“Sit in a room and read--and read and read. And read the right books by the right people. Your mind is brought onto that level, and you have a nice, mild, slow-burning rapture all the time.”

Introduction (1971)
The Golden Notebook (1962)
Context: There is only one way to read, which is to browse in libraries and bookshops, picking up books that attract you, reading only those, dropping them when they bore you, skipping the parts that drag — and never, never reading anything because you feel you ought, or because it is part of a trend or a movement. Remember that the book which bores you when you are twenty or thirty will open doors for you when you are forty or fifty — and vice versa. Don’t read a book out of its right time for you.

The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze (1934), A Cold Day

Great Books: The Foundation of a Liberal Education (1954)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQ3VcbAfd4w
The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ (2010)

Interview by Tom Vowler (2010-13)

Interview with Jessica Lee Jernigan (May 1999) http://jessicaleejernigan.typepad.com/jessica_lee_jernigan/2004/08/archival_interv.html

Source: Between the Lines