...Quotes on Reading, Writing @ Literature...

bianglala

You do not write your life with words…You write it with actions. What you think is not important. It is only important what you do.

— Patrick Ness, A Monster Calls

seribulan

“It is perfectly okay to write garbage — as long as you edit brilliantly.” — C. J. Cherryh

seribulan

“You can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page.” — Jodi Picoult

seribulan

“I think I did pretty well, considering I started out with nothing but a bunch of blank paper.” — Steve Martin

bianglala

“That was the only tragic thing about books: they changed people. All except the truly evil, who did not become better fathers, nicer husbands, more loving friends. They remained tyrants, continued to torment their employees, children and dogs were spiteful in petty matters and cowardly in important ones and rejoiced in their victims’ shame.”

NINA GEORGE, THE LITTLE PARIS BOOKSHOP

bianglala

“The world’s rulers should be forced to take a reader’s license. Only when they have read five thousand—no, make that ten thousand—books will they be anywhere near qualified to understand humans and how they behave.”

NINA GEORGE, THE LITTLE PARIS BOOKSHOP

bianglala

“Perdu reflected that is was a common misconception that booksellers looked after books. They look after people.”

NINA GEORGE, THE LITTLE PARIS BOOKSHOP

bianglala

“Reading—an endless journey; a long, indeed never-ending journey that made one more temperate as well as more loving and kind.”

NINA GEORGE, THE LITTLE PARIS BOOKSHOP

bianglala

“There are books that are suitable for a million people, others for only a hundred. There are even remedies—I mean books—that were written for one person only… A book is both medic and medicine at once. It makes a diagnosis as well as offering therapy. Putting the right novels to the appropriate ailments: that’s how I sell books.”

NINA GEORGE, THE LITTLE PARIS BOOKSHOP

bianglala

“He wanted her to sense the boundless possibilities offered by books. They would always be enough. They would never stop loving their readers. They were a fixed point in an otherwise unpredictable world. In life. In love. After death.”

NINA GEORGE, THE LITTLE PARIS BOOKSHOP

bianglala

“But it’s well known that reading makes people impudent, and tomorrow’s world is going to need some people who aren’t shy to speak their minds, don’t you think?”

NINA GEORGE, THE LITTLE PARIS BOOKSHOP

bianglala

“Books are more than doctors, of course. Some novels are loving, lifelong companions; some give you a clip around the ear; others are friends who wrap you in warm towels when you’ve got those autumn blues. And some…well, some are pink candy floss that tingles in your brain for three seconds and leaves a blissful voice. Like a short, torrid love affair.”

NINA GEORGE, THE LITTLE PARIS BOOKSHOP

bianglala

“Life is not a PG feel-good movie. Real life often ends badly. Literature tries to document this reality, while showing us it is still possible for us to endure nobly.”

MATTHEW QUICK, THE SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK

seribulan

Reading is a convesation. All books talk. Buat a good book listens as well.

Mark Haddon.

bianglala

“Reading is that fruitful miracle of a communication in the midst of solitude.”

PROUST M

bianglala

"The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story."

URSULA K. LE GUIN

bianglala

“The written word, obviously, is very inward, and when we're reading, we're thinking. It's a sort of spiritual, meditative activity. When we're looking at visual objects, I think our eyes are obviously directed outward, so there's not as much reflective time. And it's the reflectiveness and the spiritual inwardness about reading that appeals to me.”

JOYCE CAROL OATES

bianglala

“If you are a writer you locate yourself behind a wall of silence and no matter what you are doing, driving a car or walking or doing housework you can still be writing, because you have that space.”

JOYCE CAROL OATES

bianglala

“Read widely, and without apology. Read what you want to read, not what someone tells you you should read.”

JOYCE CAROL OATES

bianglala

“I have forced myself to begin writing when I've been utterly exhausted, when I've felt my soul as thin as a playing card…and somehow the activity of writing changes everything.”

JOYCE CAROL OATES