The failure to read good books both enfeebles the vision and strengthens our most fatal tendency - the belief that the here and now is all there is.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I feel that 'The Great Failure' is really a book written out of great love and a willingness to face all of who a human being is.
Reverence is fatal to literature.
The mortality of all inanimate things is terrible to me, but that of books most of all.
There is a certain aesthetic pleasure in trying to imagine the unimaginable and failing, if you are a reader.
In a very real sense, people who have read good literature have lived more than people who cannot or will not read.
Every great work, every big accomplishment, has been brought into manifestation through holding to the vision, and often just before the big achievement, comes apparent failure and discouragement.
The only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little farther down our particular path than we have yet got ourselves.
Today we read books 'extensively,' often without sustained focus, and with rare exceptions we read each book only once. We value quantity of reading over quality of reading. We have no choice, if we want to keep up with the broader culture.
We never stop reading, although every book comes to an end, just as we never stop living, although death is certain.
The novelist teaches the reader to comprehend the world as a question. There is wisdom and tolerance in that attitude. In a world built on sacrosanct certainties the novel is dead.