I don't remember ever feeling lonely; in fact, on the rare occasions when I met other children I found their games and their talk far less interesting than the adventures and dialogues I read in my bo...
I began by making assumptions about the stories Borges chose for me -- that Kipling's prose would be stilted, Stevenson's childish, Joyce's unintelligible -- buy very soon prejudice gave way to experi...
كل مكتبة تستحضر أشباحها المظلمة الخاصة بها، فكل ترتيب ينشئ، تلقائياً، طيف مكتبة من كتب غائبة.
Systematisches Lesen ist kaum von Nutzen. Offizielle Bücherlisten (der Klassiker, der Literaturgeschichte, der zensurierten oder empfohlenen Bücher, der Bibliothekskataloge) können per Zufall den eine...
If justice takes place, there may be hope, even in the face of a seemingly capricious divinity.
Die Freunde, an die ich denke, sind in der Zeit gefangen wie in einem Film. Sie (viele von ihnen sind tot, verschollen) sind in dem Alter, in dem ich sie zuletzt gesehen habe; ich bezweifle, dass sie...
ليس لدي أي شعور بالذنب بشأن الكتب التي لم اقرأها وربما لن اقرأها أبداً، فأنا أعرف بأن كتبي لديها صبر لا حدود له
We can learn from its splendid ambition that what was one man's experience can become, through the alchemy of words, the experience of all, and how that experience, distilled once again into words, ca...
Was andere als unsere Errungenschaften betrachten, ist oft nicht das, was wir selbst so sehen.
Readers are bullied in schoolyards and in locker-rooms as much as in government offices and prisons.
One book calls to another unexpectedly, creating alliances across different cultures and centuries.
My books hold between their covers every story I've ever known and still remember, or have now forgotten, or may one day read; they fill the space around me with ancient and new voices.
I have no feeling of guilt regarding the books I have not read and perhaps will never read; I know that my books have unlimited patience. They will wait for me till the end of my days. They don't requ...
I could perhaps live without writing. I don't think I could live without reading.
At one magical instant in your early childhood, the page of a book—that string of confused, alien ciphers—shivered into meaning. Words spoke to you, gave up their secrets; at that moment, whole univer...
As readers, we have gone from learning a precious craft whose secret was held by a jealous few, to taking for granted a skin that has become subordinate to principles of mindless financial profit or m...
We can imagine the books we'd like to read, even if they have not yet been written, and we can imagine libraries full of books we would like to possess, even if they are well beyond our reach, because...
أصبحت كتبي هي موطني الثابت الوحيد، حيث كنت أستطيع أن أتحرك داخلها في أي وقت أشاء، وحسب ما تشتهيه رغباتي وميولي.
We are losing our common vocabulary, built over thousands of years to help and delight and instruct us, for the sake of what we take to be the new technology's virtues.
Our society accepts the book as a given, but the act of reading -- once considered useful and important, as well as potentially dangerous and subversive -- is now condescendingly accepted as a pastime...