To Light a Fire

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 

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