I’m a book nut, a certified biblioholic. However,
I’m happy with my addiction because I believe it does me good.
When I was in college, I once went for several weeks without
reading fiction. I decided that I would never do that again.
I believe that reading gives me perspective on life. It helps
me look beyond my own little story.
Here are some quotations from great authors who help me rationalize
my habit:
“At its best, story provides us with ways to see ourselves,
ways to affirm our stuggles to overcome adversities, ways to help us reach
out to others and forge relationships. Story creates an intimacy that
is remembered in mind, body, and soul for a lifetime. . . . In the
storytelling experience we bind ourselves to others. We need to share
our stories because in so doing we hope to be understood, and being understood
we are no longer so alone.”—Julius Lester in
On Writing for Children
and Other People
“Reading transported me all over the world; it entertained
me and calmed me down when I was rattled from family arguments or a rough
day at school. . . . My mind became roomier.”—Mary Pipher in
Letters to a Young Therapist
“Through reading, we intensify our capacity for pleasure, for
sympathy, and for comprehension. What we read utterly changes our
relation to the world. There is a thirst in all readers for stories
that teach us about the world and ourselves.”—Laura Furman and Elinore Standard
in
Bookworms
“Books and writers live on, an endless stream of stories and
storytellers waiting for me to jump into the current of their words,
to swim through their images, and to be swept away in their flow. I
cannot imagine life without books any more than I can imagine life without
breathing.”—Terry Brooks in
Sometimes
the Magic Works
“It is fortunate to have had all my life this passion for studying
and enjoying literature and for trying to add a bit to it as interestingly
as I can. This passion has given me much joy, it has given me
friends who care for the same things, it has given me employment, escape
from boredom, everything.”—Elizabeth Hardwick, quoted in
Where Books Fall Open
“I also think of reading as an act of faith, a hope I will discover
something remarkable about ordinary life, about myself. And if
the writer and the reader discover the same thing, if they have that
connection, the act of faith has resulted in an act of magic.
To me, that’s the mystery and the wonder of both life and fiction—the
connection between two unique individuals who discover in the end that
they are more the same than they are different.” —Amy Tan, in
The
Opposite of Fate
“The best stories do change us. They help us live interesting
lives.” —Amy Tan, in
The
Opposite of Fate
“A great work of the imagination is one of the highest forms
of communication of truth that mankind has reached.”—Madeleine L’Engle,
in
Madeleine L’Engle:
Herself
“It is not only in the religious writings of various peoples
that I find truth. I find that my forbearance is widened, my
understanding of human potential expanded, as I read fiction, even if
it is only to disagree with a narrow or ugly view of life, or to turn
away in discontent. The fiction to which I turn and return is
that which has a noble understanding of God’s purpose for all that
has been created.” —Madeleine L’Engle, in
Madeleine L’Engle: Herself
“Children love story because it is true.” —Madeleine L’Engle,
in
Madeleine L’Engle:
Herself
“When I think of the children’s books I love best, I realize
that they’re written on a great many different levels. Now the
first level is story. A good children’s book must hold the reader’s
interest. It must be first and foremost a good story that will
make the reader keep wanting to go on turning the pages. But underneath
that good story is buried treasure. No one person will find all
of the treasure, but each will discover special joys.” —Madeleine L’Engle,
in
Madeleine L’Engle: Herself
“For some of us, books are as important as almost anything
else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small,
flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world,
worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books
help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show
us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die.
They are full of all the things that you don’t get in real life—wonderful
lyrical language, for instance, right off the bat. And quality of
attention: we may notice amazing details during the course of a
day but we rarely let ourselves stop and really pay attention. An
author makes you notice, makes you pay attention, and this is a great
gift.”—Anne Lamott, in
Bird by Bird
“Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation.
They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the
soul. When writers make us shake our heads with the exactness of
their prose and their truths, and even make us laugh about ourselves or
life, our buoyancy is restored. We are given a shot at dancing with,
or at least clapping along with, the absurdity of life, instead of being
squashed by it over and over again. It’s like singing on a boat
during a terrible storm at sea. You can’t stop the raging storm,
but singing can change the hearts and spirits of the people who are together
on that ship.” —Anne Lamott, in
Bird by Bird
“The greatest gift is the passion for reading. It is
cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites, it gives you knowledge
of the world and experience of a wide kind. It is a moral illumination.”—Elizabeth
Hardwick, quoted in
Where
Books Fall Open
“Books offer life, distilled. They have the power to
change minds and change moods.”—Carol Weston, quoted in
Where Books Fall Open
“The whole story, paradoxically enough, strengthens our relish
for real life. This excursion into the preposterous sends us
back with renewed pleasure to the actual.”—C. S. Lewis, in
Of Other Worlds
“[The fairy tale] stirs and troubles him (to his life-long
enrichment) with the dim sense of something beyond his reach and,
far from dulling or emptying the actual world, gives it a new dimension
of depth. He does not despise real woods because he has read of
enchanted woods: The reading makes all real woods a little enchanted.”
—C. S. Lewis, in
Of Other
Worlds
“Since it is so likely that they will meet cruel enemies, let
them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage.” —C. S.
Lewis, in
Of Other Worlds
“If good novels are comments on life, good stories of this
sort (which are very much rarer) are actual additions to life; they
give, like certain rare dreams, sensations we never had before, and
enlarge our conception of the range of possible experience.” —C. S. Lewis,
in
Of Other Worlds
“Fiction is like wrestling with angels—you do not expect to
win, but you do expect to come away from the experience changed.”—Jane
Yolen,
Take Joy
“You can practise the art of empathy very well in Pride and
Prejudice, and in all the novels of Jane Austen, and it is this daily
practice that we all need, or we will never be good at living, as without
practice we will never be good at playing the piano.”—Fay Weldon, in
Letters to Alice on First
Reading Jane Austen
“Story is the closest we human beings can come to truth.”
—Madeleine L’Engle, in
Madeleine
L’Engle: Herself
“So I turn again and again to story to retrieve the sense of
wonder. Story does help us to bind our fragmented selves together,
does help us to recognize ourselves in all our terrible and marvelous
complexity. Story affirms that there are constants, despite the
change and decay in all we see around us.” —Madeleine L’Engle, in
Madeleine L’Engle: Herself
“Story makes us more alive, more human, more courageous, more
loving. Why does anybody tell a story? It does indeed have
something to do with faith, faith that the universe has meaning, that
our little human lives are not irrelevant, that what we choose or say or
do matters, matters cosmically.” —Madeleine L’Engle, in
Madeleine L’Engle: Herself
“Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever
is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if
anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.”—Philippians
4:8
Copyright © 2005 Sondra Eklund.
All rights reserved.
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Book Reviews by Sondra Eklund