Quotes About Reading

My great quandary was what coat to wear and which books to bring.

The process of boarding a plane without a book produces a wave of panic. The right book can serve as a docent of sorts, setting a tone or even altering the course of a journey.

El taxi llega tan rápido que no me da tiempo a elegir qué libros llevarme. La perspectiva de embarcar en un avión sin un libro me produce una oleada de pánico. El libro adecuado puede ser una especie de maestro, que marca el tono o incluso altera el curso de un viaje.

On Friday, the thirteenth of July, I gave a reading in memory of Jim Morrison on the roof of underground filmmaker Jack Smith's loft at Greene Street and Canal.

You see, the interesting thing about books, as opposed, say, to films, is that it's always just one person encountering the book, it's not an audience, it's one to one.

El único acto íntimo entre dos extraños que todavía es posible, es el de la lectura

Doch am Ende sind Bücher kein Luxus, sondern eine Notwendigkeit, und Lesen ist eine Sucht, von der er keinesfalls geheilt werden möchte.

Leer por puro placer, por la hermosa quietud que te envuelve cuando resuenan en la cabeza las palabras de un autor.

In spite of his physical efforts, he understands that he is afraid to go on reading the typescript. Why this fear should have taken hold of him is something he cannot account for. It's only words, he tells himself, and since when have words had the power to frighten a man half to death?

Leggere per me era evasione e conforto, era la mia consolazione, il mio stimolante preferito: leggere per il puro gusto della lettura, per il meraviglioso silenzio che ti circonda quando ascolti le parole di un autore riverberate dentro la tua testa

Literature is essentially loneliness. It is written in solitude, it is read in solitude and, in spite of everything, the act of reading allows a communication between two human beings.

It was filled with books. That was the first thing I noticed when I went in—how many books there were. Three of the four walls were lined with shelves from the floor to the ceiling, and every inch of those shelves was crammed with books. There were further clusters and piles of them on chairs and tables, on the rug, on the desk. Hardcovers and paperbacks, new books and old books

Me gustó esta y quisiera compartirla. "la literatura es esencialmente soledad. Se escribe en soledad, se lee en soledad y, pese a todo, el acto de la lectura permite una comunicación entre dos seres humanos

La literatura es esencialmente soledad. Se escribe en soledad, se lee en soledad y, pese a todo, el acto de la lectura permite una comunicación entre dos seres humanos".

Maar is lezen juist niet de kunst van het zelf zien, van het oproepen van beelden in je eigen hoofd? En heeft de schoonheid van het lezen niet alles te maken met de stilte die je omgeeft zodra je je in het verhaal hebt gestort, het stemgeluid van de schrijver die weerklinkt in je hoofd en alle andere geluiden buitensluit?

in the end books are not luxuries so much as necessities, and reading is an addiction he has no wish to be cured of.

If one reads too quickly or too slowly, one understands nothing.

Prior to any generalization about literature, literary texts have to be read, and the possibility of reading can never be taken for granted. It is an act of understanding that can never be observed, nor in any way prescribed or verified.

And to read is to understand, to question, to know, to forget, to erase, to deface, to repeat--that is to say, the endless prosopopoeia by which the dead are made to have a face and a voice which tells the allegory of their demise and allows us to apostrophize them in our turn. No degree of knowledge can ever stop this madness, for it is the madness of words.

I never read. It prevents me from thinking.

all you need to do is consult an 1872 congressional hearing on the Klan quixotically entitled Testimony Taken by the Joint Select Committee to Inquire into the Condition of Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary States. The multi-volume document makes scary reading, even now.

But binge writers are also binge readers and binge statisticians. The bad habits that keep them from getting down to writing also keep them from doing the prewriting (Kellogg, 1994)—the reading, outlining, organizing, brainstorming, planning, and number-crunching necessary for typing words.

Binge writers are also binge readers and binge statisticians.

When Benjamin Franklin, the famous inventor and publisher, was serving as the American ambassador to France, he often impressed French intellectual with the wisdom of his remarks. At one dinner, the question was raised, "What human condition deserves the most pity?" Each of the guests responded, but the answer that is still remembered is Benjamin Franklins's: "A lonesome man on a rainy day who does not know how to read.