Reading Directions Quotes

I'm not big on reading directions. I can't do that. I'm just not from that world. ~ Richard Dean Anderson

Prose is like this big block - you write big paragraphs. I feel that when I'm reading and writing, that a prose book is kind of monolithic. But a song is more like a feather or something. ~ Bill Callahan

Early in the novel that Tereza clutched under her arm when she went to visit Tomas, Anna meets Vronsky in curious circumstances: they are at the railway station when someone is run over by a train. At the end of the novel, Anna throws herself under a train. This symmetrical composition - the same motif appears at the beginning and at the end - may seem quite "novelistic" to you, and I am willing to agree, but only on condition that you refrain from reading such notions as "fictive," "fabricated," and "untrue to life" into the word "novelistic." Because human lives are composed in precisely such a fashion.

They are composed like music. Guided by his sense of beauty, an individual transforms a fortuitous occurrence (Beethoven's music, death under a train) into a motif, which then assumes a permanent place in the composition of the individual's life. Anna could have chosen another way to take her life. But the motif of death and the railway station, unforgettably bound to the birth of love, enticed her in her hour of despair with its dark beauty. Without realizing it, the individual composes his life according to the laws of beauty even in times of greatest distress.

It is wrong, then, to chide the novel for being fascinated by mysterious coincidences (like the meeting of Anna, Vronsky, the railway station, and death or the meeting of Beethoven, Tomas, Tereza, and the cognac), but it is right to chide man for being blind to such coincidences in his daily li ~ Milan Kundera

ONE AFTERNOON DURING THAT FINAL SPRING, AFTER SHE HAD TURNED THIRTY AURA TURNED TO ME FROM HER DESK WHILE I LAY ON THE BED READING, AND SHE SAID, 'WE HAVE EVERYTHING WE NEED TO BE HAPPY. WE DONT HAVE TO BE RICH. WE CAN GET JOBS IN THE UNIVERSITIES IF WE NEED THEM. WE HAVE OUR BOOKS, OUR READING, OUR WRITING, AND WE HAVE EACH OTHER, FRANK. WE DONT NEED MORE TO BE HAPPY, WE ARE SO LUCKY. DO YOU KNOW HOW LUCKY WE ARE? ~ Francisco Goldman

Recognising such dimensions implicit to the reading experience can distract from the immediacy of our response; it can substitute literary archaeology for novelistic reality. That is one pole. But the other extreme is equally limiting. By failing to realise the issues involved in communicating with fictional modes that are different
to our own, in effect we do not read in the fullest sense. Between intellectual pedantry and cultivated ignorance I would pose a third approach to reading - that of the informed imagination. After occupying this position true evaluation can begin. ~ Ian Gregor

That man," Carol said. "The thin man at Gordon's will reading, with the ridiculous name. He's involved in this, isn't he?"
"Skulduggery Pleasant," Valkyrie nodded. "And yes, he is. ~ Derek Landy

I didn't feel like reading that night, so I went downstairs and watched a half-hour long commercial that advertised an exercise machine. They kept flashing a 1-800 number, so I called it. The woman who picked up the other end of the phone was named Michelle. And I told Michelle that I was a kid and did not need an exercise machine, but I hoped she was having a good night.
That's when Michelle hung up on me. And I didn't mind a bit. ~ Stephen Chbosky

In the silence that follows
a great line
you can feel Lazarus
deep inside
even the laziest, most deathly afraid
part of you,
lift up his hands and walk toward the light. ~ David Whyte

Sonechka, meanwhile, placid soul that she was - cocooned by the thousand volumes of her reading, lulled by the hazy murmurings of the Greek myths, the hypnotically shrill recorder fluting of the Middle Ages, the misty windswept yearning of Ibsen, the minutely detailed tedium of Balzac, the astral music of Dante, the siren song of the piercing voices of Rilke and Novalis, seduced by the moralistic despair of the great Russian writers calling out to the heart of heaven itself - this placid soul had no awareness that her great moment was at hand. ~ Lyudmila Ulitskaya

A Favorite start to a book [sorry it's long!]:

"In yesterday's Sunday Times, a report from Francistown in Botswana. Sometime last week, in the middle of the night, a car, a white American model, drove up to a house in a residential area. Men wearing balaclavas jumped out, kicked down the front door, and began shooting. When they had done with shooting they set fire to the house and drove off. From the embers the neighbors dragged seven charred bodies: two men, three women, two children.
Th killers appeared to be black, but one of the neighbors heard them speaking Afrikaans among themselves. And was convinced they were whites in blackface. The dead were South Africans, refugees who had moved into the house mere weeks ago.
Approached for comment, the SA Minister of Foreign Affairs, through a spokesman, calls the report 'unverified'. Inquiries will be undertaken, he says, to determine whether the deceased were indeed SA citizens. As for the military, an unnamed source denies that the SA Defence Force had anything to do with the matter. The killings are probably an internal ANC matter, he suggests, reflecting 'ongoing tensions between factions.
So they come out, week after week, these tales from the borderlands, murders followed by bland denials. He reads the reports and feels soiled. So this is what he has come back to! Yet where in the world can one hide where one will not feel soiled? Would he feel any cleaner in the snows of Sweden, reading at a dist ~ J.M. Coetzee

I love to read. My education is self-inflicted ~ Groucho Marx

Oh! I am delighted with the book! I should like to spend my whole life in reading it. ~ Jane Austen

People have pointed out evidences of personal feeling in my notices as if they were accusing me of a misdemeanor, not knowing that criticism written without personal feeling is not worth reading. It is the capacity for making good or bad art a personal matter that makes a man a critic. ~ George Bernard Shaw

Oh, Mama," I said. "What if I don't live that long?" My mother didn't hesitate one second. "By hook or by crook, you will. Having children only increases your grip on the world. It's like reading a thriller. You can't put it down because you have to know how the story turns out. ~ Jo-Ann Mapson

I'm not going to tell you the movies, but I remember getting halfway through the thing and everything sort of tunnel-visioned on me and I couldn't read the script anymore. I looked at the people and I just turned and ran out in a cold sweat. It took me about a year to study it and feel comfortable going in and reading for people. ~ John Corbett

The useless days will add up to something. The shitty waitressing jobs. The hours writing in your journal. The long meandering walks. The hours reading poetry and story collections and novels and dead people's diaries and wondering about sex and God and whether you should shave under your arms or not. These things are your becoming. ~ Cheryl Strayed

Well, a woman can learn so much from reading their books. Look at it this way: you have the Internet, I have the library," her lips twisted, " ... and bookstores. It really does come in handy." She grinned, revealing beautiful, pearly teeth. "If you ever wanna do something to make me happy, buy me books. I will love you forever." She flashed her gorgeous smile again. ~ Shanora Williams

I'm reading a bunch of fiction by Afghan and Iraq War veterans for a New Yorker piece. There hasn't been that much, but it's starting to come out, and some of the fiction is really good. ~ George Packer

I think that the reader should enrich what he is reading. He should misunderstand the text; he should change it into something else. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

Computer programming is really a lot like writing a recipe. If you've read a recipe, you know what the structure of a recipe is, it's got some things up at the top that are your ingredients, and below that, the directions for how to deal with those ingredients. ~ Larry Wall

There is no other enjoyment like reading ~ Jane Austen

My comfort zone is like a little bubble around me, and I've pushed it in different directions and made it bigger and bigger until these objectives that seemed totally crazy eventually fall within the realm of the possible. ~ Alex Honnold

He invented a machine for reading underwater and nearly drowned in the bath because it worked. ~ A.S. Byatt

I'm the enemy because I like to think. I like to read. I'm into freedom of speech and freedom of choice. I'm the kind of guy that could sit in a greasy spoon and wonder, gee, should I have the T-bone steak or the jumbo rack of barbecue ribs or the side order of gravy fries? I want high cholesterol. I would eat bacon and butter and buckets of cheese. Okay? I want to smoke Cuban cigars the size of Cincinnati in the nonsmoking section. I want to run through the streets naked with green Jell-O all over my body reading Playboy magazine. Why? Because I might suddenly feel the need to. Okay, pal? ~ Denis Leary

One must either stop reading the Bible altogether, or else leave off spending one's whole time in just doing easy pleasant things one likes to do. ~ Elizabeth Payson Prentiss

Reading if a man has a crush on you can be to your advantage. If you know a guy likes you, the power shifts in your favor giving you more confidence. ~ Georgios Christodoulou

I was reading the dictionary. I thought it was a poem about everything. ~ Steven Wright

I can critique the bad; I can take the good, and I can add whatever I want. ~ Justine Larbalestier

In reading over the Constitutions of all fifty of our states, I discovered something which some of you may not know: there is in all fifty, without exception, an appeal or a prayer to the Almighty God of the universe. Through all fifty state Constitutions, without exception, there runs this same appeal and reference to God who is the Creator of our liberties and the preserver of our freedoms. ~ D. James Kennedy

A literary academic can no more pass a bookstore than an alcoholic can pass a bar. ~ Carolyn G. Heilbrun

The mortality of all inanimate things is terrible to me, but that of books most of all. ~ William Dean Howells

I don't feel like literature has the power to alienate. I think that's something people feel if they don't connect with a work of art. But I don't think a work of art can actively reject the person who's looking at it or reading it. ~ Eleanor Catton

Reading is the unhindered flow of ideas between minds. ~ A. Umaz

Most of the Mardukans were laughing, now. Some of them were accusing him of being just too utterly ridiculous.

"Why, the people are the Government. The people would not legislate themselves into slavery."

He wished Otto Harkaman were there. All he knew of history was the little he had gotten from reading some of Harkaman's books, and the long, rambling conversations aboard ship in hyperspace or in the evenings at Rivington. But Harkaman, he was sure, could have furnished hundreds of instances, on scores of planets and over ten centuries of time, in which people had done exactly that and hadn't known what they were doing, even after it was too late. ~ H. Beam Piper

reading is learning and for fun ~ Jeremy Lam

I love you, pretty girl." "I love you, Drake Pierce," she replied. Drake lifted her chin with his finger and planted the sweetest, most gentle kiss on her lips. "What?" he asked, reading the look on her face when she pulled away from him. She broadened her smile and stared up at him like she was etching his face into her memory. Drake Pierce was her life. In all the time she'd had to come up with one word that embodied what he was to her, it had finally come to her. He was simply life. "I'm ~ Jai Bree'nae

Still, what can thoughtful people and humanists do but struggle toward suitable words? Take me, for instance. I've been writing letters helter-skelter in all directions. More words. I go after reality with language. Perhaps I'd like to change it all into language, to force Madeline and Gersbach to have a Conscience. There's a word for you. I must be trying to keep tight the tensions without which human beings can no longer be called human. If they don't suffer, they've gotten away from me. And I've filled the world with letters to prevent their escape. I want them in human form, and so I conjure up a whole environment and catch them in the middle. I put my whole heart into these constructions. But they are constructions. ~ Saul Bellow

I always say that keeping abreast of science should never be seen as a chore. It should be something you do naturally. I don't sit there reading 'New Scientist,' putting post-it notes next to ideas. ~ Alastair Reynolds

The book and I secret ourselves
Behind the paneled door.
We merge our thoughts in retrospect
Of ancient mystic lore.
We spend a pleasant quiet hour,
Nor know it passed us by ...
The easy chair, the shaded lamp,
A well-loved book and I. ~ Edna Moore Schultz

You've rotted your mind with reading books. ~ Diana Wynne Jones

Every thought I have is colored by what I learned by what I learned from reading Ray Bradbury. ~ Joe Hill

Before I met Maria, I was your basic craven hermit. I spent most of my time in my room, in love with my walls, hiding out from the world with my
fanzines and my records. I thought I was happier that way. I had developed these monastic habits to protect myself from something, probably, but
whatever it was, the monastic habits had turned into the bigger problem. In my headphones, I led a life of romance and incident and intrigue, none
of which had anything to do with the world outside my Walkman. I was an English major, obsessed with Oscar Wilde and Walter Pater and Algernon
Swinburne, thrilling to the exploits of my decadent aesthete poet idols, even though my only experience with decadence was reading about it. ~ Rob Sheffield

When you have a lot of books,you don't have to worry about getting bored unless you don't know the essence of reading.Reading is not just about reading,you have to use your imagination,make the characters alive and be one of them,feel them ... and presto,you'll never be alone! ~ Mareez Reyes

The great thing about literature is that it's subjective. No two readers read the same book, because we all see the words through different eyes, filter the story through different life experiences. ~ Lisa Wingate

In the time it takes for all of this to happen, Tariq takes a shower. In the time it takes for all of this to happen, Craig (admittedly a slow eater) eats a piece of French toast. In the time it takes for all of this to happen, Peter loads up a video game and starts to play. In the time it takes for all of this to happen, Avery wakes to find a phone number still written on his hand, and wonders what to do next. He doesn't have to worry, though. Ryan is already on it. He has Avery's number in his phone, and as soon as the clock hits ten, he's going to call. He feels it's rude to call anyone before ten. So he waits. Impatiently, he waits. It's funny the things you miss. Like phone cords. Reading ~ David Levithan

Is there some amazing rational thing you do when your mind's running in all different directions?" she managed.

"My own approach is usually to identify the different desires, give them names, conceive of them as separate individuals, and let them argue it out inside my head. So far the main persistent ones are my Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, Gryffindor, and Slytherin sides, my Inner Critic, and my simulated copies of you, Neville, Draco, Professor McGonagall, Professor Flitwick, Professor Quirrell, Dad, Mum, Richard Feynman, and Douglas Hofstadter."

Hermione considered trying this before her Common Sense warned that it might be a dangerous sort of thing to pretend. "There's a copy of me inside your head?"

"Of course there is!" Harry said. The boy suddenly looked a bit more vulnerable. "You mean there isn't a copy of me living in your head?"

There was, she realized; and not only that, it talked in Harry's exact voice.

"It's rather unnerving now that I think about it," said Hermione. "I do have a copy of you living in my head. It's talking to me right now using your voice, arguing how this is perfectly normal."

"Good," Harry said seriously. "I mean, I don't see how people could be friends without that. ~ Eliezer Yudkowsky

Reading has been proven to sharpen analytical thinking, enabling us to better discern patterns – a handy tool when it comes to the often baffling behaviour of ourselves and others. But fiction in particular can make you more socially able and empathetic. Last year, the Journal of Applied Social Psychology published a paper showing how reading Harry Potter made young people in the UK and Italy more positively disposed towards stigmatised minorities such as refugees. ~ Hephzibah Anderson

What is sure is that technological change is accelerating in all directions and, like children playing in a fountain, consumers are reveling in the experience. ~ Simon Mainwaring

Books, gentlemen, are a species of men, and introduced to them you circulate in the "very best society" that this world can furnish, without the intolerable infliction of "dressing" to go into it. In your shabbiest coat and cosiest slippers you may socially chat even with the fastidious Earl of Chesterfield, and lounging under a tree enjoy the divinest intimacy with my late lord of Verulam. ~ Herman Melville