The trouble with reading the news is that you start to believe it.
Reading
The dead alive and busy.
—Vaughan
Books that are buried need not be burned.
Reading great authors improves your writing by making you desperately unhappy with it.
There exists in all men a thirst for the hunt, for predator stalking prey inexorably until it is caught and torn to shreds, that only reading Jane Austen can slake.
Quotation device, n. A man whose memory surpasses his wit; whose conversation consists largely or exclusively of other people’s words. Cf. citation device.
Analogously to Benford’s Law, 90% of the annotations in a used book occur in the first twenty pages.
It doesn’t matter much which books you burn.
Censorship, under more competent rule, would indicate something worth reading.
Great literature inspires us to read; bad but celebrated literature inspires us to write.
The Victorians used to tell us fiction rots the mind when in fact it rots the soul.