Why+We+Read

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.  —from //The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian// by Sherman Alexie

It was my habit to go very slowly up the low, broad steps to the palace entrance, pleasing my eyes with the majestic lines of the building, and lingering to read again the carved inscriptions: //Public Library—Built by the People—Free to All//. Did I not say it was my palace? Mine, because I was a citizen; mine, though I was born an alien ... My palace—mine! ... All these eager children, all these fine browed women, all these scholars going home to write learned books—I and they had this glorious thing in common, this noble treasure house of learning. It was wonderful to say, //This is mine //; it was thrilling to say, //This is ours//. —from Mary Antin's autobiography //The Promised Land//, in which she describes her visits to the Boston Public Library as a child after her family emigrated from Russia

For some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die. <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;"> —from //Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life// by Anne Lamott

<span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 120%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.3in; text-indent: 0.25in;">The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go. <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;"> —from //I Can Read With My Eyes Shut!// by Dr. Seuss

<span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">"Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read." <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;"> —Groucho Marx

<span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">"Information is the currency of democracy." <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;"> —Thomas Jefferson

<span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">"Once you learn to read, you will be forever free." <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;"> —Frederick Douglass

<span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">"Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body." <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;"> —Joseph Addison

<span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">"It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it." <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;"> —Oscar Wilde

<span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">"Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing." <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;"> —Harper Lee

<span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">"A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint. What I began by reading, I must finish by acting." <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;"> —Henry David Thoreau

<span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">"What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it." <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;"> —J.D. Salinger

<span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">"We read to know that we are not alone." <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;"> —C.S. Lewis, as played by Anthony Hopkins in the 1993 film //Shadowlands//, written by William Nicholson

<span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">"You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive." <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;"> —James Baldwin

<span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">"My alma mater was books, a good library ... I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity." <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;"> —Malcolm X

<span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">"When I look back, I am so impressed again with the life-giving power of literature. If I were a young person today, trying to gain a sense of myself in the world, I would do that again by reading, just as I did when I was young." <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;"> —Maya Angelou

<span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">"Books are mirrors: you only see in them what you already have inside you." <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;"> —Carlos Ruiz Zafón

<span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">"If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that." <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;"> —Stephen King

<span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">"No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader." <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;"> —Robert Frost

<span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">"The man who has no imagination has no wings." <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;"> —Muhammad Ali

<span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">"You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus." <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;"> —Mark Twain

<span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">"I imagine that yes is the only living thing." <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;"> —e.e. cummings

<span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">"I think of it like that scene in [//Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade//], where he has to go across where there is no bridge, and he has to step out into nothingness—and there is a bridge you cannot see, below. It's an optical illusion. That's how I need writing to feel: finding the way by being willing to fall." <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;"> —Miranda July

<span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">"If you're serious about becoming a professional writer, prepare to have some other way of earning a living. Many fine writers don't earn enough to live on. Read widely. Master the tools of writing. I know that spelling, punctuation, and grammar are boring, but they are necessary." <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;"> —Beverly Cleary

<span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">"Read, read, read. Read everything—trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it. Then write. If it's good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out the window." <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;"> —William Faulkner