Siera Mae

“Books are sometimes windows, offering views of worlds that may be real or imagined, familiar or strange. These windows are also sliding glass doors, and readers have only to walk through in imagination to become part of whatever world has been created or recreated by the author. When lighting conditions are just right, however, a window can also be a mirror. Literature transforms human experience and reflects it back to us, and in that reflection we can see our own lives and experiences as part of a larger human experience. Reading, then, becomes a means of self-affirmation, and readers often seek their mirrors in books.”
― Rudine Sims Bishop

“Things senseless live by art, and rational die
By rude contempt of art and industry.”
― Christopher Marlowe, Hero and Leander

“there are only two sources of human vice—idleness and superstition, and only two virtues—activity and intelligence.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“Oh! it is only a novel! ... only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda;' or, in short, only some work in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour are conveyed to the world in the best chosen language.”
― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey