Favourite Book Quotes

So, this is my life. And I want you to know that I am both happy and sad and I'm still trying to figure out how that could be.

Reading is my favourite occupation, when I have leisure for it and books to read.

There’s this word in Japanese: tsundoku,” Neil says suddenly. “It’s my favorite word in any language.” “What does it mean?” He grins. “It means acquiring more books than you could ever realistically read.

I go back to the reading room, where I sink down in the sofa and into the world of The Arabian Nights. Slowly, like a movie fadeout, the real world evaporates. I'm alone, inside the world of the story. My favourite feeling in the world.

Grace is my favourite church word. A state of being. Something you can pray for. Something God can grant. Something you can obtain. Perfection is out of reach. But grace -- grace you can reach for.

‎He often envied people who hadn't read his favourite books. They had such happiness before them.

My favourite books got happily-ever-afters— why couldn’t I?

Vogon poetry is of course, the third worst in the universe. The second worst is that of the Azgoths of Kria. During a recitation by their poet master Grunthos the Flatulent of his poem "Ode to a Small Lump of Green Putty I Found in My Armpit One Midsummer Morning" four of his audience died of internal haemorrhaging and the president of the Mid-Galactic Arts Nobbling Council survived by gnawing one of his own legs off. Grunthos was reported to have been "disappointed" by the poem's reception, and was about to embark on a reading of his 12-book epic entitled "My Favourite Bathtime Gurgles" when his own major intestine, in a desperate attempt to save humanity, leapt straight up through his neck and throttled his brain. The very worst poetry of all perished along with its creator, Paul Neil Milne Johnstone of Redbridge, in the destruction of the planet Earth. Vogon poetry is mild by comparison.

Still, I wonder if we shall ever be put into songs or tales. We're in one, of course, but I mean: put into words, you know, told by the fireside, or read out of a great big book with red and black letters, years and years afterwards. And people will say: "Let's hear about Frodo and the Ring!" And they will say: "Yes, that's one of my favourite stories. Frodo was very brave, wasn't he, dad?" "Yes, my boy, the famousest of the hobbits, and that's saying a lot." 'It's saying a lot too much,' said Frodo, and he laughed, a long clear laugh from his heart. Such a sound had not been heard in those places since Sauron came to Middle-earth. To Sam suddenly it seemed as if all the stones were listening and the tall rocks leaning over them. But Frodo did not heed them; he laughed again. 'Why, Sam,' he said, 'to hear you somehow makes me as merry as if the story was already written. But you've left out one of the chief characters: Samwise the stouthearted. "I want to hear more about Sam, dad. Why didn't they put in more of his talk, dad? That's what I like, it makes me laugh. And Frodo wouldn't have got far without Sam, would he, dad?"' 'Now, Mr. Frodo,' said Sam, 'you shouldn't make fun. I was serious.' 'So was I,' said Frodo, 'and so I am.

What’s your favorite book? Doubt colors my voice. If you have a favorite, I don’t trust you. Any book lover has at least five they can name off the top of their head.

I wanted to thank you for saving my life. I am still puzzled about your motives
though. Was it revenge against Zedan for rejecting you?”
“You insult me. It seems that you think of everybody in the same lowly terms you
think of yourself. If there is anybody I should hate for Zedan rejecting me, it should be
you. He was only doing what is expected of him in our society.”
“You mean you don't hate me?” This was a new revelation to Brown. It worried him.
He was used to hate, he could deal with it, but this he could not understand, he had used
the girl ruthlessly and yet she did not hate him.

You’re too good for me.” He laughed. “Are we talking about the same person? The selfish fucker who curses and yells, blows up cars and beats up people, because he has a temper he can’t control? You know, the one who drinks like a fish and fries his brain with drugs? That person is too good for you?” She shook her head. “I’m talking about the boy who shared his chocolate bar with me when he probably never shared anything before, who gave me his mama’s favourite book, because he thought I deserved to read. The one who seems to be constantly fixing me up when I get hurt. I’m talking about the boy who treats me like I’m a regular girl, the one who desperately needs his bedroom cleaned and laundry washed but chooses to live in a mess and wear dirty clothes, because he’s too polite to ask the girl he kisses for help.” “Wow,” Carmine said. “I’d like to meet that motherfucker.

She doesn't know I cry for the changing times. That just as I reread favourite books, some small part of me hoping for a different ending, I find myself hoping against hope that the war will never come. That this time, somehow, it will leave us be.

The book is almost always better than the movie. You could have no better case in point than FROM HELL, Alan Moore's best graphic novel to date, brilliantly illustrated by Eddie Campbell. It's hard to describe just how much better the book is. It's like, "If the movie was an episode of Battlestar Galactica with a guest appearance by the Smurfs and everyone spoke Dutch, the graphic novel is Citizen Kane with added sex scenes and music by your favourite ten bands and everyone in the world you ever hated dies at the end." That's how much better it is.

You should not have a favourite weapon. To become over-familiar with one weapon is as much a fault as not knowing it sufficiently well.

On no days of our childhood did we live so fully perhaps as those we thought we had left behind without living them, those that we spent with a favourite book.

I am clumsy, drop glasses and get drunk on Monday afternoons. I read Seneca and can recite Shakespeare by heart, but I mess up the laundry, don’t answer my phone and blame the world when something goes wrong. I think I have a dream, but most of the days I’m still sleeping. The grass is cut. It smells like strawberries. Today I finished four books and cleaned my drawers. Do you believe in a God? Can I tell you about Icarus? How he flew too close to the sun? I want to make coming home your favourite part of the day. I want to leave tiny little words lingering in your mind, on nights when you’re far away and can’t sleep. I want to make everything around us beautiful; make small things mean a little more. Make you feel a little more. A little better, a little lighter. The coffee is warm, this cup is yours. I want to be someone you can’t live without. I want to be someone you can’t live without.

Neil McNair has become my alarm clock, if alarm clocks had freckles and knew all your insecurities.

I will never be able to read my mothers favourite books without thinking of her - an when I pass them on or recommend them, I'll know that some of what made her goes with them; that some of my mother will live on in those readers, readers who may be inspired to love the way loved and do their own version of what she did in the world.

You wrote a fucking book. Do you know how many people wish they could do that, or how many people talk about doing it and never do?

What do you think is my favourite book? Just now, I mean; I change every three days. "Wuthering Heights." Emily Bronte was quite young when she wrote it, and had never been outside of Haworth churchyard. She had never known any men in her life; how could she imagine a man like Heathcliff? I couldn't do it, and I'm quite young and never outside the John Grier Asylum - I've had every chance in the world. Sometimes a dreadful fear comes over me that I'm not a genius. Will you be awfully disappointed, Daddy, if I don't turn out to be a great author?

The love that I wanted so desperately: this isn’t what I thought it would feel like. It’s made me dizzy and it’s grounded me. It’s made me laugh when nothing is funny. It shimmers and it sparks, but it can be comfortable, too, a sleepy smile and a soft touch and a quiet, steady breath. Of course this boy—my rival, my alarm clock, my unexpected ally—is at the center of it. And somehow, it’s even better than I imagined.

Then you tell me your favourite colour so I can send you flowers, your favourite place so I can take you there, your favourite book so I can read it just so we can argue about it. I know you want to work in radio, and I plan to cheer you on every step of the way. I might even listen to TSwift, if you insist.

‎'He often envied people who hadn't read his favourite books. They had such happiness before them.

People come, people go - they'll drift in and out of your life, almost like characters in a favourite book. When you finally close the cover, the characters have told their story and you start up again with another book, complete with new characters and adventure.

Downstairs Peter Beste-Chetwynde mixed himself another brandy and soda and turned a page in Havelock Ellis, which, next to The Wind in the Willows, was his favourite book.

No days, perhaps, of all our childhood are ever so fully lived are those that we had regarded as not being lived at all: days spent wholly with a favourite book.

He glances down at his arms. “I didn’t even realize—am I expos-ing too much skin? I don’t want to be parading myself in front of you, taunting you with what you can’t have. I have a hoodie in my backpack. I can put it on if you’re—” “You’re definitely better. We’re leaving.

Be not content with the best book; seek sidelights from the others; have no favourites.

They're like a favourite novel- after you've read it once you know the story, but you still need to know it's nearby just in case you need to read it again.

I know you can do this. You’re the person who revolutionized garbage collection at Westview, remember?

You deserve so much more than hiding out in high school basements. You don't deserve to be someone's secret, Ashlyn. You deserve to be the chorus to a person's favourite song. You deserve to be the dedication in their favourite book.

There's a saying, cited in popular song, that if you love someone you must set them free. Well, that's just nonsense. If you love someone, you bind them to you with heavy metal chains.

It is now my favourite book of all time, but then again, I always think that until I read another book.

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.

Maybe no great man is virtuous. Or good. Perhaps a man rich in those qualities by definition is barred from greatness.

Your favourite virtue ... Simplicity Your favourite virtue in man ... Strength Your favourite virtue in woman ... Weakness Your chief characteristic ... Singleness of purpose Your idea of happiness ... To fight Your idea of misery ... Submission The vice you excuse most ... Gullibility The vice you detest most ... Servility Your aversion ... Martin Tupper Favourite occupation ... Book-worming Favourite poet ... Shakespeare, Aeschylus, Goethe Favourite prose-writer ... Diderot Favourite hero ... Spartacus, Kepler Favourite heroine ... Gretchen [Heroine of Goethe's Faust] Favourite flower ... Daphne Favourite colour ... Red Favourite name ... Laura, Jenny Favourite dish ... Fish Favourite maxim ... Nihil humani a me alienum puto [Nothing human is alien to me] Favourite motto ... De omnibus dubitandum [Everything must be doubted].

Here lie a man and a woman. The man is more beautiful than the woman. And for this reason there have been times when the woman has feared that she loves the man more than he loves her. He has always denied this.

Read me like your favourite book, word for word. Sing me like your favourite song, beat for beat. Take a walk with me in your dreams, hand in hand. Chant me like a prayer, bead for bead. Hold me in your arms like I am magic, dark, cursed yet loveable. Love me the way no one has ever been loved before.

They were all her favourite books, the books she had grown up with, the books that had found her at the right time, that had given her comfort when she needed it, had given her an escape, an opportunity to live beyond her life, an opportunity to love more powerfully, a chance to open up and let people in.

Bad people often end up as heroes.

And just so you know, we might be having dinner together, but this isn’t a date,” Neil says, completely straight-faced. “I just don’t want you to get too excited. I mean, your parents are going to be there, so it would be really awkward if you were fawning over me the whole time.

After my bedroom, this was my favourite place in the world. It was carpeted, and had heavy bookcases and ticking clocks and velvet chairs, just like someone’s living room. It smelled of unturned pages and unseen adventures, and on every shelf were people I had yet to meet, and places I had yet to visit. Each time, I lost myself in the corridors of books and the polished, wooden rooms, deciding which journey to go on next. Mrs

In the great cities we see so little of the world, we drift into our minority. In the little towns and villages there are no minorities; people are not numerous enough. You must see the world there, perforce. Every man is himself a class; every hour carries its new challenge. When you pass the inn at the end of the village you leave your favourite whimsy behind you; for you will meet no one who can share it. We listen to eloquent speaking, read books and write them, settle all the affairs of the universe. The dumb village multitudes pass on unchanging; the feel of the spade in the hand is no different for all our talk: good seasons and bad follow each other as of old. The dumb multitudes are no more concerned with us than is the old horse peering through the rusty gate of the village pound. The ancient map-makers wrote across unexplored regions, 'Here are lions.' Across the villages of fishermen and turners of the earth, so different are these from us, we can write but one line that is certain, 'Here are ghosts.' ("Village Ghosts")

My Dearest Theresa, I have read this book in your garden, my love, you were absent, or else I could not have read it. It is a favourite book of mine. You will not understand these English words, and others will not understand them, which is the reason I have not scrawled them in Italian. But you will recognize the handwriting of him who passionately loved you, and you will divine that, over a book that was yours, he could only think of love. In that word, beautiful in all languages, but most so in yours, Amor mio, is comprised my existence here and thereafter. I feel I exist here, and I feel that I shall exist hereafter – to what purpose you will decide; my destiny rests with you, and you are a woman, eighteen years of age, and two out of a convent, I wish you had stayed there, with all my heart, or at least, that I had never met you in your married state. But all this is too late. I love you, and you love me, at least, you say so, and act as if you did so, which last is a great consolation in all events. But I more than love you, and cannot cease to love you. Think of me, sometimes, when the Alps and ocean divide us, but they never will, unless you wish it.

I can see exactly what not to do at the moment. No doubt through the usual process of elimination I'll arrive at my favourite strategy of total paralysis.

I've always loved books. I'm passionate about them. I think books are sexy. They are smooth and solid and contain delightful surprises. They smell good. They fit into a handbag and can be carried around and opened at will. They don't change. They are what they are and nothing else. One day I want to own a lot of books and have them nbear to me in my house, so that I can stroll to my bookshelves and choose what I fancy. I want a harem. I shall keep my favourites by my bed.

I know. I know. But he's always buried in those books or shuffling around the house like he's lost in some dream." "And?" "I wasn't like that." Baba sounded frustrated, almost angry. Rahim Khan laughed. "Children aren't colouring books. You don't get to fill them with your favourite colours.

Cindy, have you heard of the second law of thermodynamics?” “Yes. Something about heat energy can never be created or destroyed?” “That’s the first law of thermodynamics. The second one is this…all organized systems tend to slide slowly into chaos and disorder. Energy tends to run down. The universe itself heads inevitably towards darkness and stasis. Our own star system eventually will die, the sun will become a red giant, and the earth will be swallowed by the red giant.” “Cheery thought.” “But mathematics has altered this concept; rather one particular mathematician. His name was Ilya Prigogine, a Belgian mathematician.” “Who and what does that have to do with your being a PI and a great psychologist?” “Are you being sarcastic? Of course you are. Anyway, what I was trying to say was that Prigogine used the analogy of a walled city and open city. The walled city is isolated from its surroundings and will run down, decay, and die. The open city will have an exchange of materials and energy with its surroundings and will become larger and more complex; capable of dissipating energy even as it grows. So my point is, this analogy very much pertains to a certain female. The walled person versus the open person. The walled person will eventually decline, fade, and decay.

I'm just conveying the brutality of the market to you, Katherin,' I say. That's one of my favourite lines. Good old market, always there to be blamed. "The people don't want history in their crochet books. They want cute pictures and easy instructions.

I tried to imagine myself as an old lady, grey and wrinkled, with my life behind me. And suddenly I knew what I wanted. Not in the details, but the broad sweep of things. I wanted my life to be like one of my favourite books: a big, fat novel, each page filled with smallwritten words as though the only way to cram so much life in was to make the writing really small. I wanted to be brave, take risks, make a difference, fall in love. The characters would be colourful, the landscapes exotic. I wanted my life to be a page-turner.

She's the places that she has a desire to visit. She's the pieces of quotes that are splattered in ink in her favourite books. She's the road trips she hopes to go on. She's the beautiful characters that mesmerised her in her favourite books. She's full of dreams, and I hope they one day come true.

what a life would be if i could just live in the mountains dense with greenery, sit by my window and read my favourite books.

The answer was again in the affirmative, so arrangements were made to bring 180 ladies out of the Palace. Sun Tzu divided them into two companies, and placed one of the King's favourite concubines at the head of each. He then bade them all take spears in their hands, and addressed them thus: “I presume you know the difference between front and back, right hand and left hand?

My favourite place in the whole city was the Sempere & Sons bookshop on Calle Santa Anna. It smelled of old paper and dust and it was my sanctuary, my refuge.

Yes, I think that of all his books this is my favourite one. I don’t know whether it makes one “think,” and I don’t much care if it does not. I like it for its own sake. I like its manners.

People aren't books. You can't bookmark your favourite pages to return to whenever you're feeling lonely; when the nights are too cold and you need something familiar to keep you warm, you can't reopen their spines and wear out their pages and call that obsession love.

I am reading Ian Rankins book Doors Open and am enjoying his dark Edinburgh narrative will rate soon once I have read it. I am also a fan of Jane Austen and have visited her Museum House in Chawton, Hampshire every year for the last three years. My Favourite book is Sense and Sensibility.

looking enraptured while Orion murmured to me that their kind could step right into the pages of a story. They didn’t just see it in their head, they lived every word, the whole thing playing out in their minds as if they were the main character, and that sounded pretty awesome. It must have been incredible to experience your favourite books first hand, to fall so deeply between the pages that it seemed as if those worlds really existed. “Which book would you go into?” I asked Orion, brushing my fingers over the thick stubble on his jaw. “There is no story I would choose to live in but ours,” he answered simply, and damn this man to hell for his silver tongue. My heart all but packed up its bags and moved out of my chest to go and live in his instead. He already owned it that completely anyway.

Mostly I read at this hour, perusing the pile of books that live by my favourite chair, waiting to offer up fragments of learning, rather than inviting cover-to-cover pursuits. I browse a chapter here, a segment there, or hunt through an index for a matter that’s on my mind. I love such loose, exploratory reading. For once, I am not reading to escape; instead, having already made my getaway, I am able to roam through the extra space I’ve found, as restless and impatient as I like, revelling in the play of my own absorption. They say that we should dance like no one is watching. I think that applies to reading, too.

It’s Fortune,” he said. “I was given the hardest consulship a man has ever had. Just as I was given the hardest life a man has ever had. I’m not the kind to surrender, and I’m not the kind to care how I win. There are plenty of eggs in the cups and plenty of dolphins down. But the race won’t be over until I’m dead.

Encouraged by this to a further examination of his opinions, she proceeded to question him on the subject of books; her favourite authors were brought forward and dwelt upon with so rapturous a delight, that any young man of five-and-twenty must have been insensible indeed, not to become an immediate convert to the excellence of such works, however disregarded before. Their taste was strikingly alike. The same books, the same passages were idolized by each -- or, if any difference appeared, any objection arose, it lasted no longer than till the force of her arguments and the brightness of her eyes could be displayed. He acquiesced in all her decisions, caught all her enthusiasm, and long before his visit concluded, they conversed with the familiarity of a long-established acquaintance.

Rilke wrote in one of my favourite books [Letters to a Young Poet], “Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.” It takes courage to live as our true selves; especially when doing so can be faced with such unkindness. But I believe the more we show of ourselves, the more we make space for positive change in the world. I feel so grateful I get to be a part of a series that is contributing to that change.

Se ti ricordi tutto, volevo dirgli, e se sei davvero come me, allora domani prima di partire o quando sei pronto per chiudere la portiera del taxi e hai già salutato gli altri e non c'è più nulla da dire in questa vita, allora, una volta soltanto, girati verso di me, anche per scherzo, o perché ci hai ripensato, e, come avevi già fatto allora, guardami negli occhi, trattieni il mio sguardo, e chiamami col tuo nome.

P.S. Please give my love to Tink, she always was such a funny little bug

The angel is free because of his knowledge, the beast because of his ignorance, between the two remains the son of man to struggle. —Rumi

She could stay at her own place, in her own bed, with her own books and her favourite teacup, without having to negotiate and explain herself.

It is better to live on the housetop than live in a house full of confusion' well, not a quote off of a book, but still my favourite.

Otrera, we meet at last,’ he said. ‘Dang, girl, you’re fine.’ Otrera’s knees shook. It’s not every day you meet one of your favourite gods. But she didn’t bow or kneel. She was done bowing to men, even Ares. Also,

Lares of the Crossroads

I'm a writer and I'm feeling like death, as you would too if you'd just flown into Grand Rapids, Michigan at some ungodly hour of the morning only to discover that you can't get into your hotel room for another three hours. In fact it's enough just to have flown into Grand Rapids, Michigan. If you are a native of Grand Rapids, Michigan, then please assume that I am just kidding. Anyone else will surely realise that I am not. Having nowhere else to go, I am standing up, leaning against a mantelpiece. Well, a kind of mantelpiece. I don't know what it is, in fact. It's made of brass and some kind of plastic and was probably drawn in by the architect after a nasty night on the town. That reminds me of another favourite piece of information: there is a large kink in the trans-Siberian railway because when the Czar (I don't know which Czar it was because I am not in my study at home I'm leaning against something shamefully ugly in Michigan and there are no books) decreed that the trans-Siberian railway should be built, he drew a line on a map with a ruler. The ruler had a nick in it.

Before we went to bed, Jake and Otto were called up to the living-room for prayers. Grandfather put on silver-rimmed spectacles and read several Psalms. His voice was so sympathetic and he read so interestingly that I wished he had chosen one of my favourite chapters in the Book of Kings. I was awed by his intonation of the word 'Selah.' 'He shall choose our inheritance for us, the excellency of Jacob whom He loved. Selah.' I had no idea what the word meant; perhaps he had not. But, as he uttered it, it became oracular, the most sacred of words.

As Rudy slumped into the corner and flicked mud from his sleeve at the window, Franz fired him the Hitler Youth's favourite question: 'When was our Führer Adolf Hitler born?' Rudy looked up. 'Sorry?' The question was repeated and the very stupid Rudy Steiner, who knew all too well that it was April 20 1889, answered with the birth of Christ. He even threw in Betlehem as an added piece of information. Franz smeared his hands together. A very bad sign. He walked over to Rudy and ordered him back outside for some more laps of the field. Rudy ran them alone, and after every lap, he was asked again the date of the Führer's birthday. He did seven laps before he got it right.

Certainly, if money could have been raised upon the book, Robert Herrick would long ago have sacrificed that last possession: but the demand for literature, which is so marked a feature in some parts of the South Seas, extends not so far as the dead tongues; and the Virgil, which he could not exchange against a meal had often consoled him in his hunger. He would study it, as he lay with tightened belt on the floor of the old calaboose, seeking favourite passages and finding new ones only less beautiful because they lacked the consecration of remembrance. The Ebb-Tide

Even today I enjoy reading a book much more second time around. A first read can be filled with apprehension. What if I don’t like the way the story goes? What if something awful happens to a favourite character? What if I get bored halfway through after I’ve invested something of myself in the story? A second read is a joy. I know exactly what is going to happen, so can immerse myself in the words and the subtleties in a way that would have been too stressful the first time.

One of my favourite things to do when I write is to bring a sense of wonder to a normal everyday setting... Yes, there are magical elements, but there are also very down-to-earth elements and often what shines through isn’t the magic, but the lanterns that the characters light against the dark... If you substitute the words “fairy tale” or “myth” for “fantasy,” the reason I use these elements in my own work is that they create resonances that illuminate solutions to the real world struggle without the need for an authorial voice to point them out. Magic never solves the problems–we have to do that on our own–but in fiction it allows the dialogue to have a much more organic approach than the talking heads one can encounter in fiction that doesn’t utilize the same tools. [from the interview Year’s Best 2012: Charles de Lint on “A Tangle of Green Men”]

From my earliest youth to the present hour...literature has been the favourite object of my pursuit, my recreation in leisure, and my hope in employment. My propensity to it, indeed, has been so ungovernable, that I may properly call it the source of my several miscarriages throughout life. It was the bar to my preferment, for it gave me a distaste to other studies; it was the cause of my unsteadiness in all my undertakings, because to all I preferred it. It has sunk me to distress, it has involved me in difficulties; it has brought me to the brink of ruin by making me neglect the means of living, yet never, till now, did I discern it might itself be my support.

My refusal to remove the book from the library was backed by a majority of the Board of Governors. I wrote back to Mr Malfoy, explaining my decision: So-called pure-blood families maintain their alleged purity by disowning, banishing or lying about Muggles or Muggle-borns on their family trees. They then attempt to foist their hypocrisy upon the rest of us by asking us to ban works dealing with the truths they deny. There is not a witch or wizard in existence whose blood has not mingled with that of Muggles, and I should therefore consider it both illogical and immoral to remove works dealing with the subject from our students' store of knowledge.(4) This exchange marked the beginning of Mr Malfoy's long campaign to have me removed from my post as Headmaster of Hogwarts, and of mine to have him removed from his position as Lord Voldemort's Favourite Death Eater. (4)My response prompted several further letters from Mr Malfoy, but as they consisted mainly of opprobrious remarks on my sanity, parentage and hygiene, their relevance to this commentary is remote.

In Rome, I had nearly five thousand volumes in my library. By reading and re-reading them, I discovered that one hundred and fifty books, carefully chosen, give you, if not a complete summary of human knowledge, at least everything that it is useful for a man to know. I devoted three years of my life to reading and re-reading these hundred and fifty volumes, so that when I was arrested I knew them more or less by heart. In prison, with a slight effort of memory, I recalled them entirely. So I can recite to you Thucydides, Xenophon, Plutarch, Livy, Tacitus, Strada, Jornadès, Dante, Montaigne, Shakespeare, Spinoza, Machiavelli and Bossuet; I mention only the most important …’ I have to admit that my historical work is my favourite occupation. When I go back to the past, I forget the present. I walk free and independently through history, and forget that I am a prisoner.

wonder if we shall ever be put into songs or tales. We’re in one, of course; but I mean: put into words, you know, told by the fireside, or read out of a great big book with red and black letters, years and years afterwards. And people will say: “Let’s hear about Frodo and the Ring!” And they’ll say: “Yes, that’s one of my favourite stories. Frodo was very brave, wasn’t he, dad?” “Yes, my boy, the famousest of the hobbits, and that’s saying a lot.

I am deeply sensitive to the spell of nationalism. I can play about thirty Bohemian folk songs ... on my mouth-organ. My oldest friend, who is Czech and a patriot, cannot bear to hear me play them because he says I do it in such a schmalzy way, 'crying into the mouth organ'. I do not think I could have written the book on nationalism which I did write, were I not capable of crying, with the help of a little alcohol, over folk songs, which happen to be my favourite form of music.

hey sammie you have just gone. my favourite memory is this whole book because it is you. thank you for recording your life. it was supposed to be longer. I guess you should know that before you passed, at sunrise, you asked to be moved to the window so you could see your side of the mountain. you said, "so I can see home". i love you Cooper

... books were not so prolific or so easily procurable from public libraries, and then many a reader had his own little collection of books of which he was proud. He knew them and loved them and had his favourite authors. His books were amongst his greatest friends, they were there to make his heart rejoice or to afford him consolation in distress.

Which is your favourite part of the book and why? I like the book all over, but I suppose if I had to choose a bit, I’d choose the place where Howl gets a cold. It so happened that when I was writing this bit, my husband caught a bad cold. He is the world’s most histrionic cold catcher. He moans, he coughs, he piles on the pathos, he makes strange noises, he blows his nose exactly like a bassoon in a tunnel, he demands bacon sandwiches at all hours, and he is liable to appear (usually wrapped in someone else’s dressing gown) at any time, announcing that he is dying of neglect and boredom. So all I had to do was write it down.

Having to amuse myself during those earlier years, I read voraciously and widely. Mythic matter and folklore made up much of that reading—retellings of the old stories (Mallory, White, Briggs), anecdotal collections and historical investigations of the stories' backgrounds—and then I stumbled upon the Tolkien books which took me back to Lord Dunsany, William Morris, James Branch Cabell, E.R. Eddison, Mervyn Peake and the like. I was in heaven when Lin Carter began the Unicorn imprint for Ballantine and scoured the other publishers for similar good finds, delighting when I discovered someone like Thomas Burnett Swann, who still remains a favourite. This was before there was such a thing as a fantasy genre, when you'd be lucky to have one fantasy book published in a month, little say the hundreds per year we have now. I also found myself reading Robert E. Howard (the Cormac and Bran mac Morn books were my favourites), Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith and finally started reading science fiction after coming across Andre Norton's Huon of the Horn. That book wasn't sf, but when I went to read more by her, I discovered everything else was. So I tried a few and that led me to Clifford Simak, Roger Zelazny and any number of other fine sf writers. These days my reading tastes remain eclectic, as you might know if you've been following my monthly book review column in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. I'm as likely to read Basil Johnston as Stephen King, Jeanette Winterson as Harlan Ellison, Barbara Kingsolver as Patricia McKillip, Andrew Vachss as Parke Godwin—in short, my criteria is that the book must be good; what publisher's slot it fits into makes absolutely no difference to me.

In an age like our own, when the artist is an altogether exceptional person, he must be allowed a certain amount of irresponsibility, just as a pregnant woman is. Still, no one would say that a pregnant woman should be allowed to commit murder, nor would anyone make such a claim for the artist, however gifted. If Shakespeare returned to the earth to-morrow, and if it were found that his favourite recreation was raping little girls in railway carriages, we should not tell him to go ahead with it on the ground that he might write another King Lear. And, after all, the worst crimes are not always the punishable ones. By encouraging necrophilic reveries one probably does quite as much harm as by, say, picking pockets at the races. One ought to be able to hold in one’s head simultaneously the two facts that Dali is a good draughtsman and a disgusting human being. The one does not invalidate or, in a sense, affect the other. The first thing that we demand of a wall is that it shall stand up. If it stands up, it is a good wall, and the question of what purpose it serves is separable from that. And yet even the best wall in the world deserves to be pulled down if it surrounds a concentration camp. In the same way it should be possible to say, “This is a good book or a good picture, and it ought to be burned by the public hangman.” Unless one can say that, at least in imagination, one is shirking the implications of the fact that an artist is also a citizen and a human being.

I was by no means the only reader of books on board the Neversink. Several other sailors were diligent readers, though their studies did not lie in the way of belles-lettres. Their favourite authors were such as you may find at the book-stalls around Fulton Market; they were slightly physiological in their nature. My book experiences on board of the frigate proved an example of a fact which every book-lover must have experienced before me, namely, that though public libraries have an imposing air, and doubtless contain invaluable volumes, yet, somehow, the books that prove most agreeable, grateful, and companionable, are those we pick up by chance here and there; those which seem put into our hands by Providence; those which pretend to little, but abound in much.

The progress of science has been amazingly rapid in the last decade; but consider the savants, those exhausted hens. They are certainly not “harmonious” natures: they can merely cackle more than before, because they lay eggs oftener: but the eggs are always smaller, [Pg 64] though their books are bigger. The natural result of it all is the favourite “popularising” of science (or rather its feminising and infantising), the villainous habit of cutting the cloth of science to fit the figure of the “general public.

Most of Jacks' books were crookedly stacked and next to volumes without any apparent reason, except for a small collection of the last book she'd have expected to find here: The Ballad of the Archer and the Fox. Something warmed inside of her at the sight of so many copies of her favourite storybook. Jacks owned seven volumes, ranging from old to very old. Positioned more precisely than anything else in his den, they sat side by set, on the tip-top of the shelf, the sort of place where a person stored books they didn't want anyone else touching. What was all this about? ... Evangeline reached for the first volume- she knew she was being distracted. But all she wanted was to look at the last page and see what sort of ending the story had. She wanted to know if it had a happy ending- if the Archer kissed his Fox girl or if he killed her. And maybe seeing all these books felt like a sign. She was starting to think that sometimes she imagined things were signs when they weren't. But that didn't mean they were not actual signs. She opened the first book, but the pages in the back were all ripped out. And unfortunately, she did not have better luck with any of the other volumes. Every copy fought her. One book kept falling from her hands every time she tried to open it. Another book only had blank pages at the end.

Being wounded by one’s own arrow signifies, therefore, a state of introversion. What this means we already know: the libido sinks “into its own depths” (a favourite image of Nietzsche’s), and discovers in the darkness a substitute for the upper world it has abandoned—the world of memories (“Amidst a hundred memories”), the strongest and most influential of which are the earliest ones. It is the world of the child, the paradisal state of early infancy, from which we are driven out by the relentless law of time. In this subterranean kingdom slumber sweet feelings of home and the hopes of all that is to be. As Heinrich says of his miraculous work in Gerhart Hauptmann’s The Sunken Bell: It sings a song, long lost and long forgotten, A song of home, a childlike song of love, Born in the waters of some fairy well, Known to all mortals, and yet heard of none.54

As a matter of fact I don’t care two pins about accuracy. Who is accurate? Nobody nowadays. If a reporter writes that a beautiful girl of twenty-two dies by turning on the gas after looking out over the sea and kissing her favourite Labrador, Bob, goodbye, does anybody make a fuss because the girl was twenty-six, the room faced inland, and the dog was a Sealyham terrier called Bonnie? If a journalist can do that sort of thing I don’t see that it matters if I mix up police ranks and say a revolver when I mean an automatic and a dictograph when I mean a phonograph, and use a poison that just allows you to gasp one dying sentence and no more. What really matters is plenty of bodies! If the thing’s getting a little dull, some more blood cheers it up. Somebody is going to tell something – and then they’re killed first! That always goes down well. It comes in all my books – camouflaged different ways of course. And people like untraceable poisons, and idiotic police inspectors and girls tied up in cellars with sewer gas or water pouring in (such a troublesome way of killing anyone really) and a hero who can dispose of anything from three to seven villains singlehanded.

We go in and sit on the sofa by the fire to dry out, and she plays her favourite records, lots of Rickie Lee Jones and Led Zeppelin and Donovan and Bob Dylan - even though she was sixteen in 1982, there's definitely something very 1971 about Alice. I watch as she jumps around the room to 'Crosstown Traffic' by Jimi Hendrix, then when she's out of breath and tired of changing records every three minutes she puts a crackly old Ella Fitzgerald LP on, and we lie on the sofa and read our books, and steal glances at each other every now and then, like that bit between Michael York and Liza Minnelli in Cabaret, and talk only when we feel like it.

This is a time in which very few activities seem right. Mostly I read at this hour, perusing the pile of books that live by my favourite chair, waiting to offer up fragments of learning, rather than inviting cover-to-cover pursuits. I browse a chapter here, a segment there, or hunt through an index for a matter that’s on my mind. I love such loose, exploratory reading. For once, I am not reading to escape; instead, having already made my getaway, I am able to roam through the extra space I’ve found, as restless and impatient as I like, revelling in the play of my own absorption. They say that we should dance like no one is watching. I think that applies to reading, too.

It is the responsibility of all of us to invest time and effort in uncovering our biases and in verifying our sources of information. As noted in earlier chapters, we cannot investigate everything ourselves. But precisely because of that, we need at least to investigate carefully our favourite sources of information – be they a newspaper, a website, a TV network or a person. In Chapter 20 we will explore in far greater depth how to avoid brainwashing and how to distinguish reality from fiction. Here I would like to offer two simple rules of thumb. First, if you want reliable information – pay good money for it. If you get your news for free, you might well be the product. Suppose a shady billionaire offered you the following deal: ‘I will pay you $30 a month, and in exchange, you will allow me to brainwash you for an hour every day, installing in your mind whichever political and commercial biases I want.’ Would you take the deal? Few sane people would. So the shady billionaire offers a slightly different deal: ‘You will allow me to brainwash you for one hour every day, and in exchange, I will not charge you anything for this service. The second rule of thumb is that if some issue seems exceptionally important to you, make the effort to read the relevant scientific literature. And by scientific literature I mean peer-reviewed articles, books published by well-known academic publishers, and the writings of professors from reputable institutions. Science obviously has its limitations, and it has got many things wrong in the past. Nevertheless, the scientific community has been our most reliable source of knowledge for centuries. If you think that the scientific community is wrong about something, that’s certainly possible, but at least know the scientific theories you are rejecting, and provide some empirical evidence to support your claim.

Much as Joanne disliked needlework, she was quite good at it, for she had been well taught. But hearing the remark from her governess's lips was almost more than the child could bear. And as for childish games - "Cousin Ambrose has been teaching me to play chess," she said in her curiously deep voice. "And we sometimes play cribbage and ecarte." "Still, at your age, there is so much to learn that I think we must dedicate this hour to sewing each night. And now, tell me, what is your favourite lesson?" Joanne eyed the lady for a moment. Then, "Latin and 'cello," she said sweetly. She was not disappointed. Miss Mercier's face fell. "Latin? Oh my dear, I am very sorry to hear that. Latin is essential for boys, of course; but I cannot think it necessary for a girl in your position. But you cannot have gone very far in it yet?" "We were doing the Aenid at school when I left," said Joanne briskly. "Fourth book. And Caesar, of course. I've learnt Latin for years." "My dear child, you mustn't exaggerate. That is most unladylike. I suppose you began two years ago? You cannot call two years "years" in the sense you did." "I didn't. I began Latin when I was seven. My father taught me." This was worse than Miss Mercier had expected.

The odd sensation I had while cooking would often last through the meal, then dissolve as I climbed the stairs. I would enter my room and discover the homework books I had left on the bed had disappeared into my backpack. I’d look inside my books and be shocked to find that the homework had been done. Sometimes it had been done well, at others it was slapdash, the writing careless, my own handwriting but scrawled across the page. As I read the work through, I would get the creepy feeling that someone was watching me. I would turn quickly, trying to catch them out, but the door would be closed. There was never anyone there. Just me. My throat would turn dry. My shoulders would feel numb. The tic in my neck would start dancing as if an insect was burrowing beneath the surface of the skin. The symptoms would intensify into migraines that lasted for days and did not respond to treatment or drugs. The attack would come like a sudden storm, blow itself out of its own accord or unexpectedly vanish. Objects repeatedly went missing: a favourite pen, a cassette, money. They usually turned up, although once the money had gone it had gone for ever and I would find in the chest of drawers a T-shirt I didn’t remember buying, a Depeche Mode cassette I didn’t like, a box of sketching pencils, some Lego.

Louis XIV was a very proud and self-confident man. He had such and such mistresses, and such and such ministers, and he governed France badly. The heirs of Louis XIV were also weak men, and also governed France badly. They also had such and such favourites and such and such mistresses. Besides which, certain persons were at this time writing books. By the end of the eighteenth century there gathered in Paris two dozen or so persons who started saying that all men were free and equal. Because of this in the whole of France people began to slaughter and drown each other. These people killed the king and a good many others. At this time there was a man of genius in France – Napoleon. He conquered everyone everywhere, i.e. killed a great many people because he was a great genius; and, for some reason, he went off to kill Africans, and killed them so well, and was so clever and cunning, that, having arrived in France, he ordered everyone to obey him, which they did. Having made himself Emperor he again went to kill masses of people in Italy, Austria and Prussia. And there too he killed a great many. Now in Russia there was the Emperor Alexander, who decided to reestablish order in Europe, and therefore fought wars with Napoleon. But in the year ’07 he suddenly made friends with him, and in the year ’11 quarrelled with him again, and they both again began to kill a great many people. And Napoleon brought six hundred thousand men to Russia and conquered Moscow. But then he suddenly ran away from Moscow, and then the Emperor Alexander, aided by the advice of Stein and others, united Europe to raise an army against the disturber of her peace. All Napoleon’s allies suddenly became his enemies; and this army marched against Napoleon, who had gathered new forces. The allies conquered Napoleon, entered Paris, forced Napoleon to renounce the throne, and sent him to the island of Elba, without, however, depriving him of the title of Emperor, and showing him all respect, in spite of the fact that five years before, and a year after, everyone considered him a brigand and beyond the law. Thereupon Louis XVIII, who until then had been an object of mere ridicule to both Frenchmen and the allies, began to reign. As for Napoleon, after shedding tears before the Old Guard, he gave up his throne, and went into exile. Then astute statesmen and diplomats, in particular Talleyrand, who had managed to sit down before anyone else in the famous armchair1 and thereby to extend the frontiers of France, talked in Vienna, and by means of such talk made peoples happy or unhappy. Suddenly the diplomats and monarchs almost came to blows. They were almost ready to order their troops once again to kill each other; but at this moment Napoleon arrived in France with a battalion, and the French, who hated him, all immediately submitted to him. But this annoyed the allied monarchs very much and they again went to war with the French. And the genius Napoleon was defeated and taken to the island of St Helena, having suddenly been discovered to be an outlaw. Whereupon the exile, parted from his dear ones and his beloved France, died a slow death on a rock, and bequeathed his great deeds to posterity. As for Europe, a reaction occurred there, and all the princes began to treat their peoples badly once again.

And then, as slowly as the light fades on a calm winter evening, something went out of our relationship. I say that selfishly. Perhaps I started to look for something which had never been there in the first place: passion, romance. I aresay that as I entered my forties I had a sense that somehow life was going past me. I had hardly experienced those emotions which for me have mostly come from reading books or watching television. I suppose that if there was anything unsatisfactory in our marriage, it was in my perception of it—the reality was unchanged. Perhaps I grew up from childhood to manhood too quickly. One minute I was cutting up frogs in the science lab at school, the next I was working for the National Centre for Fisheries Excellence and counting freshwater mussel populations on riverbeds. Somewhere in between, something had passed me by: adolescence, perhaps? Something immature, foolish yet intensely emotive, like those favourite songs I had recalled dimly as if being played on a distant radio, almost too far away to make out the words. I had doubts, yearnings, but I did not know why or what for. Whenever I tried to analyse our lives, and talk about it with Mary, she would say, ‘Darling, you are on the way to becoming one of the leading authorities in the world on caddis fly larvae. Don’t allow anything to deflect you from that. You may be rather inadequately paid, certainly compared with me you are, but excellence in any field is an achievement beyond value.’ I don’t know when we started drifting apart. When I told Mary about the project—I mean about researching the possibility of a salmon fishery in the Yemen—something changed. If there was a defining moment in our marriage, then that was it. It was ironical, in a sense. For the first time in my life I was doing something which might bring me international recognition and certainly would make me considerably better off—I could live for years off the lecture circuit alone, if the project was even half successful. Mary didn’t like it. I don’t know what part she didn’t like: the fact I might become more famous than her, the fact I might even become better paid than her. That makes her sound carping.

5236 rue St. Urbain The baby girl was a quick learner, having synthesized a full range of traits of both of her parents, the charming and the devious. Of all the toddlers in the neighbourhood, she was the first to learn to read and also the first to tear out the pages. Within months she mastered the grilling of the steaks and soon thereafter presented reasons to not grill the steaks. She was the first to promote a new visceral style of physical comedy as a means of reinvigorate the social potential of satire, and the first to declare the movement over. She appreciated the qualities of movement and speed, but also understood the necessity of slowness and leisure. She quickly learned the importance of ladders. She invented games with numerous chess-boards, matches and glasses of unfinished wine. Her parents, being both responsible and duplicitous people, came up with a plan to protect themselves, their apartment and belongings, while also providing an environment to encourage the open development of their daughter's obvious talents. They scheduled time off work, put on their pajamas and let the routines of the apartment go. They put their most cherished books right at her eye-level and gave her a chrome lighter. They blended the contents of the fridge and poured it into bowls they left on the floor. They took to napping in the living room, waking only to wipe their noses on the picture books and look blankly at the costumed characters on the TV shows. They made a fuss for their daughter's attention and cried when she wandered off; they bit or punched each other when she out of the room, and accused the other when she came in, looking frustrated. They made a mess of their pants when she drank too much, and let her figure out the fire extinguisher when their cigarettes set the blankets smoldering. They made her laugh with cute songs and then put clothes pins on the cat's tail. Eventually things found their rhythm. More than once the three of them found their faces waxened with tears, unable to decide if they had been crying, laughing, or if it had all been a reflex, like drooling. They took turns in the bath. Parents and children--it is odd when you trigger instinctive behaviour in either of them--like survival, like nurture. It's alright to test their capabilities, but they can hurt themselves if they go too far. It can be helpful to imagine them all gorging on their favourite food until their bellies ache. Fall came and the family went to school together.

Tonight, however, Dickens struck him in a different light. Beneath the author’s sentimental pity for the weak and helpless, he could discern a revolting pleasure in cruelty and suffering, while the grotesque figures of the people in Cruikshank’s illustrations revealed too clearly the hideous distortions of their souls. What had seemed humorous now appeared diabolic, and in disgust at these two favourites he turned to Walter Pater for the repose and dignity of a classic spirit. But presently he wondered if this spirit were not in itself of a marble quality, frigid and lifeless, contrary to the purpose of nature. ‘I have often thought’, he said to himself, ‘that there is something evil in the austere worship of beauty for its own sake.’ He had never thought so before, but he liked to think that this impulse of fancy was the result of mature consideration, and with this satisfaction he composed himself for sleep. He woke two or three times in the night, an unusual occurrence, but he was glad of it, for each time he had been dreaming horribly of these blameless Victorian works… It turned out to be the Boy’s Gulliver’s Travels that Granny had given him, and Dicky had at last to explain his rage with the devil who wrote it to show that men were worse than beasts and the human race a washout. A boy who never had good school reports had no right to be so morbidly sensitive as to penetrate to the underlying cynicism of Swift’s delightful fable, and that moreover in the bright and carefully expurgated edition they bring out nowadays. Mr Corbett could not say he had ever noticed the cynicism himself, though he knew from the critical books it must be there, and with some annoyance he advised his son to take out a nice bright modern boy’s adventure story that could not depress anybody. Mr Corbett soon found that he too was ‘off reading’. Every new book seemed to him weak, tasteless and insipid; while his old and familiar books were depressing or even, in some obscure way, disgusting. Authors must all be filthy-minded; they probably wrote what they dared not express in their lives. Stevenson had said that literature was a morbid secretion; he read Stevenson again to discover his peculiar morbidity, and detected in his essays a self-pity masquerading as courage, and in Treasure Island an invalid’s sickly attraction to brutality. This gave him a zest to find out what he disliked so much, and his taste for reading revived as he explored with relish the hidden infirmities of minds that had been valued by fools as great and noble. He saw Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë as two unpleasant examples of spinsterhood; the one as a prying, sub-acid busybody in everyone else’s flirtations, the other as a raving, craving maenad seeking self-immolation on the altar of her frustrated passions. He compared Wordsworth’s love of nature to the monstrous egoism of an ancient bellwether, isolated from the flock.