Andrew Piper > Quotes

“We may need to put down the book from time to time, but we should make sure not to let the computer become the new book. The universal medium, like the universal library, is a dream that does more harm than good.”
― Andrew Piper, Book Was There: Reading in Electronic Times

“Melancholy isn’t a sign of the book’s end; it is its inspiration. Melancholy is reading’s muse.”
― Andrew Piper, Book Was There: Reading in Electronic Times

“Reading is never purely an act of isolation. When we read, we enter into a world of commonality, whether of language, story, or material object. Reading socializes. “To us these marvelous tales have been told,” begins the great medieval German epic The Nibelungenlied.”
― Andrew Piper, Book Was There: Reading in Electronic Times

“I personally cannot help thinking that social media will make us more, not less, receptive to friendship, just as eighteenth-century Pietists imagined we became more receptive to God by reflecting on ourselves everyday with pen and paper. Writing about oneself and photographing oneself doesn’t have to be seen as the consummate act of narcissism that it is often portrayed to be.”
― Andrew Piper, Book Was There: Reading in Electronic Times

“Almost every major textual initiative today is structured around three overlapping notions of sharing: commonality, transferability, and sociability. We want other people to read the same thing we are reading (commonality); we want to be able to send other people what we are reading (transferability); and we want to be able to talk to other people about what we are reading (sociability). “Social reading” is shaping up to be the core identity, or ideology if you will, of digital media. I say ideology because there is also something duplicitous about the new commitment to sharing. Never before has the proprietary relationship to reading and ideas been more in force. Sharing texts has never been more popular—and illegal.”
― Andrew Piper, Book Was There: Reading in Electronic Times

“I was starting to believe the reason it matters to care passionately about something, is that it whittles the world down to a more manageable size.”
― Andrew Piper, Book Was There: Reading in Electronic Times

“Books, stories, recounting are primordial defenses against extinction.”
― Andrew Piper, Book Was There: Reading in Electronic Times

“Reading is a way of disciplining our minds, and it is also one of the most efficient means of mental escape.”
― Andrew Piper, Book Was There: Reading in Electronic Times

“Open books can be measured by the sliding scale of pages past and future, like steps, just off to the side of the page. What lies after the digital page? An abyss.”
― Andrew Piper, Book Was There: Reading in Electronic Times

“When my son comes home today, he will play with the computer. Then he will go and do his homework, where he will use books for his reading, writing, and math exercises. My daughter, who is still in preschool, will simulate this process in reverse, playing with her notebooks, while the computer is still very much work for her. My hope is that these two categories, work and play, will remain as interwoven throughout their lives as the instruments that they use to engage in them, the book and the computer. I hope they are afforded the advantages of both, and that they pass on those advantages to others. My real hope, though, is that when it comes time to learn how these two very different instruments work (and play), I can send them to just one camp.”
― Andrew Piper, Book Was There: Reading in Electronic Times