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"It is now my favorite book of all time, but then again, I always think that until I read another book."
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"Just as one spoils the stomach by overfeeding and thereby impairs the whole body, so can one overload and choke the mind by giving it too much nourishment. For the more one reads the fewer are the traces left of what one has read; the mind is like a tablet that has been written over and over. Hence it is impossible to reflect; and it is only by reflection that one can assimilate what one has read. If one reads straight ahead without pondering over it later, what has been read does not take root, but is for the most part lost."

"Those who are incapable of committing great crimes do not readily suspect them in others."

"A book is as dangerous as any journey you might take. The person who closes the back cover may not be the same one that opened the front one. Treat them with respect."

"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."

"Someday I must read this scholar Everyone. He seems to have written so much--all of it wrong."

"The true reader reads every work seriously in the sense that he reads it whole-heartedly, makes himself as receptive as he can. But for that very reason he cannot possibly read every work solemly or gravely. For he will read 'in the same spirit that the author writ.'... He will never commit the error of trying to munch whipped cream as if it were venison."

"Reading for enjoyment won't die altogether, but this Ereader device has the potential to repel those less imaginative from fiction. And that could have an undesirable domino effect."

"She'd obviously read the book many times before, and so she read flawlessly and confidently, and I could hear her smile in the reading of it, and the sound of that smile made me think that maybe I would like novels better if Alaska Young read them to me."
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"I know we didn't accomplish anything, but it felt great to sit there and talk about our place in things."


"If you are in a movie theater, you can look two people down and they are laughing while you are laughing or you can look three people down and they love that song that you love. It is living proof that you are not alone."


"I just wish that God or my parents or Sam or my sister or someone would just tell me what's wrong with me. Just tell me how to be different in a way that makes sense."


"I am writing to you because she said you listen and understand and didn't try to sleep with that person at that party even though you could have. I just need to know that someone out there listens and understands and doesn't try to sleep with people even if they could have. I need to know that these people exist."


"It's strange because sometimes, I read a book, and I think I am the people in the book. Also, when I write letters, I spend the next two days thinking about what I figured out in my letters."


"Girls like guys to be a challenge. It gives them some mold to fit in how they act. Like a mom. What would a mom do if she couldn't fuss over you and make you clean your room? And what would you do without her fussing and making you do it? Everyone needs a mom. And a mom knowns this. And it gives her a sense of purpose. You get it?"


"I know that things get worse before they get better because that's what my psychiatrist says, but this is a worse that feels too big."


"She also keeps talking about the Billie Holiday record she bought for me. And she says she wants to expose me to all these great things. And to tell you the truth, I don't really want to be exposed to all these great things if it means that I'll have to listen to Mary Elizabeth talk about all the great things she exposed me to all the time. It almost feels like of the three things involved: Mary Elizabeth, me, and the great things, only the first one matters to Mary Elizabeth. I don't understand that. I would give someone a record so they could love the record, not so they would always know that I gave it to them."
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