“You do what you were made to do. Some of us were made to read and write. Thanks be to God.”

“For once the disease of reading has laid upon the system it weakens so that it falls an easy prey to that other scourge which dwells in the ink pot and festers in the quill. The wretch takes to writing. ”

“As long as reading is for us the instigator whose magic keys have opened the door to those dwelling-places deep within us that we would not have known how to enter, its role in our lives is salutary. It becomes dangerous, on the other hand, when, instead of awakening us to the personal life of the mind, reading tends to take its place, when the truth no longer appears to us as an ideal which we can realize only by the intimate progress of our own thought and the efforts of our heart, but as something material, deposited between the leaves of books like a honey fully prepared by others and which we need only take the trouble to reach down from the shelves of libraries and then sample passively in a perfect repose of mind and body.”

“The sum of things to be known is inexhaustible, and however long we read, we shall never come to the end of our story-book.”(Introductory lecture as professor of Latin at University College, London, 3 October 1892)”

“An average man is egoistic, proud and has strong self esteem. They always require partners who massage their ego not those who will drag their ego to the mud.”

“A truly good book is something as natural, and as unexpectedly and unaccountably fair and perfect, as a wild flower discovered on the prairies of the West or in the jungles of the East. Genius is a light which makes the darkness visible, like the lightning’s flash, which perchance shatters the temple of knowledge itself,–and not a taper lighted at the hearth-stone of the race, which pales before the light of common day.”

“There is no other place where you can go and basically say, “I need help with this area of my life” and someone will respond, “All right, let’s figure this out”.”

“[B]riefing is not reading. In fact it is the antithesis of reading. Briefing is terse, factual and to the point. Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting. Briefing closes down a subject, reading opens it up.”

“Books, books, books!I had found the secret of a garret roomPiled high with cases in my father’s name;Piled high, packed large,–where, creeping in and outAmong the giant fossils of my past,Like some small nimble mouse between the ribsOf a mastodon, I nibbled here and thereAt this or that box, pulling through the gap,In heats of terror, haste, victorious joy,The first book first. And how I felt it beatUnder my pillow, in the morning’s dark,An hour before the sun would let me read!My books!”

“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 !”