Next Quotes (page 24)
May I ask you something?" I say. "Why do you read books, when you could be outside, living a million different adventures every day?" "Because you can always count on a book to stay the same. EVerything else changes when you least expect it," she replies, bitter. "Families split apart, and nothing's forever. In books, you always know what's coming next. There are no surprises.
Jodi Picoult
In my twenties if even a tenth reading of Mallarm failed to yield up its treasures, the fault was mine, not his. If my eyes swooned shut while I read The Sweet Cheat Gone, Proust’s pacing was never called into question, just my intelligence and dedication and sensitivity. And I still entertain these sacralizing preconceptions about high art. I still admire what is difficult, though I now recognize it as a “period” taste and that my generation was the last to give a damn. Though we were...
Edmund White
September has come, it is hers. Whose vitality leaps in the autumn, Whose nature prefers. Trees without leaves and a fire in the fireplace. So I give her this month and the next. Though the whole of my year should be hers who has rendered already. So many of its days intolerable or perplexed. But so many more so happy. Who has left a scent on my life, and left my walls. Dancing over and over with her shadow. Whose hair is twined in all my waterfalls. And all of London littered with remembered...
Louis MacNeice
Life may not be exactly pleasant, but it is at least not dull. Heave yourself into Hell today, and you may miss, tomorrow or next day, another Scopes trial, or another War to End War, or perchance a rich and buxom widow with all her first husband's clothes. There are always more Hardings hatching. I advocate hanging on as long as possible.
H. L. Mencken