“The whole idea of what happens when you read a book, I find absolutely stunning. Here's some product of a tree, little black squiggles on it, you open it up, an inside your head is the voice of someone speaking, who may have been dead 3000 years, and there he is talking directly to you, what a magical thing that is.”

—  Carl Sagan

Carl Sagan on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson (full interview, May 20th, 1977)
Others

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Nov. 1, 2022. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The whole idea of what happens when you read a book, I find absolutely stunning. Here's some product of a tree, little …" by Carl Sagan?
Carl Sagan photo
Carl Sagan 365
American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science ed… 1934–1996

Related quotes

Mohsin Hamid photo
Carl Sagan photo

“Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

42 min 33 sec
Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (1990 Update), The Persistence of Memory [Episode 11]
Context: What an astonishing thing a book is. It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.

Carl Sagan photo
Richard Serra photo
Daniel Handler photo
Michael Jackson photo
Philip José Farmer photo
Twyla Tharp photo

“I read for growth, firmly believing that what you are today and what you will be in five years depends on two things: the people you meet and the books you read.”

Twyla Tharp (1941) American choreographer

Source: The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life

James Patterson photo

“Why, the little Voice inside my head, of course. You mean you don't have one? I did.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports

Related topics