Quotes about read
page 45

“Kerouac had lots of class — stumbling drunk in the end, but read those last books. He never blames anybody else; he always blames himself.”

Ken Kesey (1935–2001) novelist

The Paris Review interview (1994)
Context: Kerouac had lots of class — stumbling drunk in the end, but read those last books. He never blames anybody else; he always blames himself. If there is a bad guy, it’s poor old drunk Jack, stumbling around. You never hear him railing at the government or railing at this or that. He likes trains, people, bums, cars. He just paints a wonderful picture of Norman Rockwell’s world. Of course it’s Norman Rockwell on a lot of dope.
Jack London had class. He wasn’t a very good writer, but he had tremendous class. And nobody had more class than Melville. To do what he did in Moby-Dick, to tell a story and to risk putting so much material into it. If you could weigh a book, I don’t know any book that would be more full. It’s more full than War and Peace or The Brothers Karamazov. It has Saint Elmo’s fire, and great whales, and grand arguments between heroes, and secret passions. It risks wandering far, far out into the globe. Melville took on the whole world, saw it all in a vision, and risked everything in prose that sings. You have a sense from the very beginning that Melville had a vision in his mind of what this book was going to look like, and he trusted himself to follow it through all the way.

Stephen Colbert photo

“He wants to do the right thing but has none of the tools to achieve it. Because he has no curiosity, he doesn't like to read and he won't listen anybody, except the voices in his head.”

Stephen Colbert (1964) American political satirist, writer, comedian, television host, and actor

On his character in The Colbert Report in an interview on Larry King Live (11 October 2007) http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/larry.king.live/
Context: We worked very hard to keep him from being a jerk by keeping in mind he's well intentioned. Just poorly informed. He wants to do the right thing but has none of the tools to achieve it. Because he has no curiosity, he doesn't like to read and he won't listen anybody, except the voices in his head.

Tom Clancy photo

“Historically, anything that gets information to people is good for the world. The most important human being who ever lived, if you want to leave out religious figures, would be Johannes Gutenberg… that's when the liberation of human thought happened, because people could read the thoughts of people across the world, and have thoughts of their own, and publish them and spread information around.”

Tom Clancy (1947–2013) American author

2000s, Larry King Live (2000)
Context: Historically, anything that gets information to people is good for the world. The most important human being who ever lived, if you want to leave out religious figures, would be Johannes Gutenberg... that's when the liberation of human thought happened, because people could read the thoughts of people across the world, and have thoughts of their own, and publish them and spread information around. Anything that gets information to people is good. America has prospered because we're the most information-friendly society in the world.

Jiddu Krishnamurti photo

“One can go on endlessly reading, discussing, piling up words upon words, without ever doing anything about it. It is like a man that is always ploughing, never sowing, and therefore never reaping. Most of us are in that position.”

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) Indian spiritual philosopher

Part V, Ch. 3 : 3rd Public Talk Madras 14th January 1968 "The Sacred" http://www.jiddu-krishnamurti.net/en/awakening-of-intelligence/1968-01-14-jiddu-krishnamurti-awakening-of-intelligence-the-sacred
1970s, The Awakening of Intelligence (1973)
Context: One can go on endlessly reading, discussing, piling up words upon words, without ever doing anything about it. It is like a man that is always ploughing, never sowing, and therefore never reaping. Most of us are in that position. And words, ideas, theories, have become much more important than actual living, which is acting, doing. I do not know if you have ever wondered why, throughout the world, ideas, formulas, concepts, have tremendous significance, not only scientifically but also theologically.

Patrick Rothfuss photo

“On the rare occasion I miss the news and feel the need to absorb some fearmongering bullshit, I just drop a tab of acid and read a Lovecraft story. There's less pretense that way.”

Patrick Rothfuss (1973) American fantasy writer

On his Interesting times….(3 February 2010) http://www.patrickrothfuss.com/blog/2010/02/interesting-times.html
Official site
Context: I really don't go in for talking about current events on the blog. The main reason for this is the fact that I am profoundly out of touch with the outside world. I don't have cable and I don't watch the news. On the rare occasion I miss the news and feel the need to absorb some fearmongering bullshit, I just drop a tab of acid and read a Lovecraft story. There's less pretense that way.

William J. Brennan photo

“We current justices read the Constitution in the only way that we can: as 20th-century Americans”

William J. Brennan (1906–1997) American judge

Speech to the Text and Teaching Symposium at Georgetown University (October 12, 1985).
Context: The framers discerned fundamental principles.... But our acceptance of the fundamental principles has not and should not bind us to those precise, at times anachronistic, contours. We current justices read the Constitution in the only way that we can: as 20th-century Americans... The ultimate question must be, what do the words of the text mean in our time? For the genius of the Constitution rests not in any static meaning it might have had in a world that is dead and gone, but in the adaptability of its great principles to cope with current problems and current needs. What the constitutional fundamentals meant to the wisdom of other times cannot be their measure to the vision of our time. Similarly, what those fundamentals mean for us, our descendants will learn, cannot be their measure to the vision of their time.

Nelson Algren photo

“I've always felt strongly that a writer shouldn't be engaged with other writers, or with people who make books, or even with people who read them. I think the farther away you get from the literary traffic, the closer you are to sources.”

Nelson Algren (1909–1981) American novelist, short story writer

"The Art of Fiction No. 11" (1955)
Context: I don't know many writers. [... ] Well, I dunno, but I do have the feeling that other writers can't help you with writing. I've gone to writers' conferences and writers' sessions and writers' clinics, and the more I see of them, the more I'm sure it's the wrong direction. It isn't the place where you learn to write. I've always felt strongly that a writer shouldn't be engaged with other writers, or with people who make books, or even with people who read them. I think the farther away you get from the literary traffic, the closer you are to sources. I mean, a writer doesn't really live, he observes.

Don McLean photo

“I can't remember if I cried
When I read about his widowed bride
But something touched me deep inside
The Day the Music Died.”

Don McLean (1945) American Singer and songwriter

Song lyrics, American Pie (1971), American Pie
Context: A long long time ago
I can still remember how that music used to make me smile
And I knew if I had my chance
That I could make those people dance
And maybe they'd be happy for a while.
But February made me shiver
With every paper I'd deliver
Bad news on the doorstep
I couldn't take one more step
I can't remember if I cried
When I read about his widowed bride
But something touched me deep inside
The Day the Music Died.

Susie Bright photo

“I, too, recoil in pain and incomprehension whenever I hear about the latest psychopath who has shot his mother, machine-gunned his coworkers, raped his daughter, or slashed a prostitute. I notice that such men are more likely to have read the Bible than pornography, but I do not hold either script responsible for their actions.”

Susie Bright (1958) American writer and feminist

"The Prime of Miss Kitty MacKinnon" http://susiebright.blogs.com/Old_Static_Site_Files/Prime_Of_Kitty_MacKinnon.pdf, East Bay Express, October 1993.
Context: Sometimes I wonder if MacKinnon has simply been driven mad by all the sick things people do to one another. I, too, recoil in pain and incomprehension whenever I hear about the latest psychopath who has shot his mother, machine-gunned his coworkers, raped his daughter, or slashed a prostitute. I notice that such men are more likely to have read the Bible than pornography, but I do not hold either script responsible for their actions.

Roberto Clemente photo

“I do not read too much these days about Jerry May, but he is worthy of a story. He is the best defensive catcher I have seen in my 13 years with the Pirates. In fact, I have not seen many better defensive catchers anywhere in my time in baseball. A story now would do him good, make him feel appreciated. How you say, the time is appropriate?”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

As quoted in "The Scoreboard: Best I’ve Seen, Clemente Says of Jerry May," by Les Biederman, in The Pittsburgh Press (Tuesday, July 18, 1967), p. 59
Baseball-related, <big><big>1960s</big></big>, <big>1967</big>
Context: “I do not read too much these days about Jerry May, but he is worthy of a story. He is the best defensive catcher I have seen in my 13 years with the Pirates. In fact, I have not seen many better defensive catchers anywhere in my time in baseball. A story now would do him good, make him feel appreciated. How you say, the time is appropriate?" Clemente always knew May could catch but May has opened his eyes in the formidable way he blocks the plate with a runner and the ball both bearing down on him. "He’s a take-charge catcher. He bosses the player throwing the ball – I tell you, that kid amazes me."

James Baldwin photo

“I began plotting novels at about the time I learned to read.”

James Baldwin (1924–1987) (1924-1987) writer from the United States

Autobiographical Notes (1952)
Context: I began plotting novels at about the time I learned to read. The story of my childhood is the usual bleak fantasy, and we can dismiss it with the restrained observation that I certainly would not consider living it again.

Richard Wright photo

“Strange reading? It is meant to be. The world is full of romantic, macabre, improbable things which would never do in works of fiction.”

Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist

Scraps and Morsels (1960).
Context: Strange reading? It is meant to be. The world is full of romantic, macabre, improbable things which would never do in works of fiction. When those that come within one man's notice are gathered together in a scrapbook, they tell of a world which sobersided folk may not choose to recognize as their own. But it is their own; I have the evidence.

Robert G. Ingersoll photo

“That the hearers will get more doubts from the answer than from reading the original arguments. So the Rev. Dr. Hawkins admits that he cannot defend Christianity from infidel attacks without creating more infidelity.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

"The Brooklyn Divines." Brooklyn Union (Brooklyn, NY), 1883.
Context: I see that the Rev. Dr. Eddy advises ministers not to answer the arguments of infidels in the pulpit, and gives this wonderful reason: That the hearers will get more doubts from the answer than from reading the original arguments. So the Rev. Dr. Hawkins admits that he cannot defend Christianity from infidel attacks without creating more infidelity.

Joseph Campbell photo

“The happy ending of the fairy tale, the myth, and the divine comedy of the soul, is to be read, not as a contradiction, but as a transcendence of the universal tragedy of man.”

Campbell follows with a quote from Ovid's Metamorposes, "All things are changing; nothing dies..."
Chapter 2
The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949)
Context: The happy ending of the fairy tale, the myth, and the divine comedy of the soul, is to be read, not as a contradiction, but as a transcendence of the universal tragedy of man.... Tragedy is the shattering of the forms and of our attachment to the forms... the two are the terms of a single mythological theme... the down-going and the up-coming (kathados and anodos), which together constitute the totality of the revelation that is life, and which the individual must know and love if he is to be purged (katharsis=purgatorio) of the contagion of sin (disobedience to the divine will) and death (identification with the mortal form).

Frederick Douglass photo

“It is only about six centuries since the blue-eyed and fair-haired Anglo Saxons were considered inferior by the haughty Normans, who once trampled upon them. If you read the history of the Norman Conquest, you will find that this proud Anglo-Saxon was once looked upon as of coarser clay than his Norman master, and might be found in the highways and byways of Old England laboring with a brass collar on his neck, and the name of his master marked upon it were down then! You are up now. I am glad you are up, and I want you to be glad to help us up also”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

1860s, What the Black Man Wants (1865)
Context: I utterly deny, that we are originally, or naturally, or practically, or in any way, or in any important sense, inferior to anybody on this globe. This charge of inferiority is an old dodge. It has been made available for oppression on many occasions. It is only about six centuries since the blue-eyed and fair-haired Anglo Saxons were considered inferior by the haughty Normans, who once trampled upon them. If you read the history of the Norman Conquest, you will find that this proud Anglo-Saxon was once looked upon as of coarser clay than his Norman master, and might be found in the highways and byways of Old England laboring with a brass collar on his neck, and the name of his master marked upon it were down then! You are up now. I am glad you are up, and I want you to be glad to help us up also.

Thomas Jefferson photo

“Whose foot is to be the measure to which ours are all to be cut or stretched? Is a priest to be our inquisitor, or shall a layman, simple as ourselves, set up his reason as the rule for what we are to read, and what we must believe? It is an insult to our citizens to question whether they are rational beings or not, and blasphemy against religion to suppose it cannot stand the test of truth and reason.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Letter to Nicolas Gouin Dufief, Philadelphia bookseller (1814) who had been prosecuted for selling the book Sur la Création du Monde, un Systême d'Organisation Primitive by M. de Becourt, which Jefferson himself had purchased.
1810s
Context: I am really mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, a fact like this can become a subject of inquiry, and of criminal inquiry too, as an offence against religion; that a question about the sale of a book can be carried before the civil magistrate. Is this then our freedom of religion? and are we to have a censor whose imprimatur shall say what books may be sold, and what we may buy? And who is thus to dogmatize religious opinions for our citizens? Whose foot is to be the measure to which ours are all to be cut or stretched? Is a priest to be our inquisitor, or shall a layman, simple as ourselves, set up his reason as the rule for what we are to read, and what we must believe? It is an insult to our citizens to question whether they are rational beings or not, and blasphemy against religion to suppose it cannot stand the test of truth and reason.

Robert B. Laughlin photo

“The world is full of intelligent, well-meaning people who, for one reason or another, did not attend university but are nonetheless well-read and educated.”

Robert B. Laughlin (1950) American physicist

Nobel Prize autobiography (1998)
Context: The world is full of intelligent, well-meaning people who, for one reason or another, did not attend university but are nonetheless well-read and educated. Out there on the prairie lost opportunities of youth were the rule rather than the exception, and I slowly became disabused of the myth of the Bright Young Thing and have not believed in it since.

“I was mad at God, I didn’t LIKE God because of how I perceived Him, and the stuff I read on Satanism said two things that appealed to me. #1 — it offered freedom, and #2 — it promised power to control my life, and others.”

Sean Sellers (1969–1999) American murderer

The Confession of My Crimes
Context: I was mad at God, I didn’t LIKE God because of how I perceived Him, and the stuff I read on Satanism said two things that appealed to me. #1 — it offered freedom, and #2 — it promised power to control my life, and others. I’d been carted all around the state and Colorado all my life, slapped, smacked, hit, and had whatever I wanted ignored. I was mad and the idea of controlling my life to get what I wanted was like candy to me. Plus I looked at the way everyone around me lived and the stuff I read in the Satanic Bible in principle was lived out in lifestyle by Mom and Dad and everyone else I knew. No one was a real Christian. We didn’t go to church. We didn’t talk about God. … What was the point of pretending to serve God when we lived like Satanists? Satanism taught me that I should make my own rules to live by in life, and that’s just what everyone I’d grown up around did, so I got very involved in Satanism. I truly thought it was an honest way to live, and the rituals of it would enable me to control my life. Even then I didn’t want to kill anyone. That desire didn’t start until later.

Thomas Jefferson photo

“When speaking of the new testament that you should read all the histories of Christ, as well of those whom a council of ecclesiastics have decided for us to be Pseudo-evangelists, as those they named Evangelists.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

1780s, Letter to Peter Carr (1787)
Context: When speaking of the new testament that you should read all the histories of Christ, as well of those whom a council of ecclesiastics have decided for us to be Pseudo-evangelists, as those they named Evangelists. Because these Pseudo-evangelists pretended to inspiration as much as the others, and you are to judge their pretensions by your own reason, & not by the reason of those ecclesiastics. Most of these are lost. There are some however still extant, collected by Fabricius which I will endeavor to get & send you.

George Müller photo
Robert H. Jackson photo
Thomas Jefferson photo

“It is in our lives, and not from our words, that our religion must be read.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Letter to Mrs. Harrison Smith (6 August 1816)
1810s
Context: It is in our lives, and not from our words, that our religion must be read. By the same test the world must judge me. But this does not satisfy the priesthood. They must have a positive, a declared assent to all their interested absurdities. My opinion is that there would never have been an infidel, if there had never been a priest.

Richard Wright photo

“God save us from reading nothing but the best.”

Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist

Reading (1990)
Context: Do not suppose, however, that I intend to urge a diet of classics on anybody. I have seen such diets at work. I have known people who have actually read all, or almost all, the guaranteed Hundred Best Books. God save us from reading nothing but the best.

“Briefly, some of them write very well, but they write from base minds that have been unimproved by thought or instruction. They feel, but they do not think. And the readers to whom they appeal are the products of our modern universal literacy, whose feeling is confused and muddled by just such reading, and who have been deluded that their mental processes are indeed a kind of thought.”

A Voice from the Attic (1960)
Context: I feel that what is wrong with scores of modern novels which show literary quality, but which are repellent and depressing to the spirit is not that the writers have rejected a morality, but that they have one which is unexamined, trivial, and lopsided. They have a base concept of life; they bring immense gusto to their portrayals of what is perverse, shabby, and sordid, but they have no clear notion of what is Evil; the idea of Good is unattractive to them, and when they have to deal with it, they do so in terms of the sentimental or the merely pathetic. Briefly, some of them write very well, but they write from base minds that have been unimproved by thought or instruction. They feel, but they do not think. And the readers to whom they appeal are the products of our modern universal literacy, whose feeling is confused and muddled by just such reading, and who have been deluded that their mental processes are indeed a kind of thought.

Philip José Farmer photo

“It was like no hell or heaven of which he had ever heard or read, and he had thought that he was acquainted with every theory of the afterlife.”

Philip José Farmer (1918–2009) American science fiction writer

Source: The Riverworld series, To Your Scattered Bodies Go (1971), Chapter 1 (pp. 3-4)
Context: It was like no hell or heaven of which he had ever heard or read, and he had thought that he was acquainted with every theory of the afterlife.
He had died. Now he was alive. He had scoffed all his life at a life-after-death. For once, he could not deny that he had been wrong. But there was no one present to say, "I told you so, you damned infidel!"
Of all the millions, he alone was awake.

Mahatma Gandhi photo

“It is also a warning. It is a warning that, if nobody reads the writing on the wall, man will be reduced to the state of the beast, whom he is shaming by his manners.”

Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India

1940s, To Every Briton (1940)
Context: This war has descended upon mankind as a curse and a warning. It is a curse inasmuch as it is brutalizing man on a scale hitherto unknown. All distinctions between combatants and noncombatants have been abolished. No one and nothing is to be spared. Lying has been reduced to an art. Britain was to defend small nationalities. One by one they have vanished, at least for the time being. It is also a warning. It is a warning that, if nobody reads the writing on the wall, man will be reduced to the state of the beast, whom he is shaming by his manners. I read the writing when the hostilities broke out. But I had not the courage to say the word. God has given me the courage to say it before it is too late.

Harry V. Jaffa photo

“DiLorenzo thinks that slavery was not the real issue in the Civil War, that it was the Whig economic program. Banks, tariffs, internal improvements, and what he calls corporate welfare. And he thinks that the slavery question was really only a sham that was not the real question; it was not the real issue. That's very strange for anybody reading the Lincoln-Douglas debates, since the subject of tariffs was never mentioned.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, The Real Abraham Lincoln: A Debate (2002), The South was a Closed Society
Context: DiLorenzo thinks that slavery was not the real issue in the Civil War, that it was the Whig economic program. Banks, tariffs, internal improvements, and what he calls corporate welfare. And he thinks that the slavery question was really only a sham that was not the real question; it was not the real issue. That's very strange for anybody reading the Lincoln-Douglas debates, since the subject of tariffs was never mentioned. The only time the word is used, I think, is when Douglas says that the tariff was one of the questions that the two parties used to discuss. But the only subject discussed in the Lincoln-Douglas debates was slavery in the territories.

“You can’t become a saint by taking dope, stealing your friends’ typewriters, giving girls chancres, not supporting your wife and children, and then reading St. John of the Cross.”

Kenneth Rexroth (1905–1982) American poet, writer, anarchist, academic and conscientious objector

Rothenberg and Antin interview (1958)
Context: You can’t become a saint by taking dope, stealing your friends’ typewriters, giving girls chancres, not supporting your wife and children, and then reading St. John of the Cross. All of that, when it’s happened before, has typified the collapse of civilization … and today the social fabric is falling apart so fast, it makes your head swim.

John Dryden photo

“Those who accuse him to have wanted learning, give him the greater commendation: he was naturally learn'd; he needed not the spectacles of Books to read Nature; he look'd inwards, and found her there.”

John Dryden (1631–1700) English poet and playwright of the XVIIth century

Essay of Dramatick Poesie (1668)
Context: To begin then with Shakespeare; he was the man who of all Modern, and perhaps Ancient Poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul. All the Images of Nature were still present to him, and he drew them not laboriously, but luckily: when he describes any thing, you more than see it, you feel it too. Those who accuse him to have wanted learning, give him the greater commendation: he was naturally learn'd; he needed not the spectacles of Books to read Nature; he look'd inwards, and found her there. I cannot say he is every where alike; were he so, I should do him injury to compare him with the greatest of Mankind. He is many times flat, insipid; his Comick wit degenerating into clenches; his serious swelling into Bombast. But he is alwayes great, when some great occasion is presented to him: no man can say he ever had a fit subject for his wit, and did not then raise himself as high above the rest of the Poets

Thomas Jefferson photo

“You will next read the new testament. It is the history of a personage called Jesus.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

1780s, Letter to Peter Carr (1787)
Context: You will next read the new testament. It is the history of a personage called Jesus. Keep in your eye the opposite pretensions 1. of those who say he was begotten by God, born of a virgin, suspended & reversed the laws of nature at will, & ascended bodily into heaven: and 2. of those who say he was a man of illegitimate birth, of a benevolent heart, enthusiastic mind, who set out without pretensions to divinity, ended in believing them, & was Punished capitally for sedition by being gibbeted according to the Roman law which punished the first commission of that offence by whipping, & the second by exile or death in furcâ. <!-- in furca? what?

Toni Morrison photo

“A few words have to be read before it is clear that 124 refers to a house … and a few more have to be read to discover why it is spiteful, or rather the source of the spite. By then it is clear, if not at once, that something is beyond control, but is not beyond understanding since it is not beyond accommodation by both the "women" and the "children."”

Toni Morrison (1931–2019) American writer

"Unspeakable Things Unspoken: The Afro-American Presence in American Literature" in Michigan Quarterly Review 28, no. 1 (Winter 1989)
Context: Beginning Beloved with numerals rather than spelled out numbers, it was my intention to give the house an identity separate from the street or even the city... Numbers here constitute an address, a thrilling enough prospect for slaves who had owned nothing, least of all an address. And although the numbers, unlike words, can have no modifiers, I give these an adjective — spiteful… A few words have to be read before it is clear that 124 refers to a house … and a few more have to be read to discover why it is spiteful, or rather the source of the spite. By then it is clear, if not at once, that something is beyond control, but is not beyond understanding since it is not beyond accommodation by both the "women" and the "children." The fully realized presence of the haunting is both a major incumbent of the narrative and sleight of hand. One of its purposes is to keep the reader preoccupied with the nature of the incredible spirit world while being supplied a controlled diet of the incredible political world. … Here I wanted the compelling confusion of being there as they (the characters) are; suddenly, without comfort or succor from the "author," with only imagination, intelligence, and necessity available for the journey. …. No compound of houses, no neighborhood, no sculpture, no paint, no time, especially no time because memory, pre-historic memory, has no time. There is just a little music, each other and the urgency of what is at stake. Which is all they had. For that work, the work of language is to get out of the way.

Octavio Paz photo

“Following a path: reading a stretch of ground, deciphering a fragment of world.”

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

Source: The Monkey Grammarian (1974), Ch. 8
Context: The Great Monkey closes his eyes, scratches himself again and muses: before the sun has become completely hidden — it is now fleeing amid the tall bamboo trees like an animal pursued by shadows — I shall succeed in reducing this grove of trees to a catalogue. A page of tangled plant calligraphy. A thicket of signs: how to read it, how to clear a path through this denseness? Hanumān smiles with pleasure at the analogy that has just occurred to him: calligraphy and vegetation, a grove of trees and writing, reading and a path. Following a path: reading a stretch of ground, deciphering a fragment of world. Reading considered as a path toward…. The path as a reading: an interpretation of the natural world? He closes his eyes once more and sees himself, in another age, writing (on a piece of paper or on a rock, with a pen or with a chisel?) the act in the Mahanātaka describing his visit to the grove of the palace of Rāvana. He compares its rhetoric to a page of indecipherable calligraphy and thinks: the difference between human writing and divine consists in the fact that the number of signs of the former is limited, whereas that of the latter is infinite; hence the universe is a meaningless text, one which even the gods find illegible. The critique of the universe (and that of the gods) is called grammar…. Disturbed by this strange thought, Hanumān leaps down from the wall, remains for a moment in a squatting position, then stands erect, scrutinizes the four points of the compass, and resolutely makes his way into the thicket.

J.M. DeMatteis photo

“Considering the current mood in the United States, it should be compulsory reading for every American who thinks the Taliban and Al-Qaeda represent the totality of Muslim life.”

J.M. DeMatteis (1953) comics illustrator

"Summer Reading" (9 September 2010) http://www.jmdematteis.com/2010/09/theres-something-about-summerthe.html
J.M. DeMatteis's CREATION POINT (2009 – present)
Context: I seriously considered putting Nine Lives aside (I no longer feel compelled, as I did when I was younger, to finish every book I start). I’m happy I stuck with it: as I continued reading, the lives chronicled — in clear, compassionate prose — became more and more fascinating, and, on occasion, heartbreaking: The collision between ancient and modern culture in India threatens to wipe away traditions that have gone on, uninterrupted, for thousands of years and most of Dalrymple’s seekers struggle with that knowledge in some way. There’s a lovely chapter about a Sufi devotee in southern Pakistan — she’s known as the Red Fairy — that illuminates the lyrical, mystical side of Islam. Considering the current mood in the United States, it should be compulsory reading for every American who thinks the Taliban and Al-Qaeda represent the totality of Muslim life.

Henry Ward Beecher photo

“There are many persons of combative tendencies, who read for ammunition, and dig out of the Bible iron for balls.”

Henry Ward Beecher (1813–1887) American clergyman and activist

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 38
Context: There are many persons of combative tendencies, who read for ammunition, and dig out of the Bible iron for balls. They read, and they find nitre and charcoal and sulphur for powder. They read, and they find cannon. They read, and they make portholes and embrasures. And if a man does not believe as they do, they look upon him as an enemy, and let fly the Bible at him to demolish him. So men turn the word of God into a vast arsenal, filled with all manner of weapons, offensive and defensive.

Ralph Waldo Emerson photo

“I read the other day some verses written by an eminent painter which were original and not conventional. The soul always hears an admonition in such lines, let the subject be what it may.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Self-Reliance
Context: I read the other day some verses written by an eminent painter which were original and not conventional. The soul always hears an admonition in such lines, let the subject be what it may. The sentiment they instil is of more value than any thought they may contain. To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, — that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost, — and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment.

James Branch Cabell photo

“James Branch Cabell made this book so that he who wills may read the story of mans eternally unsatisfied hunger in search of beauty.”

Afterpiece : a hidden inscription on the Sigil of Scoteia (and so spelled, in a peculiar modification of Roman capital letters)
The Cream of the Jest (1917)
Context: James Branch Cabell made this book so that he who wills may read the story of mans eternally unsatisfied hunger in search of beauty. Ettarre stays inaccessible always and her lovliness is his to look on only in his dreams. All men she must evade at the last and many ar the ways of her elusion.

Thomas Jefferson photo

“I have read them with great satisfaction, and always rejoice in efforts to restore us to primitive Christianity, in all the simplicity in which it came from the lips of Jesus.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Letter to John Davis (18 January 1824). Published in The Works of Thomas Jefferson in Twelve Volumes http://oll.libertyfund.org/ToC/0054.php, Federal Edition, Paul Leicester Ford, ed., New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1904, Vol. 12 http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/Jefferson0136/Works/0054-12_Bk.pdf, pp. 331–332
1820s
Context: I thank you, Sir, for the copy you were so kind as to send me of the revd. Mr. Bancroft's Unitarian sermons. I have read them with great satisfaction, and always rejoice in efforts to restore us to primitive Christianity, in all the simplicity in which it came from the lips of Jesus. Had it never been sophisticated by the subtleties of Commentators, nor paraphrased into meanings totally foreign to its character, it would at this day have been the religion of the whole civilized world. But the metaphysical abstractions of Athanasius, and the maniac ravings of Calvin, tinctured plentifully with the foggy dreams of Plato, have so loaded it with absurdities and incomprehensibilities, as to drive into infidelity men who had not time, patience, or opportunity to strip it of its meretricious trappings[. ]

“I'd read SF steadily from when I was eleven until I started college. When I started college I said, "I'm not going to read that while I'm here, I'm going to learn poetry and other things of that sort" in fact I wrote a lot of poetry then.”

Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) American speculative fiction writer

Phlogiston interview (1995)
Context: Well, I decided that as a teenager that I really didn't know enough to describe character well and I was wasting my time. I'd learned as much as I could about story telling techniques and it wasn't a matter of technique any more. It was a matter of substance. As a result I said I was going to wait until I was a lot older and had more experience. So it was that after I got out of college I'd been away from SF for about four years. I'd read SF steadily from when I was eleven until I started college. When I started college I said, "I'm not going to read that while I'm here, I'm going to learn poetry and other things of that sort" in fact I wrote a lot of poetry then.

Leo Buscaglia photo

“I started my Love Class as a result of the suicide of one of my most talented students. She showed no sign of her despair. Then one day she took her life. I had to ask, "What's the good of all our learning, knowing how to read and write and spell if no one ever teaches us the value of life, of our uniqueness, and personal dignity?"”

Leo Buscaglia (1924–1998) Motivational speaker, writer

So I started my Love Class. I taught it free of salary and tuition just so students could have a forum to consider the truly essential things. I really didn't "teach" the class. I facilitated it — helping the students to discover their own magic.
A Magazine of People and Possibilities interview (1998)

Fred Phelps photo

“There's no freedom of speech in Canada. There's no freedom of religion in Canada. It is against the law to read the Bible in Canada.”

Fred Phelps (1929–2014) American pastor and activist

2000s, God Hates Canada (2008)
Context: Canada is a filthy country run by fags, which has Draconian laws making it a crime to preach the Gospel there. All of these cowardly kissy-poo preachers who telecast their milquetoast sermons into Canada have to edit out every single word critical of fags -- snip, snip, snip -- or the fag officials of Canada will arrest and criminally prosecute the Canadian affiliates, and shut down their stations! There's no freedom of speech in Canada. There's no freedom of religion in Canada. It is against the law to read the Bible in Canada.

Nicholas Roerich photo

“Builders and warriors, strengthen the steps.
Reader, if you have not grasped — read again,
after a while.
The predestined is not accidental,
The leaves fall in their time.
And winter is but the harbinger of spring.
All is revealed; all is attainable.”

Nicholas Roerich (1874–1947) Russian painter, writer, archaeologist, theosophist, enlightener, philosopher

Leaves Of Morya's Garden (1924 - 1925), Book I : The Call (1924)
Context: Into the New World my first message. You who gave the Ashram,
And you who gave two lives,
Proclaim.
Builders and warriors, strengthen the steps.
Reader, if you have not grasped — read again,
after a while.
The predestined is not accidental,
The leaves fall in their time.
And winter is but the harbinger of spring.
All is revealed; all is attainable.
I will cover you with My shield, if you but tend to your labors.
I have spoken.

Edward R. Murrow photo

“Perhaps we should warn you that there is one thing you won’t read, and that is a pat answer for the problems of life.”

Edward R. Murrow (1908–1965) Television journalist

This I Believe (1951)
Context: Perhaps we should warn you that there is one thing you won’t read, and that is a pat answer for the problems of life. We don’t pretend to make this a spiritual or psychological patent-medicine chest where one can come and get a pill of wisdom, to be swallowed like an aspirin, to banish the headaches of our times.

Saint Patrick photo

“In a vision of the night, I saw a man whose name was Victoricus coming as it from Ireland with innumerable letters, and he gave me one of them, and I read the beginning of the letter: "The Voice of the Irish"”

Saint Patrick (385–461) 5th-century Romano-British Christian missionary and bishop in Ireland

The Confession (c. 452?)
Context: In a vision of the night, I saw a man whose name was Victoricus coming as it from Ireland with innumerable letters, and he gave me one of them, and I read the beginning of the letter: "The Voice of the Irish", and as I was reading the beginning of the letter I seemed at that moment to hear the voice of those who were beside the forest of Foclut which is near the western sea, and the were crying as if with one voice: "'We beg you, holy youth, that you shall come and shall walk again among us." And I was stung intensely in my heart so that I could read no more, and thus I awoke. Thanks be to God, because after so many ears the Lord bestowed on them according to their cry.

Richard Stallman photo

“To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden’s example.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

Edward Snowden

Mike Tyson photo
Lois McMaster Bujold photo
John Travolta photo
Benjamin Franklin photo
Francois Mauriac photo
Hermann Zapf photo
William Godwin photo
Muhammad bin Bakhtiyar Khalji photo

“In short, Muhammad Bakhtiyar assumed the canopy, and had prayers read, and coin struck in his own name and founded mosques and Khãnkahs and colleges, in place of the temples of the heathens.”

Muhammad bin Bakhtiyar Khalji Turkic military general of Qutb al-Din Aibak

About Ikhtiyãru’d-Dîn Muhammad Bakhtiyãr Khaljî (AD 1202-1206) Bengal The Tabqãt-i-Akbarî translated by B. De, Calcutta, 1973, Vol. I, p. 51. Tabqãt-i-Akharî by Nizamuddin Ahmad.

Bal Gangadhar Tilak photo
Bal Gangadhar Tilak photo

“The Congress movement was for a long time purely occidental in its mind, character and methods, confined to the English-educated few, founded on the political rights and interests of the people read in the light of English history and European ideals, but with no roots either in the past of the country or in the inner spirit of the nation. ... To bring in the mass of the people, to found the greatness of the future on the greatness of the past, to infuse Indian politics with Indian religious fervour and spirituality are the indispensable conditions for a great and powerful political awakening in India. Others, writers, thinkers, spiritual leaders, had seen this truth. Mr. Tilak was the first to bring it into the actual field of practical politics. ... There are always two classes of political mind: one is preoccupied with details for their own sake, revels in the petty points of the moment and puts away into the background the great principles and the great necessities, the other sees rather these first and always and details only in relation to them. The one type moves in a routine circle which may or may not have an issue; it cannot see the forest for the trees and it is only by an accident that it stumbles, if at all, on the way out. The other type takes a mountain-top view of the goal and all the directions and keeps that in its mental compass through all the deflections, retardations and tortuosities which the character of the intervening country may compel it to accept; but these it abridges as much as possible. The former class arrogate the name of statesman in their own day; it is to the latter that posterity concedes it and sees in them the true leaders of great movements. Mr. Tilak, like all men of pre-eminent political genius, belongs to this second and greater order of mind.”

Bal Gangadhar Tilak (1856–1920) Indian independence activist

Sri Aurobindo, (From an introduction to a book entitled Speeches and Writings of Tilak.), quoted from Sri Aurobindo, ., Nahar, S., Aurobindo, ., & Institut de recherches évolutives (Paris). India's rebirth: A selection from Sri Aurobindo's writing, talks and speeches. Paris: Institut de Recherches Evolutives. 3rd Edition (2000). https://web.archive.org/web/20170826004028/http://bharatvani.org/books/ir/IR_frontpage.htm

George Adamski photo
Joseph Addison photo
T.S. Eliot photo

“Long ago I studied the ancient Indian languages, and while I was chiefly interested at that time in philosophy, I read a little poetry too; and I know that my own poetry shows the influence of Indian thought and sensibility.”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

Source: Notes Towards the Definition of Culture, T.S. Eliot. Quoted from Gewali, Salil (2013). Great Minds on India. New Delhi: Penguin Random House.

Niall Ferguson photo
Paul J. McAuley photo

“I read in some of it (the reference is to Shakespeare). It’s not so bad when you get used to it, pretty archaic though. Why do you like old stuff like this?”

Paul J. McAuley (1955) British writer

“It has everything in it, if you look hard enough,” Dorthy said, taking the sheaf. “Love, jealousy, avarice, loyalty, murder, madness...I find it reassuring that human nature is so constant.”

Chapter 3 “The Keep” (p. 171; ellipses in the original)
Four Hundred Billion Stars (1988)

Karl Pearson photo
Baruch Spinoza photo
Baruch Spinoza photo
Arthur Stanley Eddington photo
Jamaica Kincaid photo

“I don’t like to hear people speaking in my work. I like reading it, and I marvel at people who can do it well. And there’s something when you see it done well. It’s just so terrific. But I’m not able to do it.”

Jamaica Kincaid (1949) Antiguan-American novelist, essayist, gardener, and gardening writer

On the lack of dialogue in her works in “An Interview with Jamaica Kincaid” https://believermag.com/an-interview-with-jamaica-kincaid/ in The Believer (2003 Jul 1)

Elizabeth Acevedo photo
Horace photo

“Saepe stilum vertas, iterum quae digna legi sint scripturus. Often must you turn your pencil to erase, if you hope to write something worth a second reading.”

Book I, satire i, lines 72-3, (transl. Rushton Fairclough, 1926)
Satires (c. 35 BC and 30 BC)

Helena Roerich photo
John Pilger photo
Jericho Brown photo

“What happens at the beginning of your poem has to—because it’s a poem—be transformed by the end of your poem. So if the triggering moment for the beginning of your poem is a known political moment, I am fine with that, that’s great. But as I’m reading, I expect it to change because that was just the trigger…”

Jericho Brown (1976) American writer

On how poems might be structured around a political theme in “JERICHO BROWN in conversation with MICHAEL DUMANIS” http://www.benningtonreview.org/jericho-brown-interview in Bennington Review (2018 Oct 27)

Buckminster Fuller photo

“But it can hardly be read in a week. It takes some study.”

Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor and futurist

From 1980s onwards, Buckminster Fuller Talks Politics (1982)

Petina Gappah photo

“A lot of my writing is triggered by something true, either something I read in the papers, something I overheard—I am an inveterate eavesdropper—or something that happened in my very large, and very extended, family. And yet it is precisely those things that no one believes are real.”

Petina Gappah (1971) Zimbabwean writer, journalist and business lawyer

On what she typically writes about in “Exclusive interview: Petina Gappah speaks about the highs and lows of her writing career, and reveals details of her next book” https://johannesburgreviewofbooks.com/2017/09/04/exclusive-interview-petina-gappah-speaks-about-the-highs-and-lows-of-her-writing-career-and-reveals-details-of-her-next-book/ in the Johannesburg Review of Books (2017 Sep 4)

Samanta Schweblin photo

“I learned to write reading North American literature, I love your literature, but I have this feeling that if a country only reads its own literature, it will run out of oxygen.”

Samanta Schweblin (1978) Argentine writer

On her encouraging that Americans read literature beyond their country in “Samanta Schweblin on Revealing Darkness Through Fiction” https://lithub.com/samanta-schweblin-on-revealing-darkness-through-fiction/ in LitHub (2017 Jan 12)

Samanta Schweblin photo

“Most trained actors can pick up a scene and give it a good sturdy first read, but a few coaching sessions does not a trained actor make - a lesson which has stayed with me ever since.”

Belita Moreno (1949) American actress

On what she has learned working as an acting coach in “Belita -- Not ‘Benny’ – Moreno” http://latinola.com/story.php?story=8908 in ¡LatinoLA! (2010 Sep 12)

Newton Lee photo
Jaquira Díaz photo
Jon Pineda photo

“I think it’s relative to the story you’re writing. Some novels are filled with summary and some are filled with scenes. Others are a beautiful, confusing mix, of course. Ultimately, I wanted to write a novel that I’d want to read later.”

Jon Pineda (1971) American writer

On choosing a story writing method in “7 QUESTIONS WITH JON PINEDA” https://hyphenmagazine.com/blog/2018/06/7-questions-jon-pineda in Hyphen Magazine (2018 Jun 7)

Vinayak Damodar Savarkar photo
Vinayak Damodar Savarkar photo
Daniella Monet photo
Benjamin Zephaniah photo

“When I start, I have a story that tends to have a lesson to be learnt. A lot of the time my novels are called novels for young adults and I think one of the reasons they are popular with young adults is because they read them and understand it…”

Benjamin Zephaniah (1958) English poet and author

On the appeal of his writings in “Interview | Benjamin Zephaniah” https://www.thelondonmagazine.org/interview-benjamin-zephaniah/ in the London Magazine (2018 Mar 5)

Alessandro Cagliostro photo
Malcolm Gladwell photo
Viet Thanh Nguyen photo
Kirstin Valdez Quade photo

“When I read, if I don’t know where a story is set, I always feel unmoored. The same is true for my writing: Until I place my story in a specific place, I can’t get my footing in the world…”

Kirstin Valdez Quade American writer

On the importance of location in her writings in “Kirstin Valdez Quade: How I Write” https://www.writermag.com/writing-inspiration/author-interviews/kirstin-valdez-quade/ in The Writer (2017 Apr 21)

Mikhail Bulgakov photo
Francis Bacon photo