the world.”

ReadingWell Read
Book:Mein Kampf
Create image

“Through the papers?" said Sauverand. "I never used to read them. What! Is that incredible? Are we under an obligation, an inevitable necessity, to waste half an hour a day in skimming through the futilities of policies and the piffle of the news columns? Is your imagination incapable of conceiving a man who reads nothing but reviews and scientific publications?["]”

ReadingNews
Book:Arsène Lupin in the Teeth of the Tiger
Create image

“The event of reading, like the event of loving, is singular. Just as our love for another creates a new reality as it unfolds, each reading of a particular text makes us lovers without precedent. Reading creates in us new ways of loving, and thus new ways of being. Or it can. In order for a book to work on us this way, we have to open ourselves up to an intentionality and signifying practice that originates outside of our own “egological sphere.” Because we cannot anticipate the way we will be changed by an event of reading, we commit ourselves first to the act of surrender itself and, through that surrender of our own intentionality, find ourselves remade.”

LoveReadingSubjectivity
Book:The Phenomenology of Love and Reading
Create image