Sign in with Facebook
“Drink today, and drown all sorrow;
You shall perhaps not do it tomorrow;
Best, while you have it, use your breath;
There is no drinking after death.”
―
You shall perhaps not do it tomorrow;
Best, while you have it, use your breath;
There is no drinking after death.”
―
“I will take the sun in my mouth
and leap into the ripe air
Alive
with closed eyes
to dash against darkness”
― Poems, 1923-1954
and leap into the ripe air
Alive
with closed eyes
to dash against darkness”
― Poems, 1923-1954
“I would say, for the moment, that community, at least community larger than the immediate family, consists very largely of imaginative love for people we do not know or whom we know very slightly. This thesis may be influenced by the fact that I have spent literal years of my life lovingly absorbed in the thoughts and perceptions of—who knows it better than I?—people who do not exist. And, just as writers are engrossed in the making of them, readers are profoundly moved and also influenced by the nonexistent, that great clan whose numbers increase prodigiously with every publishing season. I think fiction may be, whatever else, an exercise in the capacity for imaginative love, or sympathy, or identification.”
― When I Was a Child I Read Books
― When I Was a Child I Read Books
“We read deeply for varied reasons, most of them familiar: that we cannot know enough people profoundly enough; that we need to know ourselves better; that we require knowledge, not just of self and others, but of the way things are.”
―
―
“We must take our sentences seriously, which means we must understand them philosophically, and the odd thing is that the few who do, who take them with utter sober seriousness, the utter sober seriousness of right-wing parsons and political saviors, the owners of Pomeranians, are the liars who want to be believed, the novelists and poets, who know that the creatures they imagine have no other being than the sounding syllables which the reader will speak into his own weary and distracted head. There are no magic words. To say the words is magical enough.”
― The World Within the Word
― The World Within the Word
John’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at John’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
Favorite Genres
Adult Fiction, Classics, Fiction, Literary Fiction, Memoir, Non-fiction, Philosophy, Poetry, Politics, and War
Polls voted on by John
Lists liked by John
