“One reads alone, even in another's presence.”

— Italo Calvino

Source: If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Italo Calvino44

Italian journalist and writer of short stories and novels 1923–1985

Elizabeth Hardwick (1916–2007) Novelist, short story writer, literary critic

"Katherine Anne Porter" (p. 302)
American Fictions (1999)

“Whoever has no house now, will never have one.
Whoever is alone will stay alone,
will sit, read, write long letters through the evening,
and wander on the boulevards, up and down,
restlessly, while dry leaves are blowing.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

“Books, books, books. It was not that I read so much. I read and re-read the same ones. But all of them were necessary to me. Their presence, their smell, the letters of their titles, and the texture of their leather bindings.”

Colette (1873–1954) 1873-1954 French novelist: wrote Gigi

“He finally understood that God's presence was everywhere, at all times, and was experienced by everyone at one time or another.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Last Song

Source: The Last Song

“The words you can't find, you borrow.
We read to know we're not alone. We read because we are alone. We read and we are not alone.”

Gabrielle Zevin (1977) American writer

Source: The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

“the phrases that I write on this paper are sensations, perceptions, images, etcetera, which flare up and die down here, in front of my eyes, the verbal residuum:
the only thing that remains of the felt, imagined, thought, perceived, and vanished realities, the only reality that these evaporated realities leave behind, a reality that, even though it is merely a combination of signs, is no less real than they are:
the signs are not presences but they configure another presence, the phrases fall into line one after the other on the page and as they advance they open up a path toward a temporarily final end,
the phrases configure a presence that disappears, they are the configuration of the abolition of presence,
yes, it is as though all these presences woven by the configurations of the signs were seeking its abolition in order that there might appear those inaccessible trees, immersed in themselves, not said, that are beyond the end of this phrase,
on the other side, there where eyes read what I am writing, and on reading it, dissipate it”

Octavio Paz (1914–1998) Mexican writer laureated with the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature

Source: The Monkey Grammarian (1974), Ch. 9

“No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

As reported in Einstein — A Life (1996) by Denis Brian, when asked about a clipping from a magazine article reporting his comments on Christianity as taken down by Viereck, Einstein carefully read the clipping and replied, "That is what I believe." .
1920s, Viereck interview (1929)