However many reproductions I might supply, illustrations taken out of the apparatus of the individual bound book can never convey the bookishness of a book, the pace and scale and satisfaction of it, no more than a fish scale can substitute for a real, live unblinking carp, or a slice of honey-glazed ham can the suggest the respectable professional pig.
One of the ironies of college is that the impossibility of reading your way out of the modern predicament is something you learn about, as a student, by reading. Part of the value of a humanistic education has to do with a consciousness of, and a familiarity with, the limits that you’ll spend the rest of your life talking about and pushing against.
The library was a little old shabby place. Francie thought it was beautiful. The feeling she had about it was as good as the feeling she had about church. She pushed open the door and went in. She liked the combined smell of worn leather bindings, library past and freshly inked stamping pads better than she liked the smell of burning incense at high mass.
The old man was peering intently at the shelves. 'I'll have to admit that he's a very competent scholar.'Isn't he just a librarian?' Garion asked, 'somebody who looks after books?'That's where all the rest of scholarship starts, Garion. All the books in the world won't help you if they're just piled up in a heap.
Ruang perpustakaan tidak pernah cukup untuk menyimpan buku yang tidak pernah dibaca, jadi pustakawan memeriksa catatannya setiap saat dan menarik buku-buku yang tidak lagi dibaca orang.Kau bisa menyelamatkan buku hanya dengan membacanya. Tentu saja, kau mungkin tidak menyukainya. Tapi kau tidak pernah tahu sampai kau mencobanya, dan mungkin, kau akan suka.
Men know how to read printed books; they do not know how to read the unprinted ones. They can play on a stringed harp, but not on a stringless one. Applying themselves to the superficial instead of the profound, how should they understand music or poetry?From the Saikontan, by Kojisei (circa 1600) cited in Haiku by Robert Blyth, circa 1947 Tokyo, p. 73.
This book (Jarod Kintz's book) is trash. I mean, I assume it is, because that's where I found it while scrounging for lunch. However, I must admit that I haven't read it. I would have, but I am homeless, mainly due to my illiteracy (though Big Government, Keynesian monetary policy, and my struggle with alcoholism certainly played a large role).
The library knows that it is a temporary fix. We have a stamp for the inside front cover: BROKEN SPINE NOTED. It is like a bracelet worn by a diabetic. When you return the book with this message stamped inside, we know you're not the one responsible for this horrible thing. It was some other bastard before you. The book has a preexisting condition.
She seemed to have no inkling that life wasn't as orderly as her pencil case and that everything is chance and at any moment any number of remarkable things can happen that are totally beyond our control, events that rip up our maps and re-polarize our compasses - the madwoman walking towards us, the train falling off the bridge, the boy on the bicycle.
Whether the underlying cause of your dependency is a chemical imbalance, unresolved events from the past, beliefs you hold that are inconsistent with what is true, an inability to cope with current conditions, or a combination of these four causes, know this: not only are all the causes of dependency within you, but all the solutions are within you as well.
Have you really read all those books in your room?”Alaska laughing- “Oh God no. I’ve maybe read a third of ‘em. But I’m going to read them all. I call it my Life’s Library. Every summer since I was little, I’ve gone to garage sales and bought all the books that looked interesting. So I always have something to read.
I thought it was a novel.”“It is.”“What’s it about??”“You’ll have to buy it to find out, but it’s got everything: love, death and an amusing dog.”“This one’s got a recipe for apple crumble,” I said.“Don’t you love that about the novel? The capaciousness?” he said.
You don't buy poetry. (Neither do I.)Why?You cannot afford it? Bosh! You spendEditions de luxe on a thirsty friend.You can buy any one of the poetry bunchFor the price you pay for a business lunch. Don't you suppose that a hungry head,Like an empty stomach, ought to be fed?Looking into myself, I find this true, So I hardly can figure it false in you.
Probably all of us, writers and readers alike, set out into exile, or at least into a certain kind of exile, when we leave childhood behind...The immigrant, the nomad, the traveler, the sleepwalker all exist, but not the exile, since every writer becomes an exile simply by venturing into literature, and every reader becomes an exile simply by opening a book.
He wanted nothing, for the time being, except to understand .... Without advice, assistance or plan, he began reading an incongruous assortment of books; he would find some passage which he could not understand in one book, and he would get another on that subject .... There was no order in his reading; but there was order in what remained of it in his mind.
