#liter

For she was of that generation who, having found nothing in religion, had formed themselves through literature. ↗

— Doris Lessing

#marriage

I had found my religion: nothing seemed more important to me than a book. I saw the library as a temple. ↗

— Jean-Paul Sartre

#literature #reading #religion

The irony of Christianity is that believers get so angry, and self righteous toward other Christians who sin differently than they do. Christianity is like one large fraternity where brother and sisterhood is tested by hazing. ↗

— Shannon L. Alder

#criticism #ego #hazing #judgement #religion-literature

The books transported her into new worlds and introduced her to amazing people who lived exciting lives. She went on olden-day sailing ships with Joseph Conrad. She went to Africa with Ernest Hemingway and to India with Rudyard Kipling. She travelled all over the world while sitting in her little room in an English village. ↗

— Roald Dahl

#literature #reading #words #travel

You forget everything. The hours slip by. You travel in your chair through centuries you seem seem to see before you, your thoughts are caught up in the story, dallying with the details or following the course of the plot, you enter into characters, so that it seems as if it were your own heart beating beneath their costumes. ↗

— Gustave Flaubert

#literature #reading #travel

The aim of literature ... is the creation of a strange object covered with fur which breaks your heart. ↗

— Donald Barthelme

#heart

If you would tell me the heart of a man, tell me not what he reads, but what he rereads. ↗

— François Mauriac

#literacy #reading #heart

As a child, I read because books–violent and not, blasphemous and not, terrifying and not–were the most loving and trustworthy things in my life. I read widely, and loved plenty of the classics so, yes, I recognized the domestic terrors faced by Louisa May Alcott’s March sisters. But I became the kid chased by werewolves, vampires, and evil clowns in Stephen King’s books. I read books about monsters and monstrous things, often written with monstrous language, because they taught me how to battle the real monsters in my life. And now I write books for teenagers because I vividly remember what it felt like to be a teen facing everyday and epic dangers. I don’t write to protect them. It’s far too late for that. I write to give them weapons–in the form of words and ideas-that will help them fight their monsters. I write in blood because I remember what it felt like to bleed. ↗

— Sherman Alexie

#teens #writing #young-adult-literature #life

One of my rules is never to look sideways at what other people are doing but instead, do what I feel is right. ↗

— Annie Bryant

#children-s-books #children-s-literature #humanity #life-advice #self-assurance

Ma vie est une énigme dont ton nom est le mot. (My life is an enigma, of which your name is the word.) ↗

— Victor Hugo

#victor-hugo #life