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To Light a Fire

Ujjian, India
Myanmar/Burma

To learn to read is to light a fire;
every syllable that is spelled out is a spark.
– Victor Hugo

Yugoslavia
China

I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.
– Jorge Luis Borges

Rome, Italy
Chiang Mai, Thailand
Mumbai, India

I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading!
How much sooner one tires of anything than of a book!
When I have a house of my own,
I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.
–  Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

Venice, Italy
Uttar Pradesh, India

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed,
and some few are to be chewed and digested.
– Francis Bacon

Istanbul, Turkey
Near Al Hudaydah, Yemen

There is no frigate like a book
To take us lands away,
Nor any coursers like a page
Of prancing poetry.
This traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of toll;
How frugal is the chariot
That bears a human soul!
– Emily Dickinson

Afghanistan

We read to know we are not alone.
– C.S. Lewis

Monastery in Litang, Kham, Tibet
Chiang Mai, Thailand


Reading is a means of thinking with another person’s mind;
it forces you to stretch your own.
– Charles Scribner

Kuwait City, Kuwait
Kunduz, Afghanistan

Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily,
often helplessly, into another’s skin, another’s voice, another’s soul.
– Joyce Carol Oates

Shwedagon Pagoda, Yangon, Burma

Susan Sontag said, “The camera makes everyone a tourist
in other people’s reality…”
The same can be said for reading books

Rieti, Italy
Sana’a, Yemen

The ability to read awoke inside me some
long dormant craving to be mentally alive.
Autobiography of Malcolm X

Victoria Memorial Hall,  Kolkata. India
Lourdes, France

Reading was my escape and my comfort, my consolation,
my stimulant of choice: reading for the pure pleasure of it,
for the beautiful stillness that surrounds you when you hear an
author’s words reverberating in your head.
– Paul Auster, The Brooklyn Follies 

Pakistan

When I get a little money I buy books;
and if any is left I buy food and clothes.
– Erasmus