Anne

“The only mainstream American household I know well is the one I grew up in, and I can report that my father, who was not a reader, nevertheless had some acquaintance with James Baldwin and John Cheever, because Time magazine put them on its cover and Time, for my father, was the ultimate cultural authority. In the last decade, the magazine whose red border twice enclosed the face of James Joyce has devoted covers to Scott Turow and Stephen King. These are honorable writers; but no one doubts it was the size of their contracts that won them covers. The dollar is now the yardstick of cultural authority, and an organ like Time, which not long ago aspired to shape the national taste, now serves mainly to reflect it.”
― Jonathan Franzen, How to Be Alone: Essays

“Her bladder felt painfully, solidly full, as though it would burst and release not urine but the garbled prayers she was muttering.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun

“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons

“unbroken happiness is a bore: it should have ups and downs.”
― Molière