Reading Quotes - Page 84

We should be as careful of the books we read, as of the company we keep. The dead very often have more power than the living.

When I was dealing with the eating disorder, I wanted to look like the stick-thin models, but then I started reading fitness magazines and seeing these girls with great bodies that weren’t too muscular.

Q: What’s hard for you? A: Mostly I straddle reality and the imagination. My reality needs imagination like a bulb needs a socket. My imagination needs reality like a blind man needs a cane. Math is hard. Reading a map. Following orders. Carpentry. Electronics. Plumbing. Remembering things correctly. Straight lines. Sheet rock. Finding a safety pin. Patience with others. Ordering in Chinese. Stereo instructions in German.

Deleting 200 spams a day is a drag. And I was checking my email constantly, rather than getting on with my real work, which is reading and writing. Email was becoming a distraction, a burden rather than a liberation.

When I was 9 or 10 years old it wasn't the thing to be seen doing - reading a book in your spare time.

I was in three of the Harry Potter films without reading one of those book, quite thankfully.

She's different from the girls I'm used to dating. She doesn't get tired of my stories and jokes or expect me to start reading her mind. She doesn't want me to dress better or put highlights in my hair or serious up. I'm not a lifestyle accessory to her. I'm a necessity. I'm the guy that's going to crack open her cocoon. She doesn't need to change me - she needs me to change her. At least until her little butterfly wings get strong enough to fly away.

Back at his chair he cannot remember what he was reading. He feels the books beside him to find the one that is warm.

If time is precious, no book that will not improve by repeated readings deserves to be read at all.

If a book comes from the heart, it will contrive to reach other hearts; all art and author-craft are of small amount to that.

There was, it is said, a criminal in Italy who was suffered to make his choice between Guicciardini and the galleys. He chose the history. But the war of Pisa was too much for him; he changed his mind, and went to the oars.

If you are going to write, say, fantasy - stop reading fantasy. You've already read too much. Read other things; read westerns, read history, read anything that seems interesting, because if you only read fantasy and then you start to write fantasy, all you're going to do is recycle the same old stuff and move it around a bit.

I'd like to encourage people to please keep reading-and most importantly, to please keep trying new writers. The only way we can bring fresh new material into the field is if people go out and buy it.

The strange thing, though, is that most people who write novels these days seem to be aware of only a fraction of its possibilities. Kundera goes on and on about this, and I never tire of reading him on the subject, because I agree very deeply with it.

I must suppose that reading wonderful writers may, inadvertently, teach an avid reader a great deal -- not only about life and other matters, but about how to write. Therefore doubtless I have benefited from frequent immersions in the glowing genius of others. It would be nice to think so. (I do actually think so). But to improve my skills will never be the prompting force of my reading -- that's just literary lust.

The Genealogical Science is a wonderful account of how old-fashioned race science has come to be re-defined by resort to the most recent developments in genetics. But this book is not simply another story of the ideological uses to which science may be put. Nadia Abu El-Haj has provided the reader with a very detailed analysis of the historical entanglement between science and politics. Her study should be required reading for anyone interested in the sociology of science-and also for those dealing with Middle Eastern nationalisms. This is a work of outstanding value for scholarship.

I wouldn't mind my book being called an African novel if it didn't invite lazy readings.

Finding people who get enormous pleasure from reading books is a more and more unusual experience, and so writers just so much want to be heard.

I have two pairs of reading glasses. One pair is for reading fiction, the other for non-fiction. I've read the Bible twice wearing each pair, and it's the same.

Reading is a technology for perspective-taking. When someone else's thoughts are in your head, you are observing the world from that person's vantage point.

Reading takes time, and the glass teat takes too much of it.

Extrinsic reading rewards may not be necessary and may backfire.

Magazine reading appears to promote more reading.

The idea - the core idea of humanism - is that the act of reading about great deeds will lead you to imitate them.

Theres really not much that people can pick on me for my work, so obviously they find other reasons to write something bad about me. I mean, people enjoy reading bad stuff about people.