“Men love women who are courageous for it means they can go all the way with him in his pursuit of his good dreams and intentions.”

“The books—the generous friends who met me without suspicion—the merciful masters who never used me ill! The only years of my life that I can look back on with something like pride… Early and late, through the long winter nights and the quiet summer days, I drank at the fountain of knowledge, and never wearied of the draught.”

“My interest in reading novels of various fiction was roused at a very early age. And the thought-provoking storylines of the great Donald Goines had been included in my very first library collection. (“Reviews by Cat Ellington: The Complete Anthology, Vol. 1,” 2018)”

“It was a shocking thing to say and I knew it was a shocking thing to say. But no one has the right to live without being shocked. No one has the right to spend their life without being offended. Nobody has to read this book. Nobody has to pick it up. Nobody has to open it. And if you open it and read it, you don’t have to like it. And if you read it and you dislike it, you don’t have to remain silent about it. You can write to me, you can complain about it, you can write to the publisher, you can write to the papers, you can write your own book. You can do all those things, but there your rights stop. No one has the right to stop me writing this book. No one has the right to stop it being published, or sold, or bought, or read.”

“بربك لا تبكِ بكاء المظلوم !إن زرت أوطاني يوماً ولمحت نوافذ إنتظاري مغلقةوأبواب فقدي لك مؤصدة ،بربك لا تبكِ بكاء المظلوم !إن إحتفلوا بيوم ميلادك وبحثت عن صوتي بينهم ..ولم تجده ؟ وبحثت عن هداياي من بين هداياهم ولم تصلك”

“* نجلاء .. نجلااااء …نجلااااااااء … .- الساعة الآن التاسعة صباحاً إنهضيوإنفضي عن وسادتكِ رذاذ الأحلام ،كان هذا صوتها أمي لتفيقني من ذاكالحلم الذي كنت أهذي به كل ليلة !تمنيت حينها لو أصيبت ذاكرتي بغيبوبة عنواقع لا يحتويه ،عن واقع لا يعانق وجوده !أفقت وكعادتي أمضي إلى طريق مجهولومسافات غريبة أحمل حقائب أحلاميوأجمع بها لوحاتي وأمل أتسكع بهعلى دهاليز مدينتي الباريسية !”

“إحدى يديه كانت منهمكة بالعبث في خصلات شعريوالأخرى كان ينفث بها سيجارته ،إلتقطتها منه بغضب وبإمتعاض ممقوتوهمست له : دعها تلك اللعينة فلن أسمح بأن تشاركني فيك !”

“When you are old and grey and full of sleep And nodding by the fire, take down this book, And slowly read, and dream of the soft look Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep”

“To feel most beautifully alive means to be reading something beautiful, ready always to apprehend in the flow of language the sudden flash of poetry.”

“With one day’s reading a man may have the key in his hands.”

“Yeah. Floyd is his batman.”His what?”Batman, like in the British army, each officer had a batman, a personal servant.”You spend too much time reading, Spenser. You know more stuff that don’t make you money than anybody I know.”

“I love the place; the magnificent books; I require books as I require air.”

“You read a book for the story, for each of its words,” Gordy said, “and you draw your cartoons for the story, for each of the words and images. And, yeah, you need to take that seriously, but you should also read and draw because really good books and cartoons give you a boner.”I was shocked:”Did you just say books should give me a boner?””Yes, I did.””Are you serious?””Yeah… don’t you get excited about books?””I don’t think that you’re supposed to get THAT excited about books.””You should get a boner! You have to get a boner!” Gordy shouted. “Come on!”We ran into the Reardan High School Library.”Look at all these books,” he said.”There aren’t that many,” I said. It was a small library in a small high school in a small town.”There are three thousand four hundred and twelve books here,” Gordy said. “I know that because I counted them.””Okay, now you’re officially a freak,” I said.”Yes, it’s a small library. It’s a tiny one. But if you read one of these books a day, it would still take you almost ten years to finish.””What’s your point?””The world, even the smallest parts of it, is filled with things you don’t know.”Wow. That was a huge idea.Any town, even one as small as Reardan, was a place of mystery. And that meant Wellpinit, the smaller, Indian town, was also a place of mystery.”Okay, so it’s like each of these books is a mystery. Every book is a mystery. And if you read all of the books ever written, it’s like you’ve read one giant mystery. And no matter how much you learn, you keep on learning so much more you need to learn.””Yes, yes, yes, yes,” Gordy said. “Now doesn’t that give you a boner?””I am rock hard,” I said.”

“Beware you be not swallowed up in books! An ounce of love is worth a pound of knowledge.”

“Fiction should be a place of lollipops and escape. Real life is depressing enough–I, for one, don’t want to read about make believe misery, too.”