Sarah Clarkson > Quotes

“I am convinced, no, more like convicted, that to claim a few still spaces in which beauty is found and silence kept, is to open the door to God.”
― Sarah Clarkson

“You are part of God’s story on earth,” my parents whispered in our ears, “You can be like Aragorn or Frodo or Sam in the battles of the world, you can bring beauty like Jared (in The Journeyman by Elizabeth Yates), or discover something new like George Washington Carver. What kind of hero do you want to be?”
― Sarah Clarkson, Caught Up in a Story: Fostering a Storyformed Life of Great Books & Imagination with Your Children

“Life is a story, and each of us has but one tale to live as valiantly as we can.”
― Sarah Clarkson, Caught Up in a Story: Fostering a Storyformed Life of Great Books & Imagination with Your Children

“A woman who reads is a woman who knows she must act: in courage, in creativity, in kindness, and often in defiance of the darkness around her. She understands that life itself is a story and that she has the power to shape her corner of the drama.”
― Sarah Clarkson, Book Girl: A Journey through the Treasures and Transforming Power of a Reading Life

“heroism begins with a challenge and a choice—to fight the dragon, to pay the debt, to tell the truth, to act rightly when the cost is high.”
― Sarah Clarkson, Book Girl: A Journey through the Treasures and Transforming Power of a Reading Life

“To know yourself as an agent in the story of the world, one able to bring light and goodness in the midst of suffering, is a profoundly empowering knowledge, one that I believe comes to every woman who reads.”
― Sarah Clarkson, Book Girl: A Journey through the Treasures and Transforming Power of a Reading Life

“The feel of my mother’s warmth behind me as she read is one of the first things I can remember—the safe anchor of her body and the music of her read-aloud voice the ocean on which my small consciousness sailed into power through stories of music and brave maidens, feasts and castles, family and home.”
― Sarah Clarkson, Book Girl: A Journey through the Treasures and Transforming Power of a Reading Life

“My parents read to us morning and night, we read novels before bedtime, we read devotions in the morning, and we read picture books or adventure tales in the afternoon.”
― Sarah Clarkson, Book Girl: A Journey through the Treasures and Transforming Power of a Reading Life

“The hero tales, the epic myths, the tales of quests and dragons, knights and journeys can enter the pain and confusion of a child’s mind with a healing clarity.”
― Sarah Clarkson, Caught Up in a Story: Fostering a Storyformed Life of Great Books & Imagination with Your Children

“Book Girl is meant to last you beyond a first read. By theming the chapters and their accompanying lists to different seasons of experience or growth, I hope you will find this a continuing resource.”
― Sarah Clarkson, Book Girl: A Journey through the Treasures and Transforming Power of a Reading Life

“consider the words of G. K. Chesterton, who once wrote, “fairy tales do not give the child the idea of the evil or the ugly; that is in the child already, because it is in the world already.”
― Sarah Clarkson, Caught Up in a Story: Fostering a Storyformed Life of Great Books & Imagination with Your Children

“Way leads on to way,” wrote the poet Robert Frost, and I hope that you’ll discover that book leads on to book and that the titles in these lists will lead you beyond, into the book lists of other writers and the best beloveds of other friends.”
― Sarah Clarkson, Book Girl: A Journey through the Treasures and Transforming Power of a Reading Life

“There is nothing like companionship in the reading journey, people with whom to share the delight or puzzlement or challenge of new bookish horizons.”
― Sarah Clarkson, Book Girl: A Journey through the Treasures and Transforming Power of a Reading Life

“Twelve good years thrummed in his steps, and fifteen in mine as we strode down the gypsy ribbon of a country road, laughing in the face of a fast-setting sun and swiftly rising storm.”
― Sarah Clarkson

“Fairy land arouses a longing for [a child] knows not what. It stirs and troubles him (to his life-long enrichment) with the dim sense of something beyond his reach and, far from dulling or emptying the actual world, gives it a new dimension of depth. He does not despise real woods because he has read of enchanted woods: the reading makes all real woods a little enchanted. C. S. LEWIS, OF OTHER WORLDS”
― Sarah Clarkson, Book Girl: A Journey through the Treasures and Transforming Power of a Reading Life

“I usually turn to books first in times of distress, discouragement, or general disillusionment with life.”
― Sarah Clarkson, Book Girl: A Journey through the Treasures and Transforming Power of a Reading Life

“Reading is the road you walk to discover yourself and your world, to see with renewed vision as you encounter the vision of another.”
― Sarah Clarkson, Book Girl: A Journey through the Treasures and Transforming Power of a Reading Life

“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.
“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” ~ from The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien”
― Sarah Clarkson, Caught Up in a Story: Fostering a Storyformed Life of Great Books & Imagination with Your Children

“I think all young women should read Anne. But that’s just the beginning. I think pretty much every woman should go on to read Jane Austen and George Eliot, Marilynne Robinson and Wendell Berry, Thomas Merton and C. S. Lewis, because these authors really do help us to understand what it means to be a woman of life and grace.”
― Sarah Clarkson, Book Girl: A Journey through the Treasures and Transforming Power of a Reading Life

“I felt like half a heretic to admit that The Lord of the Rings kept me believing in redemption or that Aslan made God real to me when I was sick of church. I felt guilty when a novel made me feel closer to God than a psalm.”
― Sarah Clarkson, Book Girl: A Journey through the Treasures and Transforming Power of a Reading Life

“No fairy tale begins in despair, because if it did, what would the hero have left to fight for?”
― Sarah Clarkson, Caught Up in a Story: Fostering a Storyformed Life of Great Books & Imagination with Your Children

“Read what is good, cram your imagination with nuanced characters and truth-telling authors, and you will know how to handle books that have questionable content. If you read Goudge and Tolkien and Chaim Potok and Chesterton, you will be equipped to evaluate a just-released novel that deals with more common modern discussions of sex or an ambiguous worldview. Because the soil of your imagination is rich in what is good, you will know how to deal with what isn’t.”
― Sarah Clarkson, Book Girl: A Journey through the Treasures and Transforming Power of a Reading Life

“Literature is humanity's ongoing conversation with itself about what it means to be human, to be good, to live with meaning.”
― Sarah Clarkson

“Heroism begins when we realize that we are called to join a story much larger than ourselves.”
― Sarah Clarkson, Caught Up in a Story: Fostering a Storyformed Life of Great Books & Imagination with Your Children

“Fleeting as those childish moments were, imagined though the dramas were that I lived within them, the habit of make-believe allowed me to experiment with a wide variety of vocations and experience. In pretending, I felt out what was possible. I tried on many selves for size and in so doing, began to recognize the self I desired to become. Make-believe is a process of exploration in which our imaginations seek out the elements with which we will craft our dreams.”
― Sarah Clarkson, Caught Up in a Story: Fostering a Storyformed Life of Great Books & Imagination with Your Children

“Discussion Questions In the introduction, the author describes how she came to be a book girl. When did you realize you were a book girl? What people or circumstances contributed to your love of reading? In the introduction, the author identifies what she sees as the top three gifts of reading: it fills our hearts with beauty, gives us strength for the battle, and reminds us that we’re not alone. What gifts have you encountered from the reading life? In chapter 1, the author offers some guidelines about how to choose books and how to discern what constitutes good reading. How do you choose what book to read next? Are there people in your life whose recommendations you particularly resonate with? Have you ever found yourself in a reading slump? How did you get out of it? Are there certain books or types of books that help you when you’ve gotten out of the rhythm of reading? In chapter 2, the author gives suggestions for reading in fellowship. Do any of these recommendations resonate with you? Are there any that you’d like to begin to implement? In chapter 3, the author says, “We understand our worlds through the words we are given.” Can you think of a time when a passage from a book gave you empathy for or a deeper understanding of a person or situation in your life? The author gives her “Beloved Dozen” list in chapter 3. What titles would you include on your must-read list? In chapter 4, the author says, “A great book meets you in the narrative motion of your own life, showing you in vividly imagined ways exactly what it looks like to be evil or good, brave or cowardly, each of those choices shaping the happy (or tragic) ending of the stories in which they’re made.” In what ways have books shaped the story of your life? In chapter 5, the author describes the role literature played in making her faith her own: “Tolkien’s story helped me to recognize Scripture as my story, the one in whose decisive battles I was caught, the narrative that drew me into the conflict, requiring me to decide what part I would play: heroine, coward, lover, or villain.” What impact have books had on your faith and your discovery of self? Are there particular books or passages that have been especially meaningful to you on your spiritual journey? In chapter 7, the author describes how books gave her mutual ground on which to connect with her siblings. Have you ever had a similar experience of appreciating someone or identifying with them as a result of a shared reading experience? What mentors fostered a love of reading for you? Who are you passing along the gift of reading to? What books on the author’s books lists do you love too? What additional titles would you include? What books have you added to your to-read list after finishing this book?”
― Sarah Clarkson, Book Girl: A Journey through the Treasures and Transforming Power of a Reading Life

“Instead of planning vaguely to read “the classics” (which I have planned and failed to do many times), you can identify a single classic to begin with or which three you want to read over the course of a year.”
― Sarah Clarkson, Book Girl: A Journey through the Treasures and Transforming Power of a Reading Life

“Terms such as “courage,” “kindness,” “good,” “evil,” or “heroic” are abstract concepts for a child. In order to learn what it means to be “good,” a child needs to be shown, not merely told. In all honesty, I think that is true of the human race, adults as well as children. It”
― Sarah Clarkson, Caught Up in a Story: Fostering a Storyformed Life of Great Books & Imagination with Your Children

“All of us, as we read, are like the Pevensie children in Narnia when Aslan sends them back to their own world and tells them, There I have another name. You must learn to know me by that name. This was the very reason why you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there.[3] We grow to know God better as we encounter his reality in stories that richly image his splendor or his power or even his humble presence among us.”
― Sarah Clarkson, Book Girl: A Journey through the Treasures and Transforming Power of a Reading Life

“But if children are given time away from all the noise of the world and time to be alone, if they are loved and affirmed and invited to explore nature or listen to music or read a book, the cup of their heart will be filled to overflowing with wonder.”
― Sarah Clarkson, Caught Up in a Story: Fostering a Storyformed Life of Great Books & Imagination with Your Children