Don't Quote Me On That!
/How I Feel About Books, As Told By Others…
Quotes, idioms, aphorisms. Groups of words, perfectly choregraphed and connected to underscore any particular moment of life. They are the words you can’t seem to find to express yourself, that are on the tip of your tongue, the ones that escape you. They connect us to others who have felt what we are feeling. They are succinct reminders when we veer to forgetfulness. They are the embodiment of how we are affected by something we have seen, heard, felt, smelt or tasted. They can be empowering, comforting, insightful and witty. And sometimes, god help us, they are printed on a mug, or published as a meme.
People may mock those who seek out such things, but a quote is no different than a line from a song or a movie. The possible exception being that one brands you as cool, the other, maybe not as much.
So, at the risk of being labelled as one of the uncool kids I want to share with you my most treasured quotes on reading.
On Books & Reading
1. “Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often hopelessly, into another’s skin, another’s voice, another’s soul.” Joyce Carol Oates
2. “Reading a book is only the beginning, the first step in the relationship. After you’ve finished it, the book enters its real career. It stands there as a badge, a blackmailer, a moment, a scar. It’s both a flow in the room, like a crack in the plaster, and a decoration. The contents of someone’s bookcase are part of his history, like an ancestral portrait.” Anatole Brayard
3. “Resist all temptation to make an end of a book, seek to conserve your literary experiences. Linger over words and phrases, become thrall to a thought or convert to an idea. Read, in short, as you taste fruit or savor wine, or enjoy friendship, or love or life.” Holbrook Jackson
4. “These are not books, lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on the shelves.” Gilbert Highet
5. “You can find magic wherever you look. Sit back, relax, all you need is a book.” Dr. Seuss
6. “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies…the man who never reads lives only one.” George R R Martin
7. “There are worse crimes than blaming books. One is not reading them.” Ray Bradbury
8. “Reading is exercise for our brains in the guise of pleasure. Books give us insight into other people, other cultures. They make us laugh. They make us think. If they are really good, they make us believe that we are better for having read them.” Karin Slaughter
9. “Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read this book.” John Green
10. “I spent my life folded between the pages of books. In the absence of human relationships, I formed bonds with paper characters. I lived love and loss through stories threaded in history; I experienced adolescence by association. My world is one interwoven web of words, stringing together limb to limb, bone to sinew, thoughts and images all together. I am a being comprised of letters, a character created by sentences, a figment of imagination formed through fiction.” Tahereh Mafi
11. “There are books full of good writing that don’t have very good stories. Read sometimes for the story…don’t be like the book snobs who won’t do that. Read sometimes for the words, the language. Don’t be like the play it safers who won’t do that. But when you find a book that has both a good story and good words, treasure that book.” Stephen King
12. “Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures.” Jessamyn West
13. “Fairytales are more than true; but not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.” Neil Gaiman
