Bea says that the art of reading is slowly dying, that it’s an intimate ritual, that a book is a mirror that offers us only what we already carry inside us, that when we read, we do it with all our heart and mind, and great readers are becoming more scarce by the day.
I am a part of everything that I have read.
There is creative reading as well as creative writing.
It is well known that reading quickens the growth of a heart like nothing else.
Somebody who only reads newspapers and at best books of contemporary authors looks to me like an extremely near-sighted person who scorns eyeglasses. He is completely dependent on the prejudices and fashions of his times, since he never gets to see or hear anything else.
Keep reading. It’s one of the most marvelous adventures that anyone can have.
Everybody is a book of blood; wherever we’re opened, we’re red.
I even love the smell of books.
At one magical instant in your early childhood, the page of a book – that string of confused, alien ciphers – shivered into meaning. Words spoke to you, gave up their secrets; at that moment, whole universes opened. You became, irrevocably, a reader.
There are too many books in the world to read in a single lifetime; you have to draw the line somewhere.
I thought: pity the poor in spirit who know neither the enchantment nor the beauty of language.
It’s a rare book that wins the battle against drooping eyelids.
Maybe this is why we read, and why in moments of darkness we return to books: to find words for what we already know.
The failure to read good books both enfeebles the vision and strengthens our most fatal tendency – the belief that the here and now is all there is.
An unread book does nobody any good. Stories happen in the mind of a reader, not among symbols printed on a page.
A well-read woman is a dangerous creature.
Ahhh. Bed, book, kitten, sandwich. All one needed in life, really.
When I read a book, I put in all the imagination I can, so that it is almost like writing the book as well as reading it – or rather, it is like living it. It makes reading so much more exciting, but I don’t suppose many people try to do it.
Read a thousand books, and your words will flow like a river.
Grinning is something you do when you are entertained in some way, such as reading a good book or watching someone you don’t care for spill orange soda all over themselves.