This book was written in those long hours I spent waiting for my wife to get dressed to go out. And if she had never gotten dressed at all this book would never have been written.
I was so long writing my review that I never got around to reading the book.
Good books are the warehouses of ideas.
There are two kinds of books. Those that no one reads and those that no one ought to read.
The chief knowledge that a man gets from reading books is the knowledge that very few of them are worth reading.
The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal.
I go back to the reading room, where I sink down in the sofa and into the world of The Arabian Nights. Slowly, like a movie fadeout, the real world evaporates. I’m alone, inside the world of the story. My favourite feeling in the world.
I’m a very ordinary human being; I just happen to like reading books.
Have books ‘happened’ to you? Unless your answer to that question is ‘yes,’ I’m unsure how to talk to you.
I think people who share my dreams can enjoy reading my novels. And that’s a wonderful thing. I said that myths are like a reservoir of stories, and if I can act as a similar kind of “reservoir,” albeit a modest one, that would make me very happy.
Whether in music or in fiction, the most basic thing is rhythm. Your style needs to have good, natural, steady rhythm, or people won’t keep reading your work.
Time passes slowly. Nobody says a word, everyone lost in quiet reading. One person sits at a desk jotting down notes, but the rest are sitting there silently, not moving, totally absorbed. Just like me.
I have read all my novels that were translated into English. Reading my novels is enjoyable because I forget almost all the content in them.
I do not mean to object to a thorough knowledge of the famous works we read. I object only to the interminable comments and bewildering criticisms that teach but one thing: there are as many opinions as there are men.
Literature is my Utopia.
Literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disenfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourses of my book friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or awkwardness.
More than at any other time, when I hold a beloved book in my hand my limitations fall from me, my spirit is free.
True teaching cannot be learned from text-books any more than a surgeon can acquire his skill by reading about surgery.
Reading with children is an enormous gift to them. It’s a great honor to invite children to read with adults.
As we read spiritually about spiritual things, we open our hearts to God’s voice. Sometimes we must be willing to put down the book we are reading and just listen to what God is saying to us through our words.