“As an avid consumer of books and especially fiction, over the years I’ve developed a special shelf of particularly beautiful and inspiring works by women of color that help me not only walk around in another woman’s experiences, but also situate my own culturally and ethnically fluid self within a c…”— Sezin Koehler, wearyourvoicemag.com
“Books support us in our solitude and keep us from being a burden to ourselves.”— Jeremy Collier, goodreads.com
“Fools admire everything in an author of reputation. For my part, I read only to please myself. I like only that which serves my purpose.”— Voltaire, amazon.com
“And when I was young, did I ever tell you, I always wanted to get inside a book and never come out again? I loved reading so much I wanted to be a part of it, and there were some books I could have stayed in for ever.”— Peter Ackroyd, amazon.com
“A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading.”— William Styron, amazon.com
“Literature grants us few of the consolations and none of the vatic promises of religion, but is our religion nonetheless.”— Joyce Carol Oates, narrativemagazine.com
“That, by way of a book, we have the ability to transcend what is immediate, what is merely personal, and to enter a consciousness not known to us, in some cases distinctly alien.”— Joyce Carol Oates, narrativemagazine.com
“Consider the phenomenon of reading, that most mysterious of acts. It is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another’s skin; another’s voice; another’s soul.”— Joyce Carol Oates, narrativemagazine.com
“There are pleasures in reading so startling, so intense, they shade into pain. The realization that one’s life has been irrevocably altered by . . . can it be mere words? Print on a page? The most life-rending discoveries involve what has in fact never been thought, never given form, until another’s…”— Joyce Carol Oates, narrativemagazine.com