"I was reading the poems of Rochester. Rochester made himself out to be bisexual, but I think that was only to shock. Most of his poetry is sexual, even pornographic."

Reading, Poetry, Poems

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"I was reading the poems of Rochester. Rochester made himself out to be bisexual, but I think that was only to shock. Most of his poetry is sexual, even pornographic."

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"What a vast fertility of pleasure books hold for me! I went in and found the table laden with books. I looked in and sniffed them all. I could not resist carrying this one off and broaching it. I think I could happily live here and read forever."

Virginia Woolf, British Author

Reading, Joy, Books, Passion

"Some people claim that it is okay to read trashy novels because sometimes you can find something valuable in them. You can also find a crust of bread in a garbage can, if you search long enough, but there is a better way."

Jim Rohn, American Businessman

Reading, Books, Choice, Values

"If one reads enough books one has a fighting chance. Or better, one's chances of survival increase with each book one reads."

Sherman Alexie, American Writer

Reading, Knowledge, Survival, Learning

"It would be a good thing to buy books if one could also buy the time to read them, but one usually confuses the purchase of books with the acquisition of their contents."

Arthur Schopenhauer, German Philosopher

Reading, Books, Time, Knowledge

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

Lewis Carroll, English Author

Reading, Books, Conversation, Imagination, Engagement

"Back at the Chateau Windsor there was a rat-like scratching at the door of my room. Vinod, the youngest servant, came in with a soda water. He placed it next to the bag of toffees. Then he watched me read. I was used to being observed reading. Sometimes the room would fill like a railway station at rush hour and I would be expected to cure widespread boredom."

Tahir Shah, British Author

Reading, Observation, Isolation, Curiosity

"A learned man is a sedentary, concentrated solitary enthusiast, who searches through books to discover some particular grain of truth upon which he has set his heart. If the passion for reading conquers him, his gains dwindle and vanish between his fingers. A reader, on the other hand, must check the desire for learning at the outset; if knowledge sticks to him well and good, but to go in pursuit of it, to read on a system, to become a specialist or an authority, is very apt to kill what suits us to consider the more humane passion for pure and disinterested reading."

Virginia Woolf, British Author

Reading, Learning, Passion, Knowledge

"If time is precious, no book that will not improve by repeated readings deserves to be read at all."

Thomas Carlyle, Scottish Philosopher

Reading, Time, Values, Wisdom

"And every book, you find, has its own social group--friends of its own it wants to introduce you to, like a party in the library that need never, ever end."

Caitlin Moran, British Journalist

Reading, Books, Community, Connection, Friendship

"I am a machine condemned to devour books."

Karl Marx, German Philosopher

Reading, Obsession, Knowledge, Books

Explore more quotes by Thom Gunn

"I had assumed that I would age with all my friends growing old around me, dying off very gradually one by one. And here was a plague that cut them off so early."

Friendship

"While I don't satisfy my curiosity about the way I work, I'm terribly curious about the way other poets work. But I would think that's true about many of us."

Work

"I deliberately wrote a poem in my last book where I was suggesting that there are other passions as great as or more important than the passion of sex."

Sex

"I work best in rhyme and meter. I was most confident of myself in that way."

Work

"I deliberately decided to write a kind of guide to leather bars for straight people, for people not into leather, so that people could see what it was all about."

People

"It was difficult being a teacher and out of the closet in the '50s. By the time I retired, the English department was proud of having a gay poet of a certain minor fame. It was a very satisfactory change!"

Time

"When I first started to write, I was aware of being queer, but I didn't write about it. Queer poems would probably not have been accepted by the editors I sent them to."

Being

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Exlpore more Reading quotes

"What a vast fertility of pleasure books hold for me! I went in and found the table laden with books. I looked in and sniffed them all. I could not resist carrying this one off and broaching it. I think I could happily live here and read forever."

"Some people claim that it is okay to read trashy novels because sometimes you can find something valuable in them. You can also find a crust of bread in a garbage can, if you search long enough, but there is a better way."

"If one reads enough books one has a fighting chance. Or better, one's chances of survival increase with each book one reads."

"It would be a good thing to buy books if one could also buy the time to read them, but one usually confuses the purchase of books with the acquisition of their contents."

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

"If time is precious, no book that will not improve by repeated readings deserves to be read at all."

"And every book, you find, has its own social group--friends of its own it wants to introduce you to, like a party in the library that need never, ever end."

"I am a machine condemned to devour books."

Explore more quotes by Thom Gunn

"I had assumed that I would age with all my friends growing old around me, dying off very gradually one by one. And here was a plague that cut them off so early."

"While I don't satisfy my curiosity about the way I work, I'm terribly curious about the way other poets work. But I would think that's true about many of us."

"I deliberately wrote a poem in my last book where I was suggesting that there are other passions as great as or more important than the passion of sex."

"I work best in rhyme and meter. I was most confident of myself in that way."

"I deliberately decided to write a kind of guide to leather bars for straight people, for people not into leather, so that people could see what it was all about."

"We tend to put poems into factions. And it restricts our reading."

"I don't think of sex as a self-destructive impulse."

"We control the content of our dreams."

"It was difficult being a teacher and out of the closet in the '50s. By the time I retired, the English department was proud of having a gay poet of a certain minor fame. It was a very satisfactory change!"

"When I first started to write, I was aware of being queer, but I didn't write about it. Queer poems would probably not have been accepted by the editors I sent them to."