Reading Quotes - Page 152

The less we know the more we suspect

When a man thinks he is reading the character of another, he is often unconsciously betraying his own; and this is especially the case with those persons whose knowledge of the world is of such sort that it results in extreme distrust of men.

While reading writers of great formulatory power — Henry James, Santayana, Proust — I find I can scarcely get through a page without having to stop to record some lapidary sentence. Reading Henry James, for example, I have muttered to myself, "C’mon, Henry, turn down the brilliance a notch, so I can get some reading done." I may be one of a very small number of people who have developed writer’s cramp while reading.

As addictions go, reading is among the cleanest, easiest to feed, happiest.

Reading it now for the seventh or eighth time, I am more convinced than ever not merely that The Great Gatsby is Fitzgerald’s masterwork but that it is the American masterwork, the finest work of fiction by any of this country’s writers.

I like reading, going to the gym, hanging out with my family. That's it.

Reading is, at its best, not an escape; it is genuine experience. A novel is not a monologue, but a conversation, a collaboration between writer and reader, an invaluable exchange of human conditions.

All plays stem from personal experience. I was reading psychoanalytic lit for a couple of years, obsessively, in depth, and I got involved in analyzing everyone around me. . . . Eventually, all my friends' eyes began to glaze over when I started talking this way, and I got the hint that there might be something comical in it.

Promiscuous reading is necessary to the constituting of human nature. The attempt to keep out evil doctrine by licensing is like the exploit of that gallant man who thought to keep out the crows by shutting the park gate.

I think technique can be taught but I think the only way to learn to write is to read, and I see writing and reading as completely related. One almost couldn't exist without the other.

Support your public library! It is a treasure and a legacy that will provide entertainment, information, a sense of community, and real continuity from one generation to the next, and the next after that. So long as we keep reading, and reading to our children, there will be hope for our shared cultural heritage and the future of our world.

I grew up in a completely bookless household. It was my father's boast that he had never read a book from end to end. I don't remember any of his ladies being bookish. So I was entirely dependent on my schoolteachers for my early reading with the exception of The Wind in the Willows, which a stepmother read to me when I was in hospital.

I do think that the imagination you create yourself when you're reading, to create the tone and the accent of the world, is an individual accomplishment that someone is imposing upon you by listening to them read it. Because you're listening to their interpretation, and their emphasis would probably be different from the one that your brain makes while you're reading it.

wherever the TV glows, there sits someone who isn't reading.

I stopped reading William Faulkner because it's hard work. I want to read a good writer, but I also want to read something where the pages are going to move along. That's what I want. It doesn't have to be a thriller or a mystery. Just something where I get caught up in the story.

We've been a band longer than most of the people reading this have been alive.

A university is a reading and discussion club. If students knew how to use the library, they wouldn't need the rest of the buildings. The faculty's job, in great part, is to teach students how to use a library in a living way. All a student should really need is access to the library and a place to sleep.

The Genie declared that in his time and place there were scientists of the passions who maintained that language itself, on the one hand, originated in 'infantile pregenital erotic exuberance, polymorphously perverse,' and that conscious attention, on the other, was a 'libidinal hypercathexis' - by which magic phrases they seemed to mean that writing and reading, or telling and listening, were literally ways of making love.

The Supreme Court of the United States of America will never under any circumstances allow anyone to be stripped of their citizenship because they burned the American flag. And if you don't believe that, you haven't been reading constitutional law for the past seventy years.

The menu should be part of the entertainment, part of the dining experience. It's kind of like reading the 'Playbill' when you go to the theater. It should be an alluring and interactive document. Does it have burn marks on it from the candle? If you ever get a greasy menu with food stains on it, it's time to run like hell.

When you go visiting countries, you start reading the history of the place and you start getting into the culture, and then you have to leave. In my experience, all countries have hidden treasures.

Jimmy Greaves and Kenny Dalglish had similar know-how, but Dalglish's knowledge and reading of the game was far superior. He was the most complete footballer in British soccer.

I always considered myself a loner. I mean, not like a poor-me, Byron-esque, I-should-have-brought-a-swimming-buddy loner. I mean the sort of person who doesn’t feel too upset about the prospect of a weekend spent seeing no one, and reading good books on the couch. It wasn’t like I was a people hater or anything. I enjoyed activities and the company of friends. But they were a side dish. I always thought I would be happy without them.

The letter of application ... should be a masterpiece of fiction, papering over all the cracks. Get it properly typed on decent writing paper. Never let it run over the page, people get bored with reading.

I'm a failed poet. Reading poetry helps me to see the world differently, and I try to infuse my prose with figurative language, which goes against the trend in fiction.