Phillip Ressler

“Always enter a room with your head up. Right away that tells people you're your own person. If your head is down, that lets people feel they can do anything they want with you. When you talk to somebody, white or colored, always look him straight in the eye. First of all, it's honesty. Second, he knows he can beat up on you if you don't make eye contact.”
― Yvonne S. Thornton, The Ditchdigger's Daughters: A Black Family's Astonishing Success Story

“Real reading is a lonely activity.”
― Harold Bloom, The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages

“Without close and reciprocal relationships with other animal beings, we're alienated from the rich, diverse, and magnificent world in which we live.”
― Marc Bekoff, The Emotional Lives of Animals: A Leading Scientist Explores Animal Joy, Sorrow, and Empathy - and Why They Matter

“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. Yet the strongest, most authentic motive for deep reading…is the search for a difficult pleasure.”
― Harold Bloom