Alice In Wonderland Book Quotes

Where should I go?" -Alice. "That depends on where you want to end up." - The Cheshire Cat.

And what is the use of a book," thought Alice, "without pictures or conversation?

Books help to form us. If you cut me open, you will find volume after volume, page after page, the contents of every one I have ever read, somehow transmuted and transformed into me. Alice in Wonderland. the Magic Faraway Tree. The Hound of the Baskervilles. The Book of Job. Bleak House. Wuthering Heights. The Complete Poems of W H Auden. The Tale of Mr Tod. Howard''s End. What a strange person I must be. But if the books I have read have helped to form me, then probably nobody else who ever lived has read exactly the same books, all the same books and only the same books as me. So just as my genes and the soul within me make me uniquely me, so I am the unique sum of the books I have read. I am my literary DNA.

Lewis Carroll. He was an odd one. Real name was Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. Completely denied having anything to do with the Alice books. Daft as a brush. You'd have liked him!

Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, “and what is the use of a book,” thought Alice, “without pictures or conversation?

what is the use of a book,' thought Alice, 'without pictures or conversations?

What is the use of a book without pictures or conversations? -Alice in Wonderland

If you jotted down all of my ill-thought out comments, you could write a book entitled, Guide to Getting Punched in the Throat for Boneheads-Mad Hatter in "Death of the Mad Hatter" (Coming Soon!)

The last level of metaphor in the Alice books is this: that life, viewed rationally and without illusion, appears to be a nonsense tale told by an idiot mathematician.

Alice in Wonderland - a book about living in a world where nothing makes sense made perfect sense to me" -Ally

The Alice books belong to a branch of literature that speaks deeply and clearly to the human psyche--stories of the journey.

CUSTOMER: Do you have any of those books where you can change the names of the main character to the name of the person you're giving the book to? Do you have Alice in Wonderland, but not Alice, I'd like Sarah in Wonderland. BOOKSELLER: I'm afraid you have to buy those from the publisher, as they're a print on demand service. CUSTOMER: Yeah, I don't really have time to do that. Do you have a copy of Alice? Then I can buy some Tipp-ex or something, and edit it.

Someone should write a book about how Alice Liddell from Wonderland falls in love with Huckleberry Finn. I might rather want to read that book.

Books couldn't judge you or hurt you. They didn't make me feel small and insignificant. I know it's weird, but I always felt really close to the characters in books, like they were my true circle of friends, inviting me into their world.

The highest form of morality is not to feel at home in ones own home." Most great works of the imagination were meant to make you feel like a stranger in your own home. The best fiction always forced us to question what we took for granted. It questioned traditions and expectations when they seemed too immutable. I told my students I wanted them in their readings to consider in what ways these works unsettled them, made them a little uneasy, made them look around and consider the world, like Alice in Wonderland, through different eyes.

Her constant orders for beheading are shocking to those modern critics of children's literature who feel that juvenile fiction should be free of all violence and especially violence with Freudian undertones. Even the Oz books of L. Frank Baum, so singularly free of the horrors to be found in Grimm and Andersen, contain many scenes of decapitation. As far as I know, there have been no empirical studies of how children react to such scenes and what harm if any is done to their psyche. My guess is that the normal child finds it all very amusing and is not damaged in the least, but that books like Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz should not be allowed to circulate indiscriminately among adults who are undergoing analysis.

He lifted his shirt, and on his back was the White Rabbit, wearing his waistcoat and looking at his watch. It was just like the illustration from the book. Only standing next to him, back-to-back, was another White Rabbit wearing a leather motercycle jacket and boots and smoking a cigar.

You're caring too much about people, Alice," he says. "Take it from me: sane is mundane, insanity is the new black." I

A final word. Curious. Many years of reading many books has led me to a somewhat bizarre literary critical theory, namely that all significant texts are distinguished by the preponderance of a single word. In Alice’s adventures in Wonderland that word is ‘curious’ (In The Brothers Karamazov it’s ‘ecstasy’, but that needn’t concern us here.) The word ‘curious’ appears so frequently in Carroll’s text that it becomes a kind of tocsin awakening us from our reverie. But it isn’t the strangeness of Alice’s Wonderland that it reminds us of-it’s the bizarre incomprehensibility of our own.

But now? Now? Children in the twentieth and this early twenty-first century hated the Alice books, couldn't read them, and why should they? Their world had strayed into madness long ago. Look at the planet. Rain is acid, poisonous. Sun causes cancer. Sex=death. Children murder other children. Parents lie, leaders lie, the churches have less moral credibility than Benetton ads. And the faces of missing children staring out from milk cartons-imagine all those poor Lost Boys, and Lost Girls, not in Neverland but lost here, lost now. No wonder Wonderland isn't funny anymore: We live there full-time. We need a break from it.

My favourite book is my dictionary. It excites me. Each time I open it, the endless possibilities come tumbling out. It’s Alice falling into Wonderland. It’s an artist’s paint box. It’s a new day.

I can't go back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.

The title was Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass. He frowned at it in confusion. It wasn’t what he’d thought a mortal book would be like; he thought they would be dull things, odes to their cars or skyscrapers.

When I used to read fairy tales, I fancied that kind of thing never happened, and now here I am in the middle of one! There ought to be a book written about me, that there ought! And when I grow up, I'll write one—but I'm grown up now," she added in a sorrowful tone: "at least there's no room to grow up any more here.

If you hold your breath long enough, you're dead. If you give up and start breathing, you're mad. Isn't that so, Alice from Wonderland?

Curiouser and curiouser." Startled,I glanced at him. "I say that sometimes." Even with his face tight with worry, Dad managed to look a little amused. "It's from Alice in Wonderland. Appropriate, don't you think?" Yeah,except that our rabbit hole was a heck of a lot darker,I thought. I pretended to study the bookcase in the far corner. I'd expected boring books about Prodigium history or shifter economy, and there were a few of those, but I also noticed some recent fiction, as well as several Roald Dahl books. Dad went up in my estimation another notch.

is the use of a book,' thought Alice 'without pictures or conversation?' So she was considering in her own mind (as well as she could, for the hot day made her feel very sleepy and stupid), whether the pleasure of making a daisy-chain

They told me you had been to her, And mentioned me to him: She gave me a good character, But said I could not swim. He sent them word I had not gone (We know it to be true): If she should push the matter on, What would become of you? I gave her one, they gave him two, You gave us three or more; They all returned from him to you, Though they were mine before. If I or she should chance to be Involved in this affair, He trusts to you to set them free, Exactly as we were. My notion was that you had been (Before she had this fit) An obstacle that came between Him, and ourselves, and it. Don't let him know she liked them best, For this must ever be A secret, kept from all the rest, Between yourself and me.' –

this was a book about working out who you were. About identity, constant and threatened.

It isn't hard at all," Fabiola says. "This is what true humans feel. We're all here in this world to help one another." "And

Insane things come to those who wait.

One of the rules of the sane world… the poor keep getting poorer, and the rich keep getting… bitchier.

When she was sane, she was very, very sane. And when she was mad, she was Alice.

The only way to stay sane in the world outside is to save a soul every day.

If you've survived parasites and bacteria until the age of nineteen, you can survive sane people.

I know why a raven is like a writing desk.

Be yourself. Everyone else is taken.

You will have to shake hands with the devil to save the innocent.

When I walk next to a wall, I want people to only notice the wall.

It took Lucy forty hours to die and we hardly left her side. . . .We spent those last hours kissing her frequently and telling her how deeply we loved her. Then I began to read Leah’s children’s books out loud to her. She had lived a storyless childhood, so I read in the last day of her life the books she had missed. I told her about Winnie the Pooh and Yertle the Turtle, took her Where the Wild Things Are, introduced her to Peter Rabbit and Alice in Wonderland. Each of us took turns reading to her out of Grimm’s Fairy Tales, and, at the very last, Leah insisted that I tell all the Great Dog Chippie stories I had told her during our year of exile from the family in Rome.

She was a very small girl with a face as lovely and fresh as her son’s face—a very small girl. Most of the time she knew she was smarter and prettier than anyone else. But now and then a lonely fear would fall upon her so that she seemed surrounded by a tree-tall forest of enemies. Then every thought and word and look was aimed to hurt her, and she had no place to run and no place to hide. And she would cry in panic because there was no escape and no sanctuary. Then one day she was reading a book—brown, with a silver title, and the cloth was broken and the boards thick. It was Alice in Wonderland. But it was the bottle which said, “Drink me” that had changed her life.

Books say: she did this because. Life says: she did this. Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren't. I'm not surprised some people prefer books.' A story reflects life but also redeems it: assembled on the page, even unpredictable events can be plotted, their random scatter made part of a meaningful design.

That first day I asked my students what they thought fiction should accomplish, why one should bother to read fiction at all. It was an odd way to start, but I did succeed in getting their attention. I explained that we would in the course of the semester read and discuss many different authors, but that one thing these authors all had in common was their subversiveness. Some, like Gorky or Gold, were overtly subversive in their political aims; others, like Fitzgerald and Mark Twain, were in my opinion more subversive, if less obviously so. I told them we would come back to this term, because my understanding of it was somewhat different from its usual definition. I wrote on the board one of my favorite lines from the German thinker Theodor Adorno: “The highest form of morality is not to feel at home in one’s own home.” I explained that most great works of the imagination were meant to make you feel like a stranger in your own home. The best fiction always forced us to question what we took for granted. It questioned traditions and expectations when they seemed too immutable. I told my students I wanted them in their readings to consider in what ways these works unsettled them, made them a little uneasy, made them look around and consider the world, like Alice in Wonderland, through different eyes.

Fury said to a mouse, That he met in the house, "Let us both go to law: I will prosecute you.—Come, I'll take no denial; We must have a trial: For really this morning I've nothing to do." Said the mouse to the cur, "Such a trial, dear Sir, With no jury or judge, would be wasting our breath." "I'll be judge, I'll be jury," Said cunning old Fury: "I'll try the whole cause, and condemn you to death.

Over the years I suffered poverty and rejection and came to believe that my mother had formed me for a freedom that was unattainable, a delusion. Then ... I was ... confined to this small apartment in this alien city of Rochester. ... Looking about, I saw millions of old people in my situation, wailing like lost puppies because they were alone and had no one to talk to. But they had become enslaved by habits which bound their lives to warm bodies that talked. I was free! Although my mother had ceased to be a warm body in 1944, she had not forsaken me. She comforts me with every book I read. Once again I am five, leaning on her shoulder, learning the words as she reads aloud ‘Alice in Wonderland’.

Either the well was very deep, or she fell very slowly, for she had plenty of time as she went down to look about her, and to wonder what was going to happen next. First, she tried to look down and make out what she was coming to, but it was too dark to see anything: then she looked at the sides of the well, and noticed that they were filled with cupboards and book-shelves: here and there she saw maps and pictures hung upon pegs. She took down a jar from one of the shelves as she passed: it was labelled “ORANGE MARMALADE,” but to her great disappointment it was empty: she did not like to drop the jar, for fear of killing somebody underneath, so managed to put it into one of the cupboards as she fell past it.

The creator of Alice in Wonderland was not just an expert in poetic nonsense; Lewis Carroll (or Charles Dodgson, to use his real name) was also an Oxford mathematician with a taste for symbolic logic and a distaste, in the sunset of the Victorian era, for new-fangled maths theories and practices.

How doth the little crocodile improve his shining tall, and pour the waters of the Nile on every golden scale.” His eyes flicked meaningfully from the book to Alice before he continued. “How cheerfully he seems to grin, how neatly spreads his claws, and welcomes little fishes in, with gently smiling jaws.

To adapt Alice's comment on her sister's book before she fell into Wonderland, what is the use of a God who does no miracles and answers no prayers? Remember Ambrose Bierce's witty definition of the verb 'to pray': 'to ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner, confessedly unworthy'.

Cardan had his polished boots resting on a rock and his head pillowed on the utterly ridiculous mortal book he'd been reading. Since the one with the girl and the rabbit and the bad queen, he'd discovered he had a taste for human novels. A hob in the market traded them to Cardan for roses smuggled out of the royal gardens.

He looked down at a red book, embossed in gold. The title was Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass. He frowned at it in confusion. It wasn't what he'd thought a mortal book would be like; he thought they would be dull things, odes to their cars or skyscrapers. ... 'This is really a mortal book?' he asked.

Books on one shelf, a small collection of old titles. Isak Dinesen, bound in leather. Alice in Wonderland, in an old illustrated edition. The kind of things someone kept to show visitors how smart they were. Accessories to identity. But one book—a copy of Cadillac Desert, old. He reached for it. “Don’t,” she said. “It’s a signed first.” Angel smirked. “ ’Course it is.” Then: “My boss makes all her new hires read that. She likes us to see this mess isn’t an accident. We were headed straight to Hell, and didn’t do anything about it.

I just realized he was phrasing all of his questions as statements. Wasn’t there a character in Alice in Wonderland who did that? Did Alice punch him in the face?

Tell me, Alice." He rubs something off his trousers. "On a scale from one to insanity, how insane are you?

It's easy, Constance. All you have to do is believe." "Believe in what, Alice?" "Madness." I pull her tighter and jump.

purse my lips for a while, contemplating if the shock therapy still scares me. I think it doesn’t. It’s just pain. And trust me, there are much worse things in this life than pain.

When I get closer, I notice his head is cut off. He wears it on and off, and even kicks it like a football and runs after it. His overalls are spattered with blood.

Sane people care too much about silly things, Alice,

That Alice is horrible," the Pillar mumbles. "In the real book, she wore yellow, not blue. Blue is Disney's doing."    "You

most politicians, she's fooled them by promising the impossible," the Pillar says. "Did you ever notice if you promise the possible, people won't believe you?

The best book on programming for the layman is Alice in Wonderland, but that's because it's the best book on anything for the layman.

Like the Cheshire used to say: if you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there,

You know what insane people are, Alice?" the Pillar says. "They are just sane people who know too much." "I

and what is the use of a book,” thought Alice “without pictures or conversations?

Chapter I

first kneeling to thank that unseen Friend, who sends you the beautiful sun?

there was a real one, blazing away as brightly as the one she

Virginia Woolf observes that "the two Alices are not books for children; they are the only books in which we become children.... To become a child is very literal; to find everything so strange that nothing is surprising; to be heartless, to be ruthless, yet to be so passionate that a snub or a shadow drapes the world in gloom. It is so to be Alice in Wonderland.

None of this seems real,” said Alice. “I’m like Alice in Wonderland. Remember how much I hated that book? Because nothing made sense. You didn’t like it either. We liked things to make sense.

There ought to be a book written about me, that there ought! And when I grow up, I’ll write one—but I’m grown up now,” she added in a sorrowful tone; “at least there’s no room to grow up any more here.

And just so you know—that winter forest we walked into first? That was from Through the Looking Glass too. Hey, if you’re going to saddle me with the blame for your overconsumption, at least get the book right.

Another case for the dumbness of reading, however, is that books do not contain answers, but rather pose more questions. And asking questions makes you look dumber, not smarter. I thought Alice's Adventures in Wonderland would be a delightful romp through a child's subconscious, but while reading it I started to ask questions like "How do you really speak to other humans when our language often means the opposite of what is intended?" and "How do I really know anyone?" And so on, until I was asking the question "Why even exist at all?" That didn't make me smarter! That made me wish for death, and being dead looks way dumber than being alive.

Well, I want novels,' said Tessa. 'Or poetry. Books are for reading, not for turning oneself into livestock.' Will's eyes glittered. 'I think we may have a cope of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland about somewhere.' Tessa wrinkled her nose. 'Oh, that's for little children, isn't it?' she said. "I never liked it much-seemed like so much nonsense.' Will's eyes were very blue. 'There's plenty of sense in nonsense sometimes, if you wish to look for it.

on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, 'and what is the use of a book,' thought Alice 'without pictures or conversation?

I almost wish I hadn’t gone down that rabbit-hole — and yet — and yet — it’s rather curious, you know, this sort of life! I do wonder what can have happened to me! When I used to read fairy-tales, I fancied that kind of thing never happened, and now here I am in the middle of one! There ought to be a book written about me, that there ought! And when I grow up, I’ll write one — but I’m grown up now,’ she added in a sorrowful tone; ‘at least there’s no room to grow up any more here.

was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, “and what is the use of a book,

bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, 'and what is the use of a book,' thought Alice 'without pictures or conversation?' So she was considering in her own mind (as well as she could, for the hot day made her

First, she tried to look down and make out what she was coming to, but it was too dark to see anything; then she looked at the sides of the well, and noticed that they were filled with cupboards and book-shelves; here and there she saw maps and pictures hung upon pegs. She took down a jar from one of the shelves as she

When he was seventy-four years old the Cretan novelist Nikos Kazantzakis began a book. He called it Report to Greco... Kazantzakis thought of himself as a soldier reporting to his commanding officer on a mortal mission—his life. ... Well, there is only one Report to Greco, but no true book... was ever anything else than a report. ... A true book is a report upon the mystery of existence... it speaks of the world, of our life in the world. Everything we have in the books on which our libraries are founded—Euclid's figures, Leonardo's notes, Newton's explanations, Cervantes' myth, Sappho's broken songs, the vast surge of Homer—everything is a report of one kind or another and the sum of all of them together is our little knowledge of our world and of ourselves. Call a book Das Kapital or The Voyage of the Beagle or Theory of Relativity or Alice in Wonderland or Moby-Dick, it is still what Kazantzakis called his book—it is still a "report" upon the "mystery of things." But if this is what a book is... then a library is an extraordinary thing. ... The existence of a library is, in itself, an assertion. ... It asserts that... all these different and dissimilar reports, these bits and pieces of experience, manuscripts in bottles, messages from long before, from deep within, from miles beyond, belonged together and might, if understood together, spell out the meaning which the mystery implies. ... The library, almost alone of the great monuments of civilization, stands taller now than it ever did before. The city... decays. The nation loses its grandeur... The university is not always certain what it is. But the library remains: a silent and enduring affirmation that the great Reports still speak, and not alone but somehow all together...

In logic class, I opened my textbook—the last place I was expecting to find comic inspiration—and was startled to find that Lewis Carroll, the supremely witty author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, was also a logician. He wrote logic textbooks and included argument forms based on the syllogism, normally presented in logic books this way: All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. _________________________________ Therefore, Socrates is mortal. But Carroll’s were more convoluted, and they struck me as funny in a new way: 1) Babies are illogical. 2) Nobody is despised who can manage a crocodile. 3) Illogical persons are despised. __________________________________________ Therefore, babies cannot manage crocodiles. And: 1) No interesting poems are unpopular among people of real taste. 2) No modern poetry is free from affectation. 3) All your poems are on the subject of soap bubbles. 4) No affected poetry is popular among people of taste. 5) Only a modern poem would be on the subject of soap bubbles. __________________________________________ Therefore, all your poems are uninteresting.

had plenty of time as she went down to look about her and to wonder what was going to happen next. First, she tried to look down and make out what she was coming to, but it was too dark to see anything; then she looked at the sides of the well, and noticed that they were filled with cupboards and book-shelves; here and there she saw maps and pictures hung upon pegs. She

she had plenty of time as she went down to look about her and to wonder what was going to happen next. First, she tried to look down and make out what she was coming to, but it was too dark to see anything; then she looked at the sides of the well, and noticed that they were filled with cupboards and book-shelves; here and there she saw maps and pictures hung upon pegs.

Unfortunately, Her Majesty couldn't come. One of her Welsh dogs had been suddenly sick. The poor dog, whose name was Maddog, had gorged on a sizable portion of the Queen's Brazilian nuts last night, eventually fated with a terrible case of chronic constipation. The Queen demanded she would not attend the game until Maddog pooped, which apparently never happened.    Renowned

Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, 'and what is the use of a book,' thought Alice 'without pictures or conversation?' So she was considering in her own mind (as well as she could, for the hot day made her feel very sleepy and stupid), whether the pleasure of making a daisy-chain would be worth the trouble of getting up and picking the daisies, when suddenly a White Rabbit with pink eyes ran close by her. There was nothing so very remarkable in that; nor did Alice think it so very much out of the way to hear the Rabbit say to itself, 'Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be late!' (when she thought it over afterwards, it occurred to her that she ought to have wondered at this, but at the time it all seemed quite natural); but when the Rabbit actually took a watch out of its waistcoat-pocket, and looked at it, and then hurried on, Alice started to her feet, for it flashed across her mind that she had never before seen a rabbit with either a waistcoat-pocket, or a watch

It’s rather curious, you know, this sort of life! I do wonder what can have happened to me! When I used to read fairy tales, I fancied that kind of thing never happened, and now here I am in the middle of one! There ought to be a book written about me, that there ought! And when I grow up, I’ll write one—but I’m grown up now,” she added in a sorrowful tone; “at least there’s no room to grow up any more here.

but when the Rabbit actually took a watch out of its waistcoat-pocket, and looked at it, and then hurried on, Alice started to her feet, for it flashed across her mind that she had never before seen a rabbit with either a waistcoat-pocket, or a watch to take out of it, and burning with curiosity, she ran across the field after it, and fortunately was just in time to see it pop down a large rabbit-hole under the hedge.

when she looked down at her feet, they seemed to be almost out of sight, they were getting so far off). 'Oh, my poor little feet, I wonder who will put on your shoes and stockings for you now, dears? I'm sure I shan't be able! I shall be a great deal too far off to trouble myself about you: you must manage the best way you can;—but I must be kind to them,' thought Alice, 'or perhaps they won't walk the way I want to go!

At this moment the King, who had it for sometime been busily writing in his notebook, called out “Silence!” and read out from his book, “Rule Forty-two. All persons more than a mile high to leave the court.” Everybody looked at Alice. I’m not a mile high,” said Alice: “besides, that’s not a regular rule: you invented it just now.” “It’s the oldest rule in the book,” said the King. “Then it ought to be Number One,” said Alice.

Let us take them in order. The first is the taste, Which is meagre and hollow, but crisp: Like a coat that is rather too tight in the waist, With a flavour of Will-o'-the-wisp. –––––––– "Its habit of getting up late you'll agree That it carries too far, when I say That it frequently breakfasts at five-o'clock tea, And dines on the following day. –––––––– "The third is its slowness in taking a jest. Should you happen to venture on one, It will sigh like a thing that is deeply distressed: And it always looks grave at a pun. –––––––– "The fourth is its fondness for bathing-machines, Which is constantly carries about, And believes that they add to the beauty of scenes— A sentiment open to doubt. –––––––– "The fifth is ambition. It next will be right To describe each particular batch: Distinguishing those that have feathers, and bite, And those that have whiskers, and scratch.

ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND Lewis Carroll THE MILLENNIUM FULCRUM EDITION 3.0 CHAPTER I Down the Rabbit-Hole Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, 'and what is the use of a book,' thought Alice 'without pictures or conversation?' So she was considering in her own mind (as well as she could, for the hot day made her feel very sleepy and stupid), whether the pleasure of making a daisy-chain would be worth the trouble of getting up and picking the daisies, when suddenly a White Rabbit with pink eyes ran close by her. There was nothing so very remarkable in that; nor did Alice think it so very much out of the way to hear the Rabbit say to itself, 'Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be late!' (when she thought it over afterwards, it occurred to her that she ought to have wondered at this, but at the

I almost wish I hadn’t gone down that rabbit-hole—and yet—and yet—it’s rather curious, you know, this sort of life! I do wonder what can have happened to me! When I used to read fairy tales, I fancied that kind of thing never happened, and now here I am in the middle of one! There ought to be a book written about me, that there ought! And when I grow up, I’ll write one—but I’m grown up now,” she added in a sorrowful tone; “at least there’s no room to grow up any more here.” “But then,” thought Alice, “shall I never get any older than I am now? That’ll be a comfort, one way—never to be an old woman—but then—always to have lessons to learn! Oh, I shouldn’t like that!” “Oh, you foolish Alice!” she answered herself. “How can you learn lessons in here? Why, there’s hardly room for you, and no room at all for any lesson-books!” And so she went on, taking first one side and then the other, and making quite a conversation of it altogether; but after a few minutes she heard a voice outside, and stopped to listen.

I gave my son a lavishly illustrated edition of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland for his fourth birthday, and it did not take very long for me to realize that this was a gift for me, not for him. As Alice engaged in repartee with a dodo early in the book, my son became bored. Alice’s bewilderment and disorientation, which I had anticipated might speak to my son’s experience of being a child in an adult’s world, spoke instead to my own experience navigating the world of information. Being lost in Wonderland is what it feels like to learn about an unfamiliar subject, and research is inevitably a rabbit hole. I fell down it, in my investigation of immunization, and fell and fell, finding that it was much deeper than I anticipated. Like Alice, I fell past shelves full of books, more than I could ever read. Like Alice, I arrived at locked doors. “Drink me,” I was commanded by one source. “Eat me,” I was told by another. They had opposite effects - I grew and shrank, I believed and did not believe. I cried and then found myself swimming in my own own tears.

Suggested Reading Nuha al-Radi, Baghdad Diaries Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin Jane Austen, Emma, Mansfield Park, and Pride and Prejudice Saul Bellow, The Dean’s December and More Die of Heartbreak Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland Joseph Conrad, Under Western Eyes Henry Fielding, Shamela and Tom Jones Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary Anne Frank, The Diary of Anne Frank Henry James, The Ambassadors, Daisy Miller, and Washington Square Franz Kafka, In the Penal Colony and The Trial Katherine Kressman Taylor, Address Unknown Herman Melville, The Confidence Man Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita, Invitation to a Beheading, and Pnin Sarah Orne Jewett, The Country of the Pointed Firs Iraj Pezeshkzad, My Uncle Napoleon Diane Ravitch, The Language Police Julie Salamon, The Net of Dreams Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis Scheherazade, A Thousand and One Nights F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby W. G. Sebald, The Emigrants Carol Shields, The Stone Diaries Joseph Skvorecky, The Engineer of Human Souls Muriel Spark, Loitering with Intent and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie Italo Svevo, Confessions of Zeno Peter Taylor, A Summons to Memphis Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Anne Tyler, Back When We Were Grownups and St. Maybe Mario Vargas Llosa, Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter Reading

From an essay on early reading by Robert Pinsky: My favorite reading for many years was the "Alice" books. The sentences had the same somber, drugged conviction as Sir John Tenniel's illustrations, an inexplicable, shadowy dignity that reminded me of the portraits and symbols engraved on paper money. The books were not made of words and sentences but of that smoky assurance, the insistent solidity of folded, textured, Victorian interiors elaborately barricaded against the doubt and ennui of a dreadfully God-forsaken vision. The drama of resisting some corrosive, enervating loss, some menacing boredom, made itself clear in the matter-of-fact reality of the story. Behind the drawings I felt not merely a tissue of words and sentences but an unquestioned, definite reality. I read the books over and over. Inevitably, at some point, I began trying to see how it was done, to unravel the making--to read the words as words, to peek behind the reality. The loss entailed by such knowledge is immense. Is the romance of "being a writer"--a romance perhaps even created to compensate for this catastrophic loss--worth the price? The process can be epitomized by the episode that goes with one of my favorite illustrations. Alice has entered a dark wood--"much darker than the last wood": [S]he reached the wood: It looked very cool and shady. "Well, at any rate it's a great comfort," she said as she stepped under the trees, "after being so hot, to get into the--into the--into what?" she went on, rather surprised at not being able to think of the word. "I mean to get under the--under the--under this, you know!" putting her hand on the trunk of the tree. "What does it call itself, I wonder? I do believe it's got no name--why to be sure it hasn't!" This is the wood where things have no names, which Alice has been warned about. As she tries to remember her own name ("I know it begins with L!"), a Fawn comes wandering by. In its soft, sweet voice, the Fawn asks Alice, "What do you call yourself?" Alice returns the question, the creature replies, "I'll tell you, if you'll come a little further on . . . . I can't remember here". The Tenniel picture that I still find affecting illustrates the first part of the next sentence: So they walked on together through the wood, Alice with her arms clasped lovingly round the soft neck of the Fawn, till they came out into another open field, and here the Fawn gave a sudden bound into the air, and shook itself free from Alice's arm. "I'm a Fawn!" it cried out in a voice of delight. "And dear me! you're a human child!" A sudden look of alarm came into its beautiful brown eyes, and in another moment it had darted away at full speed. In the illustration, the little girl and the animal walk together with a slightly awkward intimacy, Alice's right arm circled over the Fawn's neck and back so that the fingers of her two hands meet in front of her waist, barely close enough to mesh a little, a space between the thumbs. They both look forward, and the affecting clumsiness of the pose suggests that they are tripping one another. The great-eyed Fawn's legs are breathtakingly thin. Alice's expression is calm, a little melancholy or spaced-out. What an allegory of the fall into language. To imagine a child crossing over from the jubilant, passive experience of such a passage in its physical reality, over into the phrase-by-phrase, conscious analysis of how it is done--all that movement and reversal and feeling and texture in a handful of sentences--is somewhat like imagining a parallel masking of life itself, as if I were to discover, on reflection, that this room where I am writing, the keyboard, the jar of pens, the lamp, the rain outside, were all made out of words. From "Some Notes on Reading," in The Most Wonderful Books (Milkweed Editions)

eBook brought to you by Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland Create, view, and edit PDF. Download the free trial versionit, and burning with curiosity, she ran across the field after it, and fortunately was just in time to see it pop down a large rabbit-hole under the hedge. In another moment down went Alice after it, never once considering how in the world she was to get out again. The

Surrounded by the familiar covers of Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz, I felt like this was where all lost people should go; to the library, I mean, so that they didn't have to feel bad about the strangeness of their days or the ambivalence of their feelings. If you ever feel the need to be affirmed as a human being, just grab one of those books, and you'll realize that having all these scary and uncomfortable things is part of life, even encouraged.

(Well, the following are my own so they probably 'don`t already exist in the data base'.) -------------------------------------------- Never visit a place where you have to count your change. When your carrier bags exceed the number of your teeth it's time to check out. What is an opinion but an ersatz fact? Things are nearly always better from a distance [aka The Expectation Is Better Than The Event] There's no such thing as a free 0800 number. The court scene at the end of Alice In Wonderland is a microcosm of the UK justice system. With respect to heterogeneity of shape & size, no other species approaches Homo Sapiens's level. Darwinism relaxes its hold with Western Man's tolerance of its current state of corporeal deviation. [I think this may be a reference to our overweight brethren. Ed.] Много людей - живы,только потому что нeзаконно них убить. The poncier the restaurant the smaller the portion. Remember that although the government may have the backing of the whole army, without the backing of the people tho' they be armed only with sticks, it will not be able to stay in power. An ill-defined border it is 'twixt arrogance and shyness. There are 2 types of people in the world. Those who want to part with as few of their resources as possible, and those aiming to relieve the rest of us of said resources. So if you need facts, you have to go to the news, history books, or your own kith-&-kin. This is why i term our society a "99% bullshit" society. And since the majority of folk are evidently ignorant of this, the state of affairs will endure. Finally, if you are intrigued as to what the future holds for you - take your life up to now, and extend it. Not very exciting I'm afraid.

except I can see his teeth now. They are pointed, like a scary clown.

Curiouser and curiouser,” muttered Agent J. “That’s a quotation,” said Chopper. “Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, 1865, Chapter Two.

You’re mad, bonkers, completely off your head. But I’ll tell you a secret. All the best people are.” — Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll