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Reading Quotes

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Reading Quotes

“I never tell students they cannot read a book they pick up, but I do guide them toward books that I think would be a good fit for them. I think of myself as a reading mentor-a reader who can help them find books they might like.”

“Anne Pitkin's poems have such lyrical sweep, such a sensitive eye for the natural world as it touches the human, that reading Winter Arguments is like seeing a landscape or, better, a richly realized painting of a landscape dotted with figures. But that would leave out their music, which would be a loss. This is a wise and graceful book by a well-traveled woman who knows how to confront deep feeling and frame it to make it all the more intense.”

“The age seems sore from excess of stimulation, just as a day or two after a thorough Debauch and long sustained Drinking-match a man feels all over like a Bruise. Even to admire otherwise than on the whole and where "I admire" is but a synonyme for "I remember, I liked it very much when I was reading it ," is too much an effort, would be too disquieting an emotion!”

“Back at the Chateau Windsor there was a rat-like scratching at the door of my room. Vinod, the youngest servant, came in with a soda water. He placed it next to the bag of toffees. Then he watched me read. I was used to being observed reading. Sometimes the room would fill like a railway station at rush hour and I would be expected to cure widespread boredom”

“What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance.”

“It is time to return to close reading, to a serious and painstaking examination of an author's methods, of his style. Do not be deterred by headaches. First of all, this would be proof of your lack of stamina. And then, migraines, piercing pain and sudden stabs at the temples are more likely the effects of syphilis than of hard work.”

“I must suppose that reading wonderful writers may, inadvertently, teach an avid reader a great deal -- not only about life and other matters, but about how to write. Therefore doubtless I have benefited from frequent immersions in the glowing genius of others. It would be nice to think so. (I do actually think so). But to improve my skills will never be the prompting force of my reading -- that's just literary lust.”

“You may be sitting in a room reading this book. Imagine one note struck upon the piano. Immediately that one note is enough to change the atmosphere of the room - proving that the sound element in music is a powerful and mysterious agent, which it would be foolish to deride or belittle.”

“I try to just be open to what the next experience is and how it makes me feel, just reading a project, or trying to get involved with a project, or thinking about a project, and what particular emotional flavor that brings. To me, it's never really about planning the next thing, or the career arc. It's about investigating how I feel, from project to project, and finding things that I haven't explored and what that would be like.”

“There is a strong conservative instinct in the average man or woman, born of the hereditary fear of life, that prompts them to cling to old standards, or, if too intelligent to look inhospitably upon progress, to move very slowly. Both types are the brakes and wheelhorses necessary to a stable civilization, but history, even current history in the newspapers, would be dull reading if there were no adventurous spirits willing to do battle for new ideas.”

“If behind the erratic gunfire of the press the author felt that there was another kind of criticism, the opinion of people readingfor the love of reading, slowly and unprofessionally, and judging with great sympathy and yet with great severity, might this not improve the quality of his work? And if by our means books were to become stronger, richer, and more varied, that would be an end worth reaching.”

“If I had the opportunity to say a fine word to all the young people of America, it would be this: Don't think too much about yourselves. Try to cultivate the habit of thinking of others; this will reward you. Nourish your minds by good reading, constant reading. Discover what your lifework is, work in which you can do most good, in which you can be happiest. Be unafraid in all things when you know you are in the right.”

“I realized that my book readings were boring me. I was going to go up there and read a passage and sleepwalk through the whole event and I needed to make it more interesting. I wanted to be running and jumping and do something so that the event would be so exciting. I had to trick myself into having fun every time.”

“Twenty times, in the course of my late reading, have I been on the point of breaking out, 'this would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it!' But in this exclamation, I should have been as fanatical as Bryant or Cleverly. Without religion, this world would be something not fit to be mentioned in public company-I mean hell.”

“The Chinese are quite entrepreneurial. Remember when Lenovo bought IBM's PC division. It was said that China didn't need a brand name, China didn't need to buy Lenovo to get into the PC business, I remember reading a one-liner somewhere which struck me as quite possibly true, it said the one thing that the Chinese had not been able to copy or figure out was the way, in terms of systems, that Americans - it probably would be true for Europeans as well - that Americans install and live by their management systems, while China is still quite half-assed. Perhaps that is a true statement.”

“It drives me crazy to do readings of my books, because if I read anything I've written in the past, I'd like to almost rewrite everything. If I could, I'd completely rewrite Fargo Rock City, and every sentence would be just slightly different. In all likelihood, most of them wouldn't be any better. Some of them would just be changed back to whatever form they used to be, before I second-guessed myself the first time.”

“Suppose there were an experience machine that would give you any experience you desired. Superduper neuropsychologists could stimulate your brain so that you would think and feel you were writing a great novel, or making a friend, or reading an interesting book. All the time you would be floating in a tank, with electrodes attached to your brain. Should you plug into this machine for life, preprogramming your life experiences?...Of course, while in the tank you won't know that you're there; you'll think that it's all actually happening...Would you plug in?”

“The Library didn't only contain magical books, the ones which are chained to their shelves and are very dangerous. It also contained perfectly ordinary books, printed on commonplace paper in mundane ink. It would be a mistake to think that they weren't also dangerous, just because reading them didn't make fireworks go off in the sky. Reading them sometimes did the more dangeous trick of making fireworks go off in the privacy of the reader's brain.”