Reading Takes You Places Quotes

Reading takes you places; it is all up to your imagination. The world (or in this case book) is your canvas, go paint it. ~ BOB

If you travel a lot, if you like roaming about in order to lose yourself, you can end up in the strangest places. I think it must be a kind of built-in radar, which often takes me to places that are either peculiarly quiet or peculiar in a quiet sort of way. ~ Wim Wenders

The best writing takes you places you don't want to go. It drags you by the hair against your will and leaves you drained, shaky, spent. Sometimes with a bad taste in your mouth. ~ Penfist

You know, when I was little, my dad told me that if I misbehaved, he'd send me to live with a witch who ate children.'

'Really?'

She nods. 'I was so afraid of the witch. Feelings are magnified when you're young, I think, and the fear can stay with you for a long time. I eventually grew out of the fear but even now when I read something with a witch, my mind always traces back to that story. Isn't that weird?'

'How'd you grow out of it?' I ask. 'The fear?'

She takes a long moment to answer. 'I read lots and lots of books about witches. ~ Stephanie Oakes

Hush now, my darling
It's all okay
Nothing can hurt you
The world won't end today
Lay down your head
Get some rest
This time will pass
We're coming up on the best
Just give it time
It's all gonna change
But remember it takes time
For things to rearrange
There are happy people in happy places
My darling, out there
One day, it'll change
One day, it'll change ~ Kaitlyn Deann

I love reading. It has taught me many things. I have learned how to bridge the gap between both genders and age. Separation anxiety and psychoanalysing myself. Between youth and adulthood. It takes a lifetime for some people to fully grasp how wonderful it is just to accept the friendship of someone who is older than you or younger than you. You will always learn something new and that is always how the game of life is played. You do not have to be an intellectual to realise that this moment in time for any generation you will always be caught between pitching your tent, finding that perfect picnic spot, realising that you are perpetually caught between being the frosting on top of the cake and the Everest. ~ Abigail George

Butterfly.
What a beautiful word
What a delicate creature.
Delicate like the cruel words that flow right out of your mouths and the food that flies right out of your hands…
Does it make you feel better?
Does it make you feel good ?
Does picking on a girl make you more of a man?
Well, I'm standing up for myself
Like I should have done before
I'm not putting up with your Butterfly anymore."
(Kiersten slides the sack off her wrist and opens it, pulling out a handful of hand-made butterflies. She takes the microphone out of the stand and begins walking down the stairs as she continues speaking.)
"I'd like to extend to others what others have extended to me."
(She walks up to Mrs. Brill first and holds out a butterfly)
"Butterfly you, Mrs. Brill."
(Mrs. Brill smiles at her and takes the butterfly out of her hands. Lake laughs out loud and I have to nudge her to get her to be quiet. Kiersten walks around the room, passing out butterflies to several of the students, including the three from the lunchroom.)
"Butterfly you, Mark.
Butterfly you, Brendan.
Butterfly you, Colby."
(When she finishes passing out the butterflies, she walks back onto the stage and places the microphone back into the stand.)
"I have one thing to say to you
And I'm not referring to the bullies
Or the ones they pursue.
I'm referring to those of you that just stand by
The ones who don't take up for t ~ Colleen Hoover

Why do you keep reading a book? Usually to find out what happens. Why do you give up and stop reading it? There may be lots of reasons. But often the answer is you don't care what happens. So what makes the difference between caring and not caring? The author's cruelty. And the reader's sympathy ... it takes a mean author to write a good story. ~ Gail Carson Levine

If your heart takes more pleasure in reading novels, or watching TV, or going to the movies, or talking to friends, rather than just sitting alone with God and embracing Him, sharing His cares and His burdens, weeping and rejoicing with Him, then how are you going to handle forever and ever in His presence ... ? You'd be bored to tears in heaven, if you're not ecstatic about God now! ~ Keith Green

Incidentally, I use the word reader very loosely. Curiously enough, one cannot read a book: one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader, an active and creative reader is a rereader. And I shall tell you why. When we read a book for the very first time the very process of laboriously moving our eyes from left to right, line after line, page after page, this complicated physical work upon the book, the very process of learning in terms of space and time what the book is about, this stands between us and artistic appreciation. When we look at a painting we do not have to move our eyes in a special way even if, as in a book, the picture contains elements of depth and development. The element of time does not really enter in a first contact with a painting. In reading a book, we must have time to acquaint ourselves with it. We have no physical organ (as we have the eye in regard to a painting) that takes in the whole picture and then can enjoy its details. But at a second, or third, or fourth reading we do, in a sense, behave towards a book as we do towards a painting. However, let us not confuse the physical eye, that monstrous masterpiece of evolution, with the mind, an even more monstrous achievement. A book, no matter what it is-a work of fiction or a work of science (the boundary between the two is not as clear as is generally believed)-a book of fiction appeals first of all to the mind. The mind, the brain, the top of the tingling spine, is, or should be, the only ~ Vladimir Nabokov

She straightens, and runs her finger over her lips, gazing down at me. "Did you feel that?"
The spark, the electricity. The desire that feeds on itself, relishing the relief of contact but always wanting more.
"Yes."
She takes my hand and places it over her breast – where her heartbeat throbs wildly in her chest. "And do you feel this?"
My own chest pounds with the same rhythm.
"Yes."
"Some people go their whole lives without feeling that. ~ Emma Chase

You're afraid of the audience, aren't you?"
"Yes, but it's not stagefright. It's that I'm there as the geek. They like to watch me eat my shit. But it pays the light bill and takes me to the racetrack. I don't have any excuses about why I do it. ~ Charles Bukowski

What I mean - and I ought to know if any one does! - is that while most countries give, others take away. Egypt changes you. No one can live here and remain exactly what he was before."
This puzzled me. It startled, too, again. His manner was so earnest. "And Egypt, you mean, is one of the countries that take away?" I asked. The strange idea unsettled my thoughts a little.
"First takes away from you," he replied, "but in the end takes you away. Some lands enrich you," he went on, seeing that I listened, "while others impoverish. From India, Greece, Italy, all ancient lands, you return with memories you can use. From Egypt you return with - nothing. Its splendour stupefies; it's useless. There is a change in your inmost being, an emptiness, an unaccountable yearning, but you find nothing that can fill the lack you're conscious of. Nothing comes to replace what has gone. You have been drained.'
I stared; but I nodded a general acquiescence. Of a sensitive, artistic temperament this was certainly true, though by no means the superficial and generally accepted verdict. The majority imagine that Egypt has filled them to the brim. I took his deeper reading of the facts. I was aware of an odd fascination in his idea.
"Modern Egypt," he continued, "is, after all, but a trick of civilisation," and there was a kind of breathlessness in his measured tone, "but ancient Egypt lies waiting, hiding, underneath. Though dead, she is amazingly alive. And you feel her ~ Charles Robert Maturin

What I notice, as a historian reading stories about so-called nature miracles, the walking on the water, or the miraculous catch of fishes, they're done especially for the insiders, for the disciples. Usually healings and exorcisms are done for people along the road, as it were. Jesus doesn't come on the water to save the fishing fleet from Capernaum, he comes on the water to save the disciples. It's a parable, dummy, it's a parable, don't you get it? If the leadership of the church takes off in a boat without Jesus, it will sink, it will get nowhere. ~ John Dominic Crossan

The Bible is forbidding when you start to read it. The language is odd. The stories start and stop herkily-jerkily. The characters behave in inexplicable ways. It takes a little bit of time to get into the rhythm of the book. I found reading the first 15 chapters of Genesis very very difficult. Once I got past there, I loved reading, and found it very easy. When you get used to the Bible, it becomes thrilling to read (like any great book - I just had exactly the same experience with the Odyssey). ~ David Plotz

I wish I could answer your question. All I can say is that all of us, humans, witches, bears, are engaged in a war already, although not all of us know it. Whether you find danger on Svalbard or whether you fly off unharmed, you are a recruit, under arms, a soldier."
"Well, that seems kinda precipitate. Seems to me a man should have a choice whether to take up arms or not."
"We have no more choice in that than in whether or not to be born."
"Oh, I like choice, though," he said. "I like choosing the jobs I take and the places I go and the food I eat and the companions I sit and yarn with. Don't you wish for a choice once in a while ?"
She considered, and then said, "Perhaps we don't mean the same thing by choice, Mr. Scoresby. Witches own nothing, so we're not interested in preserving value or making profits, and as for the choice between one thing and another, when you live for many hundreds of years, you know that every opportunity will come again. We have different needs. You have to repair your balloon and keep it in good condition, and that takes time and trouble, I see that; but for us to fly, all we have to do is tear off a branch of cloud-pine; any will do, and there are plenty more. We don't feel cold, so we need no warm clothes. We have no means of exchange apart from mutual aid. If a witch needs something, another witch will give it to her. If there is a war to be fought, we don't consider cost one of the factors in deciding whether or not it ~ Philip Pullman

The cool thing about reading is that when you read a short story or you read something that takes your mind and expands where your thoughts can go, that's powerful. ~ Taylor Swift

I didn't take the decision [to get married] lightly. I ventured into it realistically. But life takes you places you wouldn't have expected. I'm really content with what was in the cards for me. ~ Mandy Moore

As a child, a library card takes you to exotic, faraway places. When you're grown up, a credit card does it. ~ Sam Ewing

Old age is, it occurs to Busner as he lies stranded on his side staring at the clock radio, a form of institutionalisation
it deprives you of your identity and supplies another, simpler one, it takes away your clothing and issues you with a uniform of slack-waisted trousers, threadbare jackets and moth-eaten cardigans, togs that are either coming from or going to charity shops. This done, it commits you to a realm at once confined and unbounded, an atrophying circuit of corridors that connect strip-lit and overheating rooms where you fade away your days reading day-old newspapers and specialist magazines
albeit not ones relating to the specialty that awaits you. ~ Will Self

Traveling, you realize that differences are lost: each city takes to resembling all cities, places exchange their form, order, distances, a shapeless dust cloud invades the continents. ~ Italo Calvino

In the horrible places, the battle for control escalates until you get tied down or locked into your Geri-chair or chemically subdued with psychotropic medications. In the nice ones, a staff member cracks a joke, wags an affectionate finger, and takes your brownie stash away. In almost none does anyone sit down with you and try to figure out what living a life really means to you under the circumstances, let alone help you make a home where that life becomes possible. This is the consequence of a society that faces the final phase of the human life cycle by trying not to think about it. We end up with institutions that address any number of societal goals - from freeing up hospital beds to taking burdens off families' hands to coping with poverty among the elderly - but never the goal that matters to the people who reside in them: how to make life worth living when we're weak and frail and can't fend for ourselves anymore. ~ Atul Gawande

I hate the phone. It is the worst invention in the history of the world, because if you don't talk, nothing happens. You can't get by with simply listening and nodding your head in all the right places. You have to talk. You have no option. It takes away my freedom of nonspeech. ~ Alice Oseman

The seasons don't matter to most of us anymore except as spectacles. In my county and in many places around this part of the nation, the fair that once marked the harvest now takes place in late August, while tourist dollars are still in heavy circulation. Why celebrate the harvest when you harvest every week with a shopping cart? ~ Bill McKibben

I had to tell it because it was the only honorable way to fulfill the promise that I had made on the Red Lake Reservation almost twenty years earlier. This, then - The Wolf at Twilight - is the fruit of that promise. It is the part of Dan's life I had left untold. It takes us to places that for too long have been hidden in shadow and reveals truths about what has been taken from Native people and what the rest of us have lost in that taking. But it also reveals what we may all yet become if we heed Sitting Bull's poignant entreaty and put our minds together to see what kind of lives we can create for the children. I hope you find it worthy of your time. If it opens your eyes to another way of understanding, I am grateful. If it simply entertains you, I am pleased. But what matters most is that it touches you. For it is, above all, a story of Native America, and its goal is to lodge deep in your heart. ~ Kent Nerburn

I don't remember when I stopped noticing - stopped noticing every mirror, every window, every scale, every fast-food restaurant, every diet ad, every horrifying model. And I don't remember when I stopped counting, or when I stopped caring what size my pants were, or when I started ordering what I wanted to eat and not what seemed "safe," or when I could sit comfortably reading a book in my kitchen without noticing I was in my kitchen until I got hungry - or when I started just eating when I got hungry, instead of questioning it, obsessing about it, dithering and freaking out, as I'd done for nearly my whole life.

I don't remember exactly when recovery took hold, and went from being something I both fought and wanted, to being simply a way of life. A way of life that is, let me tell you, infinitely more peaceful, infinitely happier, and infinitely more free than life with an eating disorder. And I wouldn't give up this life of freedom for the world.

What I know is this: I chose recovery. It was a conscious decision, and not an easy one. That's the common denominator among people I know who have recovered: they chose recovery, and they worked like hell for it, and they didn't give up. Recovery isn't easy, at first. It takes time. It takes more work, sometimes, than you think you're willing to do. But it is worth every hard day, every tear, every terrified moment. It's worth it, because the trade-off is this: you let go of your eating disorder, and you get ~ Marya Hornbacher

Why do you think I'm reading this? But you know - though maybe you have different standards for what constitutes 'interesting' than I do - there's no such thing in this world as an uninteresting book. Any book is interesting; and not just when it's new. Even books you've already read can be quite fascinating. It just takes a little more effort to get there, that's all. ~ Natsuhiko Kyogoku

A classic is a work which gives pleasure to the minority which is intensely and permanently interested in literature. It lives on because the minority, eager to renew the sensation of pleasure, is eternally curious and is therefore engaged in an eternal process of rediscovery. A classic does not survive because of any ethical reason it does not survive because it conforms to certain canons, or because neglect would kill it. It survived because it is a source of pleasure and because the passionate few can no more neglect it then a bee can neglect a flower. The passionate few do not read "the right things" because they are right. That is to put the cart before the horse "the right things" are the right things solely because the passionate few like reading them …

Nobody at all is quite in a position to choose with certainty among modern works. To sift the wheat from the chaff is a process that takes an exceedingly long time. Modern works have to pass before the bar of the taste of successive Generations; whereas, with Classics, which have been through the ordeal, almost the reverse is the case. Your taste has to pass before the bar of the classics. That is the point. If you differ with a classic, it is you who are wrong, and not the book. If you differ with a modern work, you may be wrong or you may be right, but no judge is authoritative to decide your taste is unformed. It needs guidance and it needs authoritative guidance.

Arnold Bennett, Literary Taste: ~ S. I. Hayakawa

It took a lot to understand that the interest in both writing a story and reading it is not in the objective dangers someone takes. You don't have to fight snakes or wake up in a strange apartment to have a story; it's about what goes on inside your mind and soul. ~ Etgar Keret

Finally," I say, brushing past him as I make my way inside. The heavenly scent of something delicious lights up my senses.
"Come in," he says with a note of sarcasm.
Marshall strides over and takes me in with my hair all frizzed out, my sweater torn in two places and I look like I've just indulged in a mud bath. A dirty smile slides up the side of his face and I can practically see the pornographic implications playing out in his mind.
"You're absolutely filthy - and I most definitely approve." His smile blooms into an all-out sexual leer as he comes in close. "I might be moved to bathe you." He caresses his hand over the side of my cheek. I'm so damn tired I close my eyes and lean into his good vibrations. "Oh, how I'll scrub," he whispers. ~ Addison Moore

It's the way I am."
"How did you become this way?"
"Why is anyone the way they are? That's kind of hard to answer. Why do some people like cheese and other people hate it? Do you like cheese? Mrs. Jones - my housekeeper - has left this for supper." He takes some large, white plates from a cupboard and places one in front of me. We're talking about cheese ... Holy crap. ~ E.L. James

We've all had the experience of you pick up a book, you can't get into it, you can't concentrate.Then one day you pick up the same book and you don't hear the phone ring. You're totally absorbed. Same thing I have to do every day. When you get into that special place of unconsciousness - you get it listening to great music or seeing a great movie - it just takes you out of yourself, out of this whole world. There's no feeling quite like it. ~ T.C. Boyle

The first piece of advice I would give any writer is to read a lot and to read widely. Firstly you start to realize what's out there and what isn't out there. Publishers are looking for stories that haven't been told before. Reading other people can also improve your own writing. I love reading poetry even though I wouldn't think of writing it. A great poet can say in two lines what it takes me a whole novel to express. If I've learned from any kind of writing, it's poetry – and the lesson is concision. What can you leave out and the reader will still get the message? ~ Ian Rankin

I had begun reading the book on the plane just after take-off. And I realised that something does happen to you when you read fiction above ground: The intensity of each word and phrase is magnified and the world which the writer has created for you takes on a greater dimension than before. After a while, you can't tell fiction from fact. ~ Phan Ming Yen

The kids I see are lazy. Nobody wants to work. I teach physics. It takes years to master. But all the kids want to dress like Charlie Sheen and make a million dollars before they're twenty-eight. The only way you can make that kind of money is in law, investment banking, Wall Street. Places where the game is paper profits, something for nothing. But that's what the kids want to do, these days. ~ Michael Crichton

I am thinking now of old Moses sitting on a mountain - sitting with God - looking across the Jordan into the Promised Land. I am thinking of the lump in his throat, that weary ache in his heart, that nearly bitter longing sweetened by the company of God...

And then God - the great eternal God - takes Moses' thin-worn, thread-bare little body into His hands - hands into whose hollows you could pour the oceans of the world, hands whose breadth marked off the heavens - and with these enormous and enormously gentle hands, God folds Moses' pale lifeless arms across his chest for burial.

I don't know if God wept at Moses' funeral. I don't know if He cried when He killed the first of His creatures to take its skins to clothe this man's earliest ancestors. I don't know who will bury me -

...Of God, on whose breast old Moses lays his head like John the Beloved would lay his on the Christ's. And God sits there quietly with Moses - for Moses - and lets His little man cry out his last moments of life.

But I look back over the events of my life and see the hands that carried Moses to his grave lifting me out of mine. In remembering I go back to these places where God met me and I meet Him again and I lay my head on His breast, and He shows me the land beyond the Jordan and I suck into my lungs the fragrance of His breath, the power of His presence. ~ Rich Mullins

I remember the beginnings of the Kurzweil reading machine. I was one of the first to meet Ray Kurzweil and purchase the reading machine in Boston. To think that the machine was at least two and a half large suitcases at the time, and now you have a camera and it takes a picture and you have sound. ~ Stevie Wonder

You could time a suburban story by your watch: it lasts as long as it takes a small furry animal that's lonely to find friends, or a small furry animal that's lost to find its parents; it lasts as long as a quick avowal of love; it lasts precisely as long as the average parent is disposed on a Tuesday night to spend reading aloud to children. ~ Rachel Cusk

If a walker is indeed an individualist there is nowhere he can't go at dawn and not many places he can't go at noon. But just as it demeans life to live alongside a great river you can no longer swim in or drink from, to be crowded into safer areas and hours takes much of the gloss off walking - one sport you shouldn't have to reserve a time and a court for. ~ Edward Hoagland

Reading is like dreaming. You can't control anything, but it takes you to another world ~ Anonymous

Aligning your body clock to the new environment requires a phase shift. It takes one day per time zone to shift. Advance or retard your body clock as many days before your trip as the number of time zones you'll be crossing. Before traveling east, get into sunlight early in the day. Before traveling west, avoid sunlight early by keeping the curtains drawn, and instead expose yourself to bright light in the evening, to simulate what would be late afternoon sun in your destination. Once you're on the plane, if you're westbound, keep the overhead reading lamp on, even if it is your home bedtime. When you arrive in the western city, exercise lightly by taking a walk in the sun. That sunlight will delay the production of melatonin in your body. If you're on an eastbound plane, wear eye shades to cover your eyes two hours or so before sunset in your destination city, to acclimate yourself to the new "dark" time. ~ Daniel J. Levitin

The truth of the matter is that for all the drive-in movie references, what Weston Ochse has really created in Multiplex Fandango is a travelogue. Acting as narrator and guide, Weston takes you on a trip to places familiar and obscure-New Orleans, the Sonoran desert, Mexico's Pacific coast, and the dark, impenetrable reaches of the soul. He shows off sights that chill the blood, and as with any good trip, the things seen and experienced along the way will stay with you for a lifetime. ~ Jeff Mariotte

Miracles don't have to be big, and they can happen in the unlikeliest places. Sometimes they are so small people don't notice. Sometimes miracles are shy. They brush against your sleeve, they settle on your eyelashes. They wait for you to notice, then melt away. Lots of things start by being small. It's a good way to begin, because no one takes any notice of you. You're just a little thing beetling along, minding your own business. Then you grow. ~ Grace McCleen

One of the biggest misperceptions about places of genius, I'm discovering, is that they are akin to paradise. They are not. Paradise is antithetical to genius. Paradise makes no demands, and creative genius takes root through meeting demands in new and imaginative ways. "The Athenians matured because they were challenged on all fronts," said Nietzsche, in a variation of his famous "what doesn't kill you will make you stronger" line. ~ Eric Weiner