All Quotes By Tag: Books

“A story is not like a road to follow … it’s more like a house. You go inside and stay there for a while, wandering back and forth and settling where you like and discovering how the room and corridors relate to each other, how the world outside is altered by being viewed from these windows. And you, the visitor, the reader, are altered as well by being in this enclosed space, whether it is ample and easy or full of crooked turns, or sparsely or opulently furnished. You can go back again and again, and the house, the story, always contains more than you saw the last time. It also has a sturdy sense of itself of being built out of its own necessity, not just to shelter or beguile you.”

“أمقت تلك المسافات التي تفصلني عنك ،أتذمر من تلك المواقيت التي تسرقني منك ..أسخط على أعين تتأملك / على أنامل تلمسكعلى أنفاسك وهي تستنشقك !على نبضاتك وهي تستشعرك ، على ثيابك وهي تعانقك”

“Her reputation for reading a great deal hung about her like the cloudy envelope of a goddess in an epic.”

“Why does one begin to write? Because she feels misunderstood, I guess. Because it never comes out clearly enough when she tries to speak. Because she wants to rephrase the world, to take it in and give it back again differently, so that everything is used and nothing is lost. Because it’s something to do to pass the time until she is old enough to experience the things she writes about.”

“أنا أخبئ بين أقفاص صدري أوجاع نساء الأرض ودموع الصغار ،أنا أحمل على عاتقي خيبات ثكلى !وفي حنجرتي تستقر حشرجة حزن مدوية ..أنا الأنثى التي تقام كل ليلة على مدائن قلبهامآتم الخذلان !وبالرغم من ذلك الأسى المفرط .. .تبتسم وتمضي دونما إكتراث !”

“Doctor Who: You want weapons? We’re in a library. Books are the best weapon in the world. This room’s the greatest arsenal we could have. Arm yourself!(from Tooth and Claw in Season 2)”

“اعذرني !!لن ألوث طهري ونقائي لمجرد إرضائك ،ولن أدنس مبادئي لأكسب شرف قربك مني ..ولن أنزع رداء الطفولة من روحي من ذاتي من وجداني ..لأكون في نظرك أنثى كاملة النضوجهذه أنا إن أردتني بطهري بطفولتي بنقائي بوفائي بعطائي !!وإن لم ترغب بنجلائك كما هي ..إذهب إليهن وغادرنيفكثيرات ياسيدي من هن بحجم رغباتك !وقليلات / قليلات من هن بحجم نقائي !”

“Unless a convention of anarchists visited the library yesterday, most books ought to be in their rightful places.”

“The world is a hellish place, and bad writing is destroying the quality of our suffering.”

“MarginaliaSometimes the notes are ferocious,skirmishes against the authorraging along the borders of every pagein tiny black script.If I could just get my hands on you,Kierkegaard, or Conor Cruise O’Brien,they seem to say,I would bolt the door and beat some logic into your head.Other comments are more offhand, dismissive -Nonsense.” “Please!” “HA!!” -that kind of thing.I remember once looking up from my reading,my thumb as a bookmark,trying to imagine what the person must look likewho wrote “Don’t be a ninny”alongside a paragraph in The Life of Emily Dickinson.Students are more modestneeding to leave only their splayed footprintsalong the shore of the page.One scrawls “Metaphor” next to a stanza of Eliot’s.Another notes the presence of “Irony”fifty times outside the paragraphs of A Modest Proposal.Or they are fans who cheer from the empty bleachers,Hands cupped around their mouths.Absolutely,” they shoutto Duns Scotus and James Baldwin.Yes.” “Bull’s-eye.” “My man!”Check marks, asterisks, and exclamation pointsrain down along the sidelines.And if you have managed to graduate from collegewithout ever having written “Man vs. Nature”in a margin, perhaps nowis the time to take one step forward.We have all seized the white perimeter as our ownand reached for a pen if only to showwe did not just laze in an armchair turning pages;we pressed a thought into the wayside,planted an impression along the verge.Even Irish monks in their cold scriptoriajotted along the borders of the Gospelsbrief asides about the pains of copying,a bird singing near their window,or the sunlight that illuminated their page-anonymous men catching a ride into the futureon a vessel more lasting than themselves.And you have not read Joshua Reynolds,they say, until you have read himenwreathed with Blake’s furious scribbling.Yet the one I think of most often,the one that dangles from me like a locket,was written in the copy of Catcher in the RyeI borrowed from the local libraryone slow, hot summer.I was just beginning high school then,reading books on a davenport in my parents’ living room,and I cannot tell youhow vastly my loneliness was deepened,how poignant and amplified the world before me seemed,when I found on one pageA few greasy looking smearsand next to them, written in soft pencil-by a beautiful girl, I could tell,whom I would never meet-Pardon the egg salad stains, but I’m in love.”

“Right now, we’re living in an ugly chapter of our lives, but books always get better!”

“A book is a device to ignite the imagination.”

“Writers Are Insane. For months we are lone wolves locked in our caves. Then overnight we become publicity hounds. It’s a schizophrenic business.”

“The best way to become acquainted with a subject is to write about it. ”

“Science and religion are not at odds. Science is simply too young to understand.”