Doe Quotes (page 207)
Fiction does something unique in that it takes us out of our heads and puts us into other people's heads. And I think reading, and experiencing fiction through reading, is something that gives us empathy. And that, I think, is vital. It takes us out of our lives. Without reading, you're stuck with one life. Reading gives you more than one life. It gives you an infinite number of lives, which I think is wonderful. Or at least, not infinite, but as many as there are books on the shelves.
Neil Gaiman
After this, Boy became very curious about the mansion where the clothes and the food came from. He made me describe everything. Then he asked Good Thing 'Are there books in this mansion, too?'
'And pictures and jewels,' Good Thing said through me. 'What does Master wish me to fetch? There is a golden harp, a musical box like a bird, a—'
'Just books,' said Boy. 'I need to learn. I'm still so ignorant.
Diana Wynne Jones
The Creator has? I say it in all reverence - drawn a myriad red herrings across the track, but the true scientist refuses to be baffled by superficial appearances in detecting the secrets of Nature. The vulgar herd catches at the gross apparent fact, but the man of insight knows what lies on the surfaces does lie.
Israel Zangwill
There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the...
C. S. Lewis
You will die. You will not live forever. Nor will any man nor any thing. Nothing is immortal. But only to us is it given to know that we must die. And that is a great gift: the gift of selfhood. For we have only what we know we must lose, what we are willing to lose... That selfhood which is our torment, and our treasure, and our humanity, does not endure. It changes; it is gone, a wave on the sea. Would you have the sea grow still and the tides cease, to save one wave, to save yourself?
Ursula K. Le Guin
England was alive, throbbing through all her estuaries, crying for joy through the mouths of all her gulls, and the north wind, with contrary motion, blew stronger against her rising seas. What did it mean? For what end are her fair complexities, her changes of soil, her sinuous coast? Does she belong to those who have moulded her and made her feared by other lands, or to those who have added nothing to her power, but have somehow seen her, seen the whole island at once, lying as a jewel in a...
E. M. Forster