lau > lau's Quotes

“Why do I read?
I just can't help myself.
I read to learn and to grow, to laugh
and to be motivated.
I read to understand things I've never
been exposed to.
I read when I'm crabby, when I've just
said monumentally dumb things to the
people I love.
I read for strength to help me when I
feel broken, discouraged, and afraid.
I read when I'm angry at the whole
world.
I read when everything is going right.
I read to find hope.
I read because I'm made up not just of
skin and bones, of sights, feelings,
and a deep need for chocolate, but I'm
also made up of words.
Words describe my thoughts and what's
hidden in my heart.
Words are alive--when I've found a
story that I love, I read it again and
again, like playing a favorite song
over and over.
Reading isn't passive--I enter the
story with the characters, breathe
their air, feel their frustrations,
scream at them to stop when they're
about to do something stupid, cry with
them, laugh with them.
Reading for me, is spending time with a
friend.
A book is a friend.
You can never have too many.”
― Gary Paulsen, Shelf Life: Stories by the Book

“To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark.”
― Victor Hugo

“We do this because the world we live in is a house on fire and the people we love are burning.”
― Cisneros Sandra

“Here there is too much sadness and not enough sky.”
― Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street

“At school they say my name funny as if the syllables were made out of tin and hurt the roof of your mouth. But in Spanish my name is made out of a softer something, like silver”
― Cisneros Sandra

“the Mexican records my father plays on Sunday mornings when he is shaving, songs like sobbing”
― Cisneros Sandra

“I have decided not to grow up tamed like the others who lay their necks on the threshold waiting for the ball and chain.”
-The House on Mango Street”
― Cisneros, Sandra

“People who live on hills sleep so close to the stars they forget those of us who live too much on earth. They don’t look down except to be content to live on hills. One day I’ll own my own house but I will not forget who I am or where I came from.”
- The House on Mango Street”
― Cisneros, Sandra

“For every Animal Farm and The Great Gatsby we’ve read, we’ve also read The House on Mango Street and The Bluest Eye. It’s incredible, and it’s in this class I’ve been exposed to some of my favorite books.”
― Crystal Maldonado, Fat Chance, Charlie Vega

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”
― Neil Gaiman, Coraline

“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.”
― Oscar Wilde

“It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it.”
― Oscar Wilde

“I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in my life. And I am horribly limited.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers.”
― Charles W. Eliot

“Books are the perfect entertainment: no commercials, no batteries, hours of enjoyment for each dollar spent. What I wonder is why everybody doesn't carry a book around for those inevitable dead spots in life.”
― Stephen King

“The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.”
― St. Augustine

“Make it a rule never to give a child a book you would not read yourself.”
― George Bernard Shaw

“Think before you speak. Read before you think.”
― Fran Lebowitz, The Fran Lebowitz Reader

“Books are mirrors: you only see in them what you already have inside you.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

“There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.”
― Joseph Brodsky

“but for my own part, if a book is well written, I always find it too short.”
― Jane Austen

“A book, too, can be a star, a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

“A half-read book is a half-finished love affair.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry. When we consider a book, we mustn't ask ourselves what it says but what it means...”
― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose

“I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson

“Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Books and You