“[F]olks would better off dipping their heads in a bucket of liquid [nitrogen] and battering them against a tree very very hard than reading Baxter's Titan. It would not surprise me if reading that book causes birth defects.”

— James Nicoll

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James Nicoll 69

Canadian fiction reviewer 1961

James Nicoll (1961) Canadian fiction reviewer

[914171029.329464@watserv4.uwaterloo.ca, 1998]
1990s

“Amy Kofman: Have you read all the books in here?
Derrida: No, only four of them. But I read those very, very carefully.”

Jacques Derrida book Specters of Marx

Derrida (2003 documentary), referring to his personal library
Specters of Marx (1993), 2000s

“Reading is like looking through several windows which open to an infinite landscape…. For me life without reading would be like being in prison, it would be as if my spirit were in a straightjacket; life would be a very dark and narrow place.”

Isabel Allende (1942) Chilean writer

“I have read my books by many lights, hoarding their beauty, their wit or wisdom against the dark days when I would have no book, nor a place to read.”

Louis L'Amour (1908–1988) Novelist, short story writer

Source: Education of a Wandering Man (1989), Ch. 11
Context: How much of what we do is free will, and how much is programmed in our genes? Why is each people so narrow that it believes that it, and it alone, has all the answers?
In religion, is there but one road to salvation? Or are there many, all equally good, all going in the same general direction?
I have read my books by many lights, hoarding their beauty, their wit or wisdom against the dark days when I would have no book, nor a place to read. I have known hunger of the belly kind many times over, but I have known a worse hunger: the need to know and to learn.

“To regiment artists, to make them servants of some particular cause does violence to the very springs of artistic creation. But it does more than that. It betrays the very cause of a better future it would serve, for in its subjugation of the individuality of the artist it annihilates the source of that which is genuinely new. Where the regimentation is successful, it would cause the future to be but a rearrangement of the past.”

John Dewey (1859–1952) American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer

Time and Individuality (1940)

“Reading those books is all he does these days. I think he’s even read some of them. What kind of disturbed individual would read the same book twice, I ask you?”

Derek Landy (1974) Irish children's writer

Source: Last Stand of Dead Men

“Be it sports, theatre activities or even reading a book, I would feel I should read faster and more books than the others. Lazing around is not in my nature.”

Narendra Modi (1950) Prime Minister of India

2011, Interview with C. S. S. Latha, 2011
Context: I have been an early riser since the beginning. My initial life demanded labour and effort for survival, so I am very hard working by nature. I would toil more than my peers. Be it sports, theatre activities or even reading a book, I would feel I should read faster and more books than the others. Lazing around is not in my nature. Even today, I don't avail a Sunday. I remember when I was a child, during the India–China war, 50 kilometres from my village; there was a railway junction from where the army was dispersing aid to the war field. I accompanied some young men who went there to serve tea and snacks and give a pep talk to boost the soldiers' spirits. I didn't know what exactly this whole act was about, but I was there[. ]