Books Quotes - Page 14

We read to under­stand our intu­ition of the world, to dis­cover that some­one a thou­sand miles and years away has put into words our most inti­mate desires and our most secret fears. Reading is a col­lab­o­ra­tive act.

One bright day in the last week of February, I was walking in the park, enjoying the threefold luxury of solitude, a book, and pleasant weather.

I suppose what one wants really is ideal company and books are ideal company.

It is not all books that are as dull as their readers.

But in reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a myriad eyes, but it is still I who see... I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do.

She would go off in the morning with the punt full of books, and spend long glorious days away in the forest lying on the green springy carpet of whortleberries, reading. She would most diligently work at furnishing her empty mind. She would sternly endeavour to train it not to jump.

Just give me a thousand words and you may make your own pictures.

I'd always admired writers. I'd always loved words on a page. Somehow, words seemed to bypass image and get straight to the heart of things. Somehow, words seemed big enough to contain pain, and sentences could pull broken bits together.

If you can read & write then the opportunities are endless, if you just believe in yourself then anything is possible, you can become anyone and do anything, what’s more is, you can take others with you!

No days, perhaps, of all our childhood are ever so fully lived are those that we had regarded as not being lived at all: days spent wholly with a favourite book.

We knew the difference between that which cannot be expressed and that which must. We understood that while words are a path taking us only so far, they are a requisite to the journey. They are like road maps that show us which way to go.

My fingers burn behind the keys of my typewriter, the lettering fading with every thoughtful strike. The many words I write I dare not stall; my mind perpetually alert for my magnum opus call.

More than at any other time, when I hold a beloved book in my hand my limitations fall from me, my spirit is free.

I suppose if I had to give a one-word answer to the question of why I read, that word would be pleasure. The kind of pleasure you can get from reading is like no other in the world.

Only a few days earlier he had explained to her that he did not merely read books but traveled with them, that they took him to other countries and unfamiliar continents, and that with their help he was always getting to know new people, many of whom even became his friends.

While art thrives on the blazing colours of scandal, literature blossoms on the dark soil of tragedy.

There's no such thing as 'no market'. Some books are just niche orientated that's all.

To literary critics a book is assumed to be guilty until it proves itself innocent.

Hugh Laurie (playing Mr. Palmer) felt the line 'Don't palm all your abuses [of language upon me]' was possibly too rude. 'It's in the book,' I said. He didn't hit me.

My plan is to continue teaching many more years than the 32 years I've already enjoyed and continue writing, and promoting my books and websites if it's God will.