Quotes from Maureen Corrigan

Reality TV, blogging and self-publishing are all evidence of a society's or culture's desire to be more public. And that's a sign of a healthy or energetic culture.

Prolonged travel in the alternate world of books can also make a reader more prone to fantasy thinking and estranged from his or her "real" life.

It's not that I don't like people. It's just that when I'm in the company of others - even my nearest and dearest - there always comes a moment when I'd rather be reading a book.

I think, consciously or not, what we readers do each time we open a book is to set off a search for authenticity. We want to get closer to the heart of things, and sometimes even a few good sentences contained in an otherwise unexceptional book can crystallize vague feelings, fleeting physical sensations, or, sometimes, profound epiphanies. pg. xvi

We read literature for a number of reasons, but two of the most compelling ones are to get out of ourselves and our own life stories and - especially important - to find ourselves by understanding our own life stories more clearly in the context of others.

In our daily lives, where we're bombarded by the fake and the trivial, reading serves as a way to stop, shut out the noise of the world, and try to grab hold of something real, no matter how small.

According to a Wall Street Journal article some 59 percent of Americans don t own a single book. Not a cookbook or even the Bible.

Readers, professional or casual, are alert to passages in a book that illuminate what was previously shadowy and formless.

It's Fitzgerald's thin-but-durable urge to affirm that finally makes Gatsby worthy of being our Great American Novel. Its soaring conclusion tells us that, even though Gatsby dies and the small and corrupt survive, his longing was nonetheless magnificent.

Fitzgerald's plot may suggest that the American Dream is a mirage, but his words make that dream irresistible.

Social class. Class remains our national awkward topic, usually mumbled over in academic diversity workshops; indeed, most people don't know how to talk about class without automatically coupling it with race. That's because we Americans are loath to recognize that the sky's-the-limit potential we take as our birthright comes at a price far beyond what many Americans--of any race--can afford to pay.

Reading, my earliest refuge in the unknown world, made me want to venture into it.

Terry Eagleson says his family's aim was to have the words We Were No Trouble engraved on their gravestones.

My students should be afraid: choosing what kind of work you'll do to a great extent means choosing who you'll be.

Whatever (its) virtues, (the) writing explores the culture of work but marginalizes work itself.

Most martyr stories – sacred and profane – contain an element of superiority. This self-denying hero or heroine is rewarded, at the very least, by capturing the admiring focus of the narrative, while everyone else recedes into the background.

It is probably the sturdy influence of the Catholic belief in a Big Plan that accounts for my own enduring faith that you find the books you need when you need them- even if they're not the books you start out thinking you need.

Like a lot of other bashful introverts, I discovered that I like teaching a lot because it's like acting. When I stepped into the classroom, I stepped into a role, one that allowed me to forget myself.

by 1929, one out of every five Americans had a car (as opposed to one out of thirty-seven Englishmen, one out of forty Frenchmen, and one out of forty-eight Germans).

It's a gift of tranquility when your adult desires mesh with your childhood background. I don't quite know why mine didn't, although I think books, again, are partly to blame.

Gatsby's fall from grace may be grim, but the language of the novel is buoyant; Fitzgerald's plot may suggest that the American Dream is a mirage, but his words make that dream irresistible.

Constant reading pulled me away from the world of my childhood, the world of my parents.

Prolonged travel in the alternate world of books can also make a reader more prone to fantasy thinking and estranged from his or her real life.

During the Great Depression, the philosophy of grin-and-bear-it became a national coping mechanism.