ART IS A CONVERSATION

'...consuming a piece of art is two biographies meeting: the biography of the artist, which might disrupt the consuming of the art; and the biography of the audience member, which might shape the viewing of the art. I repeat: this occurs in every case.'

Claire Dederer, Monsters, p.251.

READING NOVELS

'Life being so terribly short, and without guarantees against disaster, it is something that by picking up a book what we know to be true we can place in the widest possible context, and take the world in through eyes and hearts that are not our own. We have this always accessible form of reincarnation.'

William Maxwell, The Writer at Illusionist: Uncollected & Unpublished Work, p.106.

HOW READING BREEDS EMPATHY

'One great beauty of literature in its difference from everyday life is that you may be brought to a point of identifying with characters would never get to know in real life because you wouldn't spend nearly as much time with them.'

Matthew Mullins, Enjoying the Bible, p.98.

THE INTIMACY OF GOOD FICTION

'Fiction, if it's doing it work, will always, I've suggested, take us deeper into connectedness. And in a fiction that works with with and is inspired by Christian themes, we are taken into the deepest connectedness of all: in the light and in hope of which we live and pray for one another.' 

Rowan Williams in Timothy Larsen and Keith L Johnson, Balm in Gilead, p.167. 

READING/ WRITING SOMETHING VS. CREATING/ APPRECIATING AN OBJECT OF ART

'Reading text is a linear progression where one idea follows another like the news crawl at the bottom of a television screen. On the positive side, this gives a writer significant control of the step-by-step process through which a reader accesses ideas. On the downside, only one thought can be presented at a time.The remainder of the author's composition is either receding into the netherworld of memory or invisibly waiting in the wings for its moment on stage. In contrast, a craft object, is a collage in which many pieces and levels of information are read in relationship to each other in the present...A craftsman cannot control a respondent's path through this information as tightly as as an author, but the craftsman has the advantage of making complex structures of information simultaneously apparent. His picture is worth the proverbial thousand words.' 

Peter Korn, Why We Make Things & Why It Matters, p.64. 

WHY READ?

'In reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with myriad eyes, but it is still I who see. Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do.' 

CS Lewis in Paul M Gould, Cultural Apologetics, p.112. 

THE GOOD COMPANY OF A BOOK

'...reading is special. It not only allows us to escape other people, but simultaneously provides us with company, company that as well as being more interesting is more restful than real people, company you can ignore whenever you choose to, without giving any explanation.' 

Claudia Hammond, The Art of Rest, p.239. 

READING AS A CHILD

'I suppose it is partly because you read so much more slowly as a child that the books you come to then seem as endless as summer and richer, fuller, more inexhaustible than anything you are likely to read later on.'

Frederick Buechner, A Sacred Journey, p.15.

THE IMPORTANCE OF READING

'For me, reading was never an antisocial activity. It was deeply social. It was the most profound kind of socialising there was. A deep connection to the imagination of another human being. A way to connect without many filters society normally demands...

Reading isn't important because it helps to get you a job. It's important because it gives you room to exist beyond the reality you're given. It is how humans merge. How minds connect. Dreams. Empathy. Understanding. Escape.'

Matt Haig, Notes on a Nervous Planet, p.257.

READING GOOD BOOKS

'...as you seek books that you will enjoy reading, demand ones that make demands on you: books with sentences so exquisitely crafted that they must be reread, familiar words used in fresh ways, new words so evocative that you are compelled to look them up, and images and ideas so arresting that they return to you unbidden for days to come.'  

Karen Swallow Prior, On Reading Well, p.17. 

READING BAD BOOKS

'Since therefore the knowledge of and survey of vice is in this world so necessary to the constituting of human virtue, and the scanning or error to the confirmation of truth, how can we more safely, and with less danger, scout into the region of sin and falsity than by reading all manner of tractates and hearing all manner of reason? And this  is the benefit which may be had of books promiscuously read.'  

John Milton in Karen Swallow Prior, Reading Well: Finding the Good Life through Great Books, p.15. 

THE IMPORTANCE OF READING HISTORY

'A man who has lived in many places is not likely to be deceived by the local errors of his native village: the scholar has lived in many times and is therefore in some degree immune from the great cataract of nonsense that pours from the press and the microphone of his own age.' 

CS Lewis, 'Learning in War-Time' in CS Lewis Essay Collection: Literature, Philosophy and Short Stories, p.176.  

THE POWER OF A SENTENCE OR TWO

'What I have learned from about twenty years of serious reading is this: It is sentences that change my life, not books. What changes my life is oem new glimpse of truth, some powerful challenge, some resolution to a long-standing dilemma, and these usually come concentrated in a sentence or two. I do not remember 99% of what I read, but if 1% of each book or article I do remember is a life-changing insight, then I don't begrudge the 99%!' 

John Piper in Tony Reinke, Lit! p.116. 

CHOOSING THE RIGHT BOOKS

'For every one book that you choose to read, you must ignore ten thousand other books simply because you don't have the time (or money!).' 

Tony Reinke, Lit! p.94

THE POWER OF BOOKS

'Books connect you to others. It sounds trite but it is true. You are kept company by characters, by a story and by the consciousness - held literally in the hand, seemingly entire - that wrote the book. They all speak to you now across time and space, a commonality of minds, a sharing of experience, a proffering of thoughts and philosophies effortlessly spanning dimensions that would otherwise defeat all such efforts. They are insurmountable proof that the bundle of flaws, fancies, idiocies, instincts, anxieties and aptitudes that is you is neither unique or alone.' 

Lucy Mangan, Bookworm, p.306. 

GEORGE ELIOT'S AIM AS A NOVELIST

'...the only effect I ardently long to produce by my writings is that those who read them should be better able to imagine and to feel the pains and joys of those who differ from themselves in everything but the broad fact of being struggling erring human creatures.' 

George Eliot quoted in Stephen Gill's Introduction to Adam Bede, p.39.

THE IMPORTANCE OF ART

'Art is the nearest thing to life; it is a mode of amplifying experience and extending our contact with our fellowmen beyond the bounds of our personal lot.' 

George Eliot quoted in David Lodge's Introduction to Scenes of Clerical Life, p.15. 

THE IMPORTANCE OF LOVE & READING

'And when it comes to colossal strokes of good fortune...it starts here - it starts with having a family who loves you and someone who inspires you to read. Not because reading makes you smart, but because to involve yourself in a story is to imagine what it's like to be someone else.' 

Robert Webb, How Not to be a Boy, p.67. 

READING IS CAUGHT NOT TAUGHT?

'There must be writers whose parents owned no books, and who were taken under the wing of a neighbor or teacher or librarian, but I have never met one. My daughter is seven, and some of the other second-grade parents complain that their children don't read for pleasure. When I visit their homes, the children's rooms are crammed with expensive books, but the parents' rooms are empty. Those children do not see their parents reading as I did every day of my childhood. By contrast, when I walk into an apartment with books of the shelves, books on the bedside tables, boos on the floor, and books on the toilet tank, then I know what I would see if I opened the door that says PRIVATE - GROWNUPS KEEP OUT: a child sprawled on the bed, reading.' 

Anne Fadiman, Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader, p.126. 

EVERY LIBRARY IS AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL

'Every library is autobiographical...our books will bear witness for or against us, our books reflect who we are and what we have been...What makes a library a reflection of its owner is not merely the choice of titles themselves, but the mesh of associations implied in the choice.' 

Alberto Manguel in Penelope Lively, Ammonites and Leaping Fish, p.184.