But my philosophy is that plot advancement is not what the experience of reading fiction is about. If all we care about is advancing the plot, why read novels? We can just read Cliffs Notes.
Do you want to die old and craven in your bed?- How else? Though not till I’m done reading.
The great thing about reading is that it broadens your life.
I’m often reading a magazine and hearing about someone’s new record, and I think : “Oh, boy, that’s gonna be better than me”. It’s a very common thing.
My education was the liberty I had to read indiscriminately and all the time, with my eyes hanging out.
Somebody’s boring me. I think it’s me.
Reading one’s own poems aloud is letting the cat out of the bag. You may have always suspected bits of a poem to be overweighted, overviolent, or daft, and then, suddenly, with the poet’s tongue around them, your suspicion is made certain.
What are you reading for?
The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries.
The reading of all good books is indeed like a conversation with the noblest men of past centuries who were the authors of them, nay a carefully studied conversation, in which they reveal to us none but the best of their thoughts.
Some words have to be explicitly uttered, Lenore. Only by actually uttering certain words does one really DO what one SAYS. ‘Love’ is one of those words, performative words. Some words can literally make things real.
The fun of reading as “an exchange between consciousnesses, a way for human beings to talk to each other about stuff we can’t normally talk about.”
Above all, have a good time. If you aren’t enjoying writing it, you can hardly expect someone else to enjoy reading it.
The gods have chosen to entertain me with chronic eyestrain headaches. Very poisonous episodes. So I don’t do a lot of reading anymore except on tape.
I hope and hoping feeds my pain I weep and weeping feeds my failing heart I laugh but the laughter does not pass within I burn but the burning makes no mark outside.
Grandma told me Mama was once caught by the Principal for writing in the front of her book, “In Case of Fire, Throw This in First.” I have never had so much respect for Mama as the day I heard this.
Everyone in the South has no time for reading because they are all too busy writing.
That’s a very good way to learn the craft of writing – from reading.
I learned little save that most of the deeds, good and bad both, incurring opprobrium or plaudits or reward either, within the scope of man’s abilities, had already been performed and were to be learned about only from books.
I think parents should know what their children are reading, and if they truly object, they should tell their kids why, rather than summarily removing a book from their possession.