Quotes from Will Schwalbe

had my hair permed down the center but cut shorter on the sides, in a recent fit of enthusiasm for the artist who was still then known as Prince and also for the look of a singer named Adam Ant. Despite my stylist's valiant efforts, my hair looked nothing like theirs. But I did look like someone trying very hard not to look like everyone else; I was elaborately disguised as someone who didn't care what other people thought of me.

at about page twenty or so, the magical thing occurred that happens only with the very best books: I became absorbed and obsessed and entered the "Can't you see I'm reading?" mode.

There are certain books that I mean to read and keep stacked by my bedside. I even take them on trips. Some of my books should be awarded their own frequent-flier miles, they've traveled so much.

In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin, had just been published. The other was a Pulitzer Prize–winner, Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout,

She always read the end of a book first because she couldn't wait to find out how things would turn out.

When we ask one another "What are you reading?" sometimes we discover the ways that we are similar; sometimes the ways that we are different. Sometimes we discover things we never knew we shared; other times we open ourselves up to exploring new worlds and ideas. "What are you reading?" isn't a simple question when asked with genuine curiosity; it's really a way of asking, "Who are you now and who are you becoming?

Almost all the earliest conversations I remember with my parents were about books:

I do believe that my Holy Grail of books could be out there—and I intend to keep reading until I find it. Of course, I'll keep reading after I do, too, because—well, because I love to read. I also believe that the Holy Grail of books won't be the greatest book ever written—I am certain there isn't such a thing. I think it will simply be a book that speaks perfectly to me at the moment I most need it and continues to speak to me for the rest of my life.

Eleanor Rathbone and the Politics of Conscience by Susan Pedersen,

Girls Like Us by the journalist Sheila Weller,

The Etiquette of Illness

The Uncommon Reader,

Feasting the Heart by Reynolds Price,

Of course," said the Queen, "but briefing is not reading. In fact it is the antithesis of reading. Briefing is terse, factual and to the point. Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting

It was like before I was in a noisy church in a big city. Now it's like I'm in a beautiful monastery that no human has visited for a thousand years.

Irène Némirovsky's Suite Française

There is no place more perfectly lonely than an airport at night when you fear someone you love is dying and you're rushing to see that person.

It is my habit to buy cheap editions of old, obscure books and see what I can discover there. If the professors of literature knew the sources of my ideas, they would be astounded at the Philistine. But there is a greater pleasure in picking up a small pearl in an ash-can than in looking at a large one in a jeweler's window.

Ishmael Beah's memoir of his life as a boy soldier in Sierra Leone, A Long Way Gone.

Crossing to Safety,

I was learning that when you're with someone who is dying, you may need to celebrate the past, live the present, and mourn the future all at the same time.

Freedom can still depend on ink, just as it always has.

The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch,

I consider the education of our senses and our emotions rather more important than the education of our ideas.