" I did not think of language as the means to self-description. I thought of it as a door - a thousand opening doors! - past myself. I...

" Books never really end. They stay with you, good or bad, and can float in your mind without warning. Years later, the faint embers of...

" He had the indistinct feeling that the priest's forgiveness was the greatest assault and most tremendous attack he had ever...

" The deliciousness of discovering a masterwork. The beauty of the first sentences, the 'what is this?', the 'how can it be?', the first...

" Ivy had always cherished books for the stillness they allowed in a world that valued fast, unforgiving progress regardless of the human...

" The camera unites my hands & mind. I am utterly absorbed, rapt, fully present and intensely alive. This alignment of body & senses in...

" There are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea." ​ {Henry James} ​ ​ one...

" Ye dear companions of my silent hours, whose pages oft before my eyes would strew so many sweet & variegated flowers..." {fr; book...

" I believe a work of art is primarily concerned with the creation of beauty, whether through words, colors, shapes, sounds, or movement....

“ I wish it need not have happened in my time,’ said Frodo. ‘So do I,’ said Gandalf, ‘and so do all who live to see such times. But that...

" Literature, before anything else, is saying, Be mindful. Stop whatever you are doing & notice. Allow yourself to be seized by this." ​...

" All lovely tales that we have heard or read: An endless fountain of immortal drink, Pouring unto us from the heaven's brink. ​ Nor do...

" When we reread a novel, we encounter it as all the ages we have been as well as the age we are now. Our souls are steeped in the story....

" To practice any art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow. So do it." ​ {Kurt Vonnegut} ​ ​ perusing...

" The delights of the poet as I jotted them down turned out to be light, solitude, the natural world, love, time, creation itself." ​...

" Her home was always witch-tales and words, stories into which she could escape... ​ it was the soft quiet of the stacks and the scratch...

The sacred flame of pure devotion glowed in my heart, and elevated my soul to sublimity. The world and all its recollections faded from...

" My mind is settled and satisfied with the right of possession. I never travel without books, for it is wonderful what repose I take,...

" I think the first reason we read is to shape our very essence, to form the selves from which we act. We read first to shape the person...

" I feel so intensely the delights of shutting oneself up in a little world of one's own, with pictures and music and everything...