Adele

“His manner showed a curious mixture of longing and enthusiasm, which is to say that his enthusiasms were always of a wistful sort, and his longings, always enthusiastic. He was delighted by things of an improbable or impractical nature, which he sought out with the open-hearted gladness of a child at play. When he spoke, he did so originally, and with an idealistic agony that was enough to make all but the most rigid of his critics smile; when he was silent, one had the sense, watching him, that his imagination was nevertheless usefully occupied, for he often sighed, or nodded, as though in agreement with an interlocutor whom no one else could see.”
― Eleanor Catton, The Luminaries

“Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“In the quiet spaces opened up by the prolonged, undistracted reading of a book, people made their own associations, drew their own inferences and analogies, fostered their own ideas. They thought deeply as they read deeply.”
― Nicholas Carr, The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains

“Individuals who frequently read fiction seem to be better able to understand other people, empathize with them and see the world from their perspective.”
― Annie Murphy Paul