Creation stories had never been regarded as historically accurate; their purpose was therapeutic. But once you start reading Genesis as scientifically valid, you have bad science and bad religion.
After I left the convent, for 15 years I was worn out with religion, I wanted nothing whatever to do with it. I felt disgusted with it. If I saw someone reading a religious book on a train, I’d think, how awful.
Storytelling is my passion, and it rises from a love of reading.
Written poetry is worth reading once, and then should be destroyed. Let the dead poets make way for others.
Written poetry is worth reading once, and then should be destroyed. Let the dead poets make way for others. Then we might even come to see that it is our veneration for what has already been created, however beautiful and valid it may be, that petrifies us.
I love the place; the magnificent books; I require books as I require air.
Reading is a pleasure, but to finish reading, to come to the blank space at the end, is also a pleasure.
It never seems to occur to anyone that each reader is different, and that even those who might be said to resemble each other will each bring an individual set of experiences and references to their reading, and interpret and misinterpret it according to these.
Each servant stamps the reader with a look.
I think people enjoy reading about money, but the people who are in charge of giving me guidance tell me not to talk about it in interviews. Why not? That’s what everybody thinks about.
Fairy tales opened up a door into my imagination – they don’t conform to the reality that’s around you as a child. I started reading when I was three and read everything, but I wanted to be an actress.
I’m sitting in the bus station, minding my own business, reading ‘Ta-Da!’ magazine; a magazine by and for gay magicians, but that’s a different story.
Children start off reading in books about lions and giraffes and so on, but they also-if theyre lucky enough and have reasonable privileges of any human being-are able to go into a garden and turn over stone and see a worm and see a slug and see an ant.
I’m really not responsible for what mental operation people have when they’re reading my books other than the ones which are created by literary effects.
Proust is a hero of mine. I read ‘A la recherche’ in one go, and I’m a very slow reader. It had an astonishing impact, reading it on my own and being my main company. I think Proust is the most intelligent person to ever have written a novel.
You learn to write by writing, and by reading and thinking about how writers have created their characters and invented their stories. If you are not a reader, don’t even think about being a writer.
My photographs don’t go below the surface. They don’t go below anything. They’re readings of the surface. I have great faith in surfaces. A good one is full of clues.
One of the first serious attempts I made to write a novel was when I was in Grade 6 and I had read ‘Matilda.’ I wrote my own version and my teacher had it bound and permitted me to read it to the class – cementing my love of reading, writing and Roald Dahl!
I do most of my reading on the train ride to and from work. But I always have a book in my handbag so that I can read at any time, anywhere.
Nobody knows that in reading we are re-living our temptations to be a poet. All readers who have a certain passion for reading, nurture and repress, through reading, the desire to become a writer.