reading

I have a really vivid imagination and I find it difficult to read scenes of complete graphic violence. That's not to say that graphic violence does not exist. It's just that I find it quite harrowing and I much prefer if it isn't completely outlined for me because my imagination can do that.

Literature takes us away from our grey everyday experience, but brings us back enriched with new sensibilities.

As every reader knows in his or her heart, there is much more to truth than mere fact.

Living is worth the effort if only because without life we could not read or imagine stories.

My life is in these books, he wants to tell her. Read these and know my heart.

We invent fictions in order to live somehow the many lives we would like to lead when we barely have one at our disposal.

Because of literature we can decipher, at least partially, the hieroglyphic that existence tends to be for the great majority of human beings.

For me, stories are like WD-40 for the brain: they keep all the wheels and gears and clicky-things running smoothly. Without them, cognitive function becomes a bore.

You, my reader, who see me close, wonder about my heartbeats and measure my words, you my close friend who know my eyes and the home of their prose, you, my only lover, who always move my life, my poetry's pace and rhyme,...I can not disclose the shape of metaphors, nor what they bashfully display behind the robes of their naked source; but you can use the eyes of heart to feel what they are made of. And if it's a tear or a smile I evoke, it means we are human, it means we care and we love. It means we are both beautiful. (Soar)

I__ a reader who uses fiction as a way of worrying about life.

People in books were always so charming, and all their thoughts and actions so comprehensible. They all invariably had a clear, well-defined object in life, and strove through a few hundred engrossing pages to attain this object. They were all noble and generous, and their lives were bright and beautiful. What interesting and delightful moments Irene had passed in their society! They had made her laugh and cry and suffer and rejoice, and had entertained her with the brilliancy of their wit. How dull and colourless real people had appeared beside these heroes and heroines of fiction.

Scripture trains us to listen to and learn from stories of all kinds, inside the sacred text and outside, and to discern patterns and meanings within them. Stories of all sorts form and shape the character of those who read them. We live within the narrative as creatures in search of an ending, in search of happiness.

Edmund doesn__ solve any of his grievances or personality disorders by going through the wardrobe. If anything, they're exacerbated and brought to a crisis by his experiences in Narnia. When you go to Narnia, your worries come with you. Narnia just becomes the place where you work them out and try to resolve them.

There__ so much to learn. So much to enjoy. So terribly much to be curious about. Take your life and run with it. Make a habit of being alive. This much of anything, I have learned. And am still learning.

Reading is a collaboration between the writer and reader. Both parties must keep that in mind when dealing with a work of fiction.__Guy Gavriel Kay}

Stories, whether they're good or bad, are expressions of interactions within society. Some may be seen as 'boring', but in their own right, they are still stories to explored. People throughout life have more exciting endeavours than others, and that can be the same for stories. It's just a matter of segregating comparisons between the senseless and the thoughtful. The norm and the unbiased. We are what we are. As are stories.

Reading takes the reader to faraway lands, new cultures, new and exciting adventures; you meet new friends and enemies; it takes the reader from the heights of the imagination to the depths of human emotions; all without taking a single step.

Often, when I am able to check out a book, I read it a dozen times before returning it, desperate to remain lost in the magic of someone else's story.