Personally, I don't pick books for how people think about me. I read books so I can learn.
I like what I read, I find it intellectually engaging and I don't really have that much time, so I gotta make every bit count. I read magazines and stuff like that, but if I'm going to read a book, I want to come out smarter. It's not to escape, it's to learn.
But I like my madness. There is a thrill in it unknown to such sanity as yours. ~ Book 1, Chapter 9.
Do you expect sincerity in man when hypocrisy is the very keynote of human nature? We are nurtured on it; we are schooled in it, we live by it; and we rarely realize it.’ – Book 3, Chapter 16
I am NOT an anarchist. Never have been, never will be. Just because Crimethinc put out two of my poetry books, I am labeled everywhere as an anarchist poet. I am a poet, yes. Not an anarchist. I have no formulated political philosophy other than a general feeling of disgust for the majority of the human race.
Like most of my poems, 'Lie' has several sources: I read a very troubling book called The Sixth Extinction. I took note of the way people, including me, enjoy talking knowledgeably about how the world will end. I drove to Tucson and saw the desert flowering on either side of the road. And I glanced at my spam to see what people wanted to sell me these days.
The true treasure lies within. It is the underlying theme of the songs we sing, the shows we watch and the books we read. It is woven into the Psalms of the Bible, the ballads of the Beatles and practically every Bollywood film ever made. What is that treasure? Love. Love is the nature of the Divine.
It is true, Monsieur," Raoule went on, shrugging her shoulders, "that I have had lovers in my life as I have books in my library, to know, to study. But I have had no passion, I have not written my own book yet! I always found myself alone when we were two. One is not weak when one remains master of one's self in the midst of the most stupefying pleasures.
Lizzie Harris's Stop Wanting is an unflinching book about a girlhood filled with violence, doubt, vulnerability, and loss. These gorgeously crafted and hauntingly memorable poems are a bleak place full of life, prayer, and the kind of answers only poems like these can provide.
I've always been obsessed with style and glamor and if I want anyone to get anything out of my book, it's how we can all have them in our lives.
I'm a textbook definition of that perfectionist girl who has huge expectations of herself.
I wanted a do over. A time machine. That magic wand. But real life didn't have any easy outs, and very few happily-ever-afters. The real world was more like a Choose Your Own Adventure book, with most of the choices ripped out before you even opened the cover.
Don't get me wrong, I love watching episodes of my favorite shows on Hulu and reading the daily trash on PageSix, but I also embrace the opportunity to settle down with a good book and let my mind travel to another place and time.
I strongly believe that good books are the best home accessory.
My house is filled with books, most of which I have read, some of which I intend to eventually get to. I'm always reading at least one work of fiction and one work of non-fiction simultaneously. Whatever mood I'm in, there's always a book nearby to suit it.
I think that being read to every night is the reason why I was plowing through volume after volume of 'Nancy Drew' books all by myself by the time I reached the first grade. I loved stories. I loved the escape. I had a vivid imagination.
I remember thinking that people were crazy for reading the same book more than once, but I now have a new-found appreciation for the re-discovery of literature. The lessons we learned from books in the school curriculum are reinvented and updated when we read as adults.
I would go to the beach in my turtle neck, all bundle up. I would read my book and kind of scowl, but I hadn't seen the most beautiful beaches in the world. We had a beach (in Canada) where you couldn't even go swimming. But once I travelled and saw more beautiful areas, my relationship to the planet expanded I started connect to it more and be more aware.
If everybody can author their own story, if media is democratizing because everybody can make a really good-looking website... that's the way we learn now instead of in books. It means that more people get to tell their own story in their own terms rather than having to go through publishers and editors and executives.
It's really a misconception to identify the writer with the main character, given that the author creates all the characters in the book. In certain ways, I'm every character.
I do not enjoy the promotional side of being a writer, to be blunt about it. Even with the little amount that is expected of me, which is nothing compared to the life of an artist. Writers can live in obscurity and come out of the woodwork with a book, then go back in. Artists don’t have that luxury.
I begin a book with imagery, more than I do with an idea or a character. Some kind of poetic image.
It's really a misconception to identify the writer with the main character, given that the author creates all the characters in the book. In certain ways, I'm every character. Then again, there is a huge gap between me as a person and what I do in the novel.
Since it's fiction, the book resonates, at least for me, on various levels, some of which intimate ideas about history but none of which have the kind of directly causal reasoning you cite.
At home, I dedicate occasional whole days to reading as if I’m a convalescent. The ideal place for this is the bath, where the body floats free. Books go a little wavy, but they’re mine, so who cares.