When we, as young women, are given the space to read, the act becomes a happy, private corner we can return to for the rest of our lives. We develop this love of reading by turning to stories that speak to the most special, secret parts of us.
I wanted to be a poet. I had a really romantic idea about what that would mean. My parents knew some poets, and I liked how they dressed and acted, but I didn’t really acknowledge that I only liked reading some bits of poetry while I was peeing or something.
I have learned so much from working with other poets, travelling and reading with them, spending days discussing poems in progress. There is the sense that we are all, as writers, part of something which is more powerful than any of us.
The best scripts I read are usually pretty – they move really quickly, there’s not a lot of exposition in between all of what’s happening, so you can really just flow with the lines, and you’re reading and it has a momentum and you understand it emotionally.
In the olden days, the umpire didn’t have to take any courses in mind reading. The pitcher told you he was going to throw at you.
When you’re a kid, you see your parents reading the newspaper and you’re like, ‘God, why are they reading the newspaper?’ When you’re young, you’re not reading the newspaper. But there comes a time in your life when the newspaper’s cool.
Seeing your name on the list for KP or guard duty when you’re in the Army is like reading a bad review.
I liked early Amis a lot, but I stopped reading him some time ago. I admire Hitchens on literary topics – I think he is very astute. McEwan, I read a bit. But I suppose it’s more the ideological phenomenon that they represent together that interests me.
Reading a text is more like tracing this process of constant flickering than it is like counting the beads on a necklace.
Literary texts do not exist on bookshelves: they are processes of signification materialized only in the practice of reading. For literature to happen, the reader is quite as vital as the author.
Today, everything I do from morning meditation on – eating breakfast, going for a walk, writing, reading, even recreation – is governed by one purpose only: how to give the very best account of my life that I can in the service of all.
Doing research on the Web is like using a library assembled piecemeal by pack rats and vandalized nightly.
Since any reasonable person would choose a Mac over a PC, Apple’s market share provides us with an accurate reading of the percentage of reasonable people in our society.
It amazes me that filmmakers will still film, and audiences will still watch, relationships so bankrupt of human feeling that the characters could be reading dialogue written by a computer.
Not reading a beautiful book again because you’ve already read it, that is, as if you were not visiting a dear friend again because you know him already.
No time is ever wasted if you have a book along as a companion.
Books only spoil the originality of genius. Very well for those who can’t think for themselves – But when one has made up one’s opinions, there is no use in reading.
Between 2 and 5 I’m reading in to find out what’s been going on while I’ve been asleep.
We should be as careful of the books we read, as of the company we keep. The dead very often have more power than the living.
Read at the level at which you want to write. Reading is the nourishment that feeds the kind of writing you want to do.