"I read,' I say. 'I study and read. I bet I've read everything you've read. Don't think I haven't. I consume libraries. I wear out spines and ROM drives. I do things like get in a taxi and say, "The library, and step on it."

Reading, Knowledge, Books, Curiosity

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"I read,' I say. 'I study and read. I bet I've read everything you've read. Don't think I haven't. I consume libraries. I wear out spines and ROM drives. I do things like get in a taxi and say, "The library, and step on it."

Exlpore more Reading quotes

"A woman reading Playboy feels a little like a Jew reading a Nazi manual."

Gloria Steinem, American Activist

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"You can read Kant by yourself, if you wanted to; but you must share a joke with someone else."

Robert Louis Stevenson, Scottish Writer

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"By reading the writings of the most interesting minds in history, we meditate with our own minds and theirs as well. This is to me is a miracle."

Kurt Vonnegut, American Author

Reading, History, Thought, Reflection

"Readers of fiction read, I think, for a deeper embrace of the world, of reality. And that's brave. I never get over being thankful for that - for the courage of my readers."

Barbara Kingsolver, American Novelist

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"No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally " and often far more " worth reading at the age of fifty and beyond."

C. S. Lewis, British Author

Reading, Books, Aging, Learning

"If I am communicating to my readers exactly what the White House believes on any certain issue, that's reporting to them an unvarnished, unfiltered version of what they - the Administration - believe."

Jeff Gannon, American Journalist

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"No book, however good, can survive a hostile reading."

Orson Scott Card, American Writer

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"Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted... but to weigh and consider."

Francis Bacon, English Philosopher

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"One thing I will surely miss is that I couldn't read all the good books in this lifetime."

Amit Kalantri, Indian Author

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"Books are always good company if you have the right sort. Let me pick out some for you.' And Mrs. Jo made a bee-line to the well-laden shelves, which were the joy of her heart and the comfort of her life."

Louisa May Alcott, American Novelist

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Explore more quotes by David Foster Wallace

"Why do prostitutes when they get straight always try and get so prim? It's like long-repressed librarian-ambitions come flooding out."

Society

"The interesting thing is why we're so desperate for this anesthetic against loneliness."

Society

"I think I was very often bored as a child, but boredom is not what I knew it as-what I knew was that I worried a lot."

Childhood

"I think TV promulgates the idea that good art is just art which makes people like and depend on the vehicle that brings them the art."

Art

"It is also lonely on a level that cannot be conveyed ... If a person in physical pain has a hard time attending to anything except that pain, a clinically depressed person cannot even perceive any other person or thing as independent of the universal pain that is digesting her cell by cell."

Depression

"You decide. You be the judge. It says You are welcome regardless of severity. Severity is in the eye of the sufferer, it says. Pain is pain."

Empathy

"Psychotics, say what you want about them, tend to make the first move."

Madness

"I mean, Tarantino is such a SHMUCK 90 percent of the time. But ten percent of the time, I've seen genius shining off the guy."

Film

"And we hate this possibility in movies; we hate this "both" shit. "Both" comes off as sloppy characterization, muddy filmmaking, lack of focus. ... But I submit that the real reason we criticized and disliked Lynch's Laura's muddy bothness is that it required of us an empathetic confrontation with the exact same muddy bothness in ourselves and our intimates that makes the real world of moral selves so tense and uncomfortable, a bothness we go to the movies to get a couple hours' fucking relief from."

Criticism

"Something they seem to omit to mention in Boston AA when you're new and out of your skull with desperation and ready to eliminate your map and they tell you how it'll all get better and better as you abstain and recover: they somehow omit to mention that the way it gets better and you get better is through pain. Not around pain, or in spite of it."

Struggle