31 quotes
In our day, computer technology and the proliferation of books on CD-ROM have not affected - as far as statistics show - the production and sale of books in their old-fashioned codex form.
A History of Reading (1996)
Books read in a public library never have the same flavour as books read in the attic or the kitchen.
A History of Reading (1996)
Every library is a library of preferences, and every chosen category implies an exclusion.
A History of Reading (1996)
Most readers, then and now, have at some time experienced the humiliation of being told that their occupation is reprehensible.
A History of Reading (1996)
In every literate society, learning to read is something of an initiation, a ritualized passage out of a state of dependency and rudimentary communication.
A History of Reading (1996)
A society can exist - many do exist - without writing, but no society can exist without reading.
A History of Reading (1996)
The association of books with their readers is unlike any other between objects and their users.
A History of Reading (1996)
From its very start, reading is writings apotheosis.
A History of Reading (1996)
I quickly learned that reading is cumulative and proceeds by geometric progression: each new reading builds upon whatever the reader has read before.
A History of Reading (1996)
A book brings its own history to the reader.
A History of Reading (1996)
One can transform a place by reading in it.
A History of Reading (1996)
I never talked to anyone about my reading; the need to share came afterwords.
A History of Reading (1996)
Augustine's description of Ambrose's silent reading (including the remark that he never read aloud) is the first definite instance recorded in Western literature.
A History of Reading (1996)
Possessing these books has become all important to me, because I have become jealous of the past.
A History of Reading (1996)
I know that something dies when i give up my books, and that my memory keeps going back to them with mournful nostalgia.
A History of Reading (1996)
As we read a text in our own language, the text itself becomes a barrier.
A History of Reading (1996)
Socrates affirmed that only that which the reader already knows can be sparked by a reading, and that the knowledge cannot be acquired through dead letters.
A History of Reading (1996)
Slothful, feeble, pretentious, pedantic, elitist - these are some of the epithets that eventually become associated with the absent minded scholar, the poor sighted reader, the book worm, the nerd.
A History of Reading (1996)
As centuries of dictators have known, an illiterate crowd is easiest to rule; since the craft of reading cannot be untaught once it has been acquired, the second-best recourse is to limit its scope.
A History of Reading (1996)
We read to understand, or to begin to understand. We cannot do but to read. Reading almost as much as breathing, is our essential function.
A History of Reading (1996)