"As a grad student and later as a writer, I have found it hard to sustain the pure, almost erotic love of reading I had as a kid - you know, where you climb in bed and read for hours and hours, and the book itself is this charged magical object. Later, when writing becomes your job, it's tied up with ego and all kinds of worry, and it's not always easy to get to that state of pure escape."

--

Source : Source: www.commonwealmagazine.org

Elif Batuman

#Reading Quotes #Book Quotes #Kids Quotes

“Sophisticated readers understand that writers work out their anger, their conflicts, their endless grief and rolling list of loss, through their stories. That however mean-spirited or diabolical, it's only a story. That the darkness in the soul is shaped into type and lies there, brooding and inert, black on the page, and active, dangerous, only in the reader's mind. Actually, harmless. I am not harmless.”
“It is night, And it is vanity, and age Blackens the heart of Adam. Fear, The yellow chirper, beaks its cage.”

Source : Robert Lowell (1964). “Poems, 1938-1949”
“To Him I owe my life and breath, And all the joys I have; He makes me triumph over death, And saves me from the grave.”

Source : Samuel Stennett (1824). “The works ...: now first collected into a body: with some account of his life and writings”, p.539
“Remodeling defies the principles of modern commerce. You shell out great sums of money to people over whom you have no authority or power, yet these same people are constantly insinuating that you're cheap. (It reminded me of medicine, another area where you shell out great sums of money to people over whom you have no authority or power, who make you feel guilty for questioning a bill.) Construction workers are the blue-collar version of the snooty salespeople at Gucci who make $8 an hour but look down on you if you balk at a $400 alligator wallet.”
“Monitoring activities is neither new or intrusive. We did that with communities in terms of getting rid of the mob. And cops, believe me, do not want to do this. Do you think they really want to listen to you chant five times a day. However, you should look on the bright side: you might convert them.”
“In terms of the emotional underpinning, if you've been in relationships, you understand what's happening.”
“I'm a baseball player. I'm also a guy who mows his lawn and plays with his dog.”
“Indeed, American companies make three times as much profits from their investment in one E.U. country, Ireland, than they do from all their investments in China.”

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