Will Schwalbe Quotes

And if the book is too silly, I find that it's often because the writer doesn't really have anything to say - or there are no values. Or because the whole book is just a lead-up to a trick at the end....

Good books often answer questions you didn't even know you wanted to ask.

Electronic books live out of sight and out of mind. But printed books have body, presence.

I think women should have choices and should be able to do what they like, and I think it's a great choice to stay at home and raise kids, just as it's a great choice to have a career. But I don't ent...

This was not even a particularly big offense in the pantheon of book club crimes, where the worst sin one could commit was not to read the book in question--or, even worse, to lie about having read th...

We were terrified to stop, stop anything, and admit that something was wrong. Activity, frenzied activity, seemed to be the thing we all felt we needed. Only Dad slowed down, and that wasn’t until he...

What is the Lord asking of me in this moment, in this situation?

Often we feel the need to say that a book isn’t just about a particular time or place but is about the human spirit. People say this of Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, or Night by Elie Wiesel,...

Felicia’s Journey by the Irish short-story writer and novelist William Trevor.

There was one sure way to avoid being assigned an impromptu chore in our house - be it taking out the trash or cleaning your room - and that was to have your face buried in a book. Like churches durin...

Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking

You can only do what you can, and what doesn't get done, just doesn't get done.

All readers have reading in common.

We would also have to say goodbye to the joy of watching this next generation soak up the massive quantities of love their grandmother would have given them, and seeing them learn that there was someo...

Irène Némirovsky’s Suite Française

The idea is that if you practice the Naikan part of Constructive Living, life becomes a series of small miracles, and you may start to notice everything that goes right in a typical life and not the f...

I asked: And I was very surprised by the ending. Were you? Of course not—I’d read it first.

I realized then that for all of us part of the process of mom's dying was mourning, not just her death, but also the death of our dreams of things to come. You don't really lose the person who has bee...

You can truly miss characters. Not like you miss people, but you can still miss them. I don’t think I’ll ever get over Melanie’s death in Gone With the Wind. But I’m still so glad I got to know her.

What I suddenly understood was that a thank-you note isn't the price you pay for receiving a gift, as so many children think it is, a kind of minimum tribute or toll, but an opportunity to count your...