Virginia Reeves > Quotes

“Let the prison library not only meet the recognized needs of the men, but inspire them in further efforts. The reading habit once firmly fixed is among the best safeguards for any man.”
― Virginia Reeves, Work Like Any Other

“Marie’s father was a farmer—yes, always—but he was also a reader. These were his two occupations, he told me. “Are you a reader, son?” he asked early. “Yes, sir.” “That’s good. A heap of books is the only foundation a man needs.”
― Virginia Reeves, Work Like Any Other

“We are born with some things in our veins, coal for my father and farming for Marie’s and a deep electrical current for me. My father’s draw started from need, I suppose, and Marie’s father’s from land, and mine from glowing Birmingham streetlamps. I had stared at those bulbs the first time I saw them, the streets lit by a force greater than any I’d known—bigger than me, bigger than my father, bigger than his tunnels even.”
― Virginia Reeves, Work Like Any Other

“I fear we don’t grow, either, here in these walls. Instead, we go backward. So many of the men around me are boys, taken again with legends. All of us imagine new creatures in the dark of our cells. Four-headed beasts with calf hooves from our own new Guernseys, down in their fields.”
― Virginia Reeves, Work Like Any Other

“I prefer the numbers in Dewey’s system to Rash’s alphabetical sorting in the fiction. Dewey put literature in the 800s, but library folks like to give it a spot of its own, let the customers find their favorites by name. As though convicts have favorites. Taking the fiction away from the numbers breaks the rules of classification, and it bothers me like misplaced pails and caps in the barn. Any misplacement throws off the whole system, and the 800s are too small without their novels.”
― Virginia Reeves, Work Like Any Other