“I think that is where poetry reading becomes such an individual thing. I mean I have friend who like poets who just don't say anything to me at all, I mean they seem to me rather ordinary and pedestrian.” ThinkingMeanSeemsReadingIndividualPoetOrdinarySay AnythingPedestriansPoetry Reading Author:James Laughlin
“I think predictability is built into any good novel in some way - you begin reading Anna Karenina and you know pretty much what's going to happen at the end. But that doesn't mean you know what's going to happen in the middle. For me, it's that sense of what happens in the middle that's important.” ThinkingKnowsWayMeanImportantEndsHappensReadingNovelMiddleBuiltAnnaPredictability Author:Scarlett Thomas
“Imagination, it turns out, is a great deal like reporting in your own head. Here is a paradox of fiction-writing. You are crafting something from nothing, which means, in one sense, that none of it is true. Yet in the writing, and perhaps in the reading, some of a character's actions or lines are truer than others.” WritingMeanCharacterActionTurnsReadingImaginationLinesDealsFictionParadoxFiction Writing Author:Amy Waldman
“I'm not very good at relaxing. Reading's the main thing. On the bus, on the tube, on the loo. Literally all the time. I mean, I don't think there's a moment of the day when I wouldn't be if I was left alone.” IfsThinkingMeanMomentsReadingLeftVery GoodBusTubesLeft Alone Author:Samuel West
“Reading is merely a surrogate for thinking for yourself; it means letting someone else direct your thoughts.” ThinkingMeanReadingDirectSurrogates Book:101 Facts of life Source: 101 Facts of life
“You asked if I thought my fiction had changed anything in the culture and the answer is no. Sure, there's been some scandal, but people are scandalized all the time; it's a way of life for them. It doesn't mean a thing. If you ask if I want my fiction to change anything in the culture, the answer is still no. What I want is to possess my readers while they are reading my book if I can, to possess them in ways that other writers don't. Then let them return, just as they were, to a world where everybody else is working to change, persuade, tempt, and control them.” PeopleIfsWorldWayWantMeanStillsI CanBookCultureReadingAsksAnswersFictionChangedReturnReaderScandal Book:Conversations with Philip Roth Source: Conversations with Philip Roth
“I'm a big comic book geek and I've been reading comic books since pretty much since I was five or six in 1971 or something like that. So, I mean, I read it all and there's certainly a lot of different iterations of Superman that I personally have enjoyed more than others.” MeanBookDifferentBigsReadingFiveSixComicEnjoyedComic BookGeek Author:David S. Goyer
“The young man [Turgot] destined for an ecclesiastical career was placed within walls carefully designed to keep out all currents of new thought; his studies, his reading, his professors, his associates, all were combined to keep from him any results of observation or reflection save those prescribed: probably, of all means for stifling healthy and helpful thought, a theological seminary, as then conducted whether Catholic or Protestant, Jewish or Mohammedan, was the most perfect.” MenMeanYoungReadingPerfectResultsCareersStudyWallHealthyReflectionCatholicCurrentsObservationYoung ManHelpfulProfessorsAssociatesDestinedNew ThoughtTheologicalProtestantsStiflingSeminary Author:Andrew Dickson White
“What an artist does, is fail. Any reading of the literature, (I mean the literature of artistic creation), however summary, will persuade you instantly that the paradigmatic artistic experience is that of failure. The actualization fails to meet, equal, the intuition. There is something "out there" which cannot be brought "here". This is standard. I don't mean bad artists, I mean good artists. There is no such thing as a "successful artist" (except, of course, in worldly terms).” MeanDoeArtArtistCoursesReadingLiteratureTermSuccessfulFailingCreationEqualStandardsIntuitionArtisticWorldlyGood ArtSummaryGood ArtistActualizationArtistic CreationSuccessful Artists Author:Donald Barthelme
“If you mean to know yourself, interline such of these aphorisms as affect you agreeably in reading, and set a mark to such as left a sense of uneasiness with you; and then show your copy to whom you please.” IfsKnowsMeanShowsReadingLeftPleaseMarkCopiesAphorismKnow YourselfUneasiness Author:Johann Kaspar Lavater