My father loved biographies. He loved the true tales of interesting people that were shaping our culture. I get why he dug Vanity Fair. You feel smarter, somehow, for reading it.
From all these experiences the most important thing I have learned is that legibility and beauty stand close together and that type design, in its restraint, should be only felt but not perceived by the reader.
Does housekeeping interest you at all? I think it really ought to be just as good as writing and I never see where the separation between the too comes in. At least if you must put books on one side and life on the other, each is a poor and bloodless thing; but my theory is that they mix indistinguishable.
When fear enters the heart of a man at hearing the names of candidates and the reading of laws that are proposed, then is the State safe, but when these things are heard without regard, as above or below us, then is the Commonwealth sick or dead.
If anyone spends almost the whole day in reading...he gradually loses the capacity for thinking...This is the case with many learned persons; they have read themselves stupid
Writing in English is the most ingenious torture ever devised for sins committed in previous lives. The English reading public explains the reason why.
There is only one expert who is qualified to examine the souls and the life of a people and make a valuable report - the native novelist. ... And when a thousand able novels have been written, there you have the soul of the people; and not anywhere else can these be had.
I have to say that my kids, like every child in America, is completely absorbed with Harry Potter. And so, I have gotten sucked into it, too; I can't wait for the next one to come out. I am trying to figure out what happens with Harry and Voldemort. So we have been reading that.
...as parents, we have to find the time and the energy to step in and help our children love reading. We can read to them, talk to them about what they're reading, and make time for this by turning off the television set ourselves. Libraries are a critical tool to help parents do this.
The comic-book industry today is not what it was back then, unfortunately. Kids are no longer interested in reading comic books; they've got television and the electronic games that they can bury themselves in like ostriches. They don't have to pay attention to what's going on in the world around them.
People are reading more and writing more because of the internet. So the virtual world is a way for me to listen to my readers and interact with my readers. It is a way that they can voice their opinion.