#book

In the highest civilization, the book is still the highest delight. He who has once known its satisfactions is provided with a resource against calamity. ↗

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

#civilization #civilized #emerson #quote #reading

When I was a child, when I was an adolescent, books saved me from despair: that convinced me that culture was the highest of values[...]. ↗

— Simone de Beauvoir

#culture #literature #culture

Always carry a notebook. And I mean always. The short-term memory only retains information for three minutes; unless it is committed to paper you can lose an idea for ever. ↗

— Will Self

#journals #memory #notebook #writing #information

But after all we are not children, not illiterate juvenile delinquents, not English public school boys who after a night of homosexual romps have to endure the paradox of reading the Ancients in expurgated versions. ↗

— Vladimir Nabokov

#britain #life #reading #school #life

Thus I rediscovered what writers have always known (and have told us again and again): books always speak of other books, and every story tells a story that has already been told. ↗

— Umberto Eco

#story-telling #storytelling #writer

A lot of the people who read a bestselling novel, for example, do not read much other fiction. By contrast, the audience for an obscure novel is largely composed of people who read a lot. That means the least popular books are judged by people who have the highest standards, while the most popular are judged by people who literally do not know any better. An American who read just one book this year was disproportionately likely to have read ‘The Lost Symbol’, by Dan Brown. He almost certainly liked it. ↗

— The Economist

#literature #reading #novel

If you want to write a fantasy story with Norse gods, sentient robots, and telepathic dinosaurs, you can do just that. Want to throw in a vampire and a lesbian unicorn while you're at it? Go ahead. Nothing's off limits. But the endless possibility of the genre is a trap. It's easy to get distracted by the glittering props available to you and forget what you're supposed to be doing: telling a good story. Don't get me wrong, magic is cool. But a nervous mother singing to her child at night while something moves quietly through the dark outside her house? That's a story. Handled properly, it's more dramatic than any apocalypse or goblin army could ever be. ↗

— Patrick Rothfuss

#inspirational #inspirational

Sometimes books feel like the only thing that keep her sane. Actually, she knows that they're the only reason she's still even vaguely okay right now. That's what she clings to: reading great books and seeing great films and, for as long as she's immersed in them, being able to forget, if only for a short time, about the reality of her life. ↗

— Steph Bowe

#books #contemporary #young-adult #life

So it is that a writer writes many books. In each book, he intended several urgent and vivid points, many of which he sacrificed as the book's form hardened. ↗

— Annie Dillard

#readers-and-writers #reading #writing #writing-craft #writing-process

It's a reflex. Hear a bell, get food. See an undead, throw a knife. Same thing, really. ↗

— Ilona Andrews

#humor #food