Really Random Tuesday #67: Quotes about Books and Reading

The Reader by Fragonard, courtesy of Wikipedia

"The world was hers for the reading.”
 ~Betty Smith

"You could never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me."
~C.S. Lewis

"Books are a uniquely portable magic."
~Stephen King

"I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading!  How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book!"
~Jane Austen

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“Many people, myself among them, feel better at the mere sight of a book.”
~Jane Smiley

“Show me a family of readers, and I will show you the people who move the world.”
~Napoleon Bonaparte

“I have often reflected upon the new vistas that reading has opened to me; I knew right there in prison that reading had changed forever the course of my life.  As I see it today, the ability to read awoke inside me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive.”
~Malcolm X

“I am a part of everything that I have read.”
~Theodore Roosevelt

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“Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.”
 ~Henry David Thoreau

“I am reading six books at once, the only way of reading; since, as you will agree, one book is only a single unaccompanied note, and to get the full sound, one needs ten others at the same time."
~Virginia Woolf

“When I look back, I am so impressed again with the life-giving power of literature. If I were a young person today, trying to gain a sense of myself in the world, I would do that again by reading, just as I did when I was young.”
~Maya Angelou

“There is creative reading as well as creative writing.”
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

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“Reading a book is like re-writing it for yourself. You bring to a novel, anything you read, all your experience of the world. You bring your history and you read it in your own terms.”
~Angela Carter

“A good book is an event in my life.”
~Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle)

“The reading of all good books is like conversation with the finest men of past centuries.”
~René Descartes

“I intend to put up with nothing that I can put down.”
~Edgar Allan Poe

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“While we pay lip service to the virtues of reading, the truth is that there is still in our culture something that suspects those who read too much, whatever reading too much means, of being lazy, aimless dreamers, people who need to grow up and come outside to where real life is, who think themselves superior in their separateness.”
 ~Anna Quindlen

“I really had a lot of dreams when I was a kid, and I think a great deal of that grew out of the fact that I had a chance to read a lot.”
~Bill Gates

“Oh! It is absurd to have a hard-and-fast rule about what one should read and what one shouldn't.  More than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn't read.”
~Oscar Wilde

“All I have learned, I learned from books.”
 ~Abraham Lincoln

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Appearing on random Tuesdays, Really Random Tuesday is a way to post odds and ends--announcements, musings, quotes, photos--any blogging and book-related matters you can think of.  If you have miscellaneous book news to gather up and are inspired by this idea, "grab" the button for use on your own blog, then add your link to the "master" Mister Linky on the Really Random Tuesday page. 

I hope you've enjoyed these quotes about reading and books. Your comments are welcomed.  If you have a favorite quote about books or reading, please feel free to include it in your comment.  Thanks for reading!

Bookworm or Bibliophile

If you're reading this post, chances are good that you're either a bookworm or a bibliophile. Do you know the difference between these two words? Although sometimes the word bookworm is used in a derogatory sense, to me a bookworm is someone who simply loves to read. A bibliophile, on the other hand, is someone who loves books themselves, admires and often collects them, and usually likes to read. Bookworms go to the library to find books to take home and read, whereas bibliophiles may visit libraries to surround themselves with books.

I consider myself more of a bookworm, but I don't think I'm the stereotypical bookworm, socially awkward and pedantic; I wonder why some associate an interest in reading with negative traits. However, I do at times get books for the purpose of adding to my collection, and very recently found a beautiful copy of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, illustrated by Louis Jambor (even though we already own two versions of this classic), and a copy of The Giver, signed by author Lois Lowry. Are you a bookworm, bibliophile, or both?

Books and Obama

In college if not before, President-elect Barack Obama discovered that words have the incredible power to transform lives. Equally eloquent as a speaker and as an author, Obama, who reads Baldwin, Lessing, Lincoln, Melville, Morrison, Shakespeare, and numerous others, has been shaped by his reading, much like the sixteenth President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln. In Obama's first book, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, he acknowledges the importance of books in his life as a source of insight, information, and inspiration. On the eve of the inauguration, here's the original article from the NY Times.


Books by Barack Obama:

1. Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (1995, 2004)
2. The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream (2006)
3. Celebrating Change: Key Speeches of President-Elect Barack Obama, October 2002-November 2008 (2008) (also by Hillary Clinton and John McCain)
4. Change: Barack Obama's Plan to Repair the U.S. Economy (2008)

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings: The Importance of Books

Maya Angelou often talks about the love of reading she and her brother, Bailey, shared in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. It was an activity they truly enjoyed, and they'd read together in the evenings in Stamps, Arkansas, whenever possible:

"There was going to be a storm and perfect night for rereading Jane Eyre. Bailey had finished his chores and was already behind the stove with Mark Twain."
~I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou

And:

"Pots rattled in the kitchen where Momma was frying corn cakes to go with vegetable soup for supper, and the homey sounds and scents cushioned me as I read of Jane Eyre in the cold English mansion of a colder English gentleman. Uncle Willie was engrossed in the Almanac, his nightly reading, and my brother was far away on a raft on the Mississippi."
~I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou

These are warm and secure moments as the children (and Uncle Willy) are engrossed in their books (before the arrival of an unexpected visitor, Mr. Taylor). The importance of books in Maya Angelou's life was central; she credits her adult friend, Mrs. Flowers, for her lifelong love of reading, who, in Maya Angelou's words, "had given me her secret word which called forth a djinn who was to serve me all of my life: books."

Also see post, The Power of Books.
Your comments and questions are welcomed.

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,

When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,
When he beats his bars and would be free,
It is not a carol of joy or glee,
But a prayer that he sends from his heart's deep core,
But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings--
I know why the caged bird sings.
~Third Stanza of the poem "Sympathy" (1899) by Paul Laurence Dunbar; title of Maya Angelou's book, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is an autobiographical novel (although there are fictional aspects to the work), which highlights the racism she faced growing up, as well as the importance of books and literacy, and tells the story of her life from the age of three until sixteen. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings was published in 1969, after the author was extremely disturbed by the assassination of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1968. James Baldwin, Robert Loomis, and others "dared" Maya Angelou to write an autobiography. At first she was reluctant, because she considered herself a poet, but in 1970 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings won the National Book Award, and was on the New York Times paperback bestseller list for a few years, the first in a series of six-volumes by Maya Angelou.

In I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, young Maya does not feel she's as beautiful as the rest of her immediate family, but realizes she is smart and sensitive. She adores her older brother, Bailey, Jr., and is an avid reader. Books are her salvation, including the works of Shakespeare. The children travel by train when they're three and four years old by themselves to live with their grandmother, called "Momma", and Uncle Willy, in Stamps, Arkansas. Momma has a general store, "the Store", where Maya and Bailey spend a lot of their time, and she provides a home for Maya and Bailey while their parents live in California and St. Louis. Affected by ugly, senseless racism, Maya must learn to protect her growing strength and dignity. This autobiographical novel has been the target of censorship in homes and schools over the years since it's publication, because it tackles some very difficult subjects. Maya Angelou writes with remarkable spirit. The horrific event of her childhood--she was raped at the age of 8 by her mother's boyfriend--shatters my heart. Somehow she found the courage and strength to go on, and much later to put her story into words, with honesty and compassion.