The Picador Book Room

Pretty sure René Descartes would’ve agree.  

(via: Book Riot)

Can’t ever get enough quotes about the joy of reading and the addiction of a good book.

(Hat tip: Tattered Cover Book Store. Buy prints here: http://etsy.me/11gXcia)

Aphorisms are rogue ideas. Aphorism is aristocratic thinking:  this is all the aristocrat is willing to tell you: he thinks you should get it fast, without spelling out all the details.  Aphoristic thinking constructs thinking as an obstacle race:  the reader is expected to get it fast, and move on.  An aphorism is not an argument; it is too well-bred for that.  To write aphorisms is to assume a mask—a mask of scorn, of superiority.

From As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980, by Susan Sontag. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, page 512. This quotation is from 1980.

“college instruction is a brand of popular culture; the universities are poorly run mass media”

From Reborn: Journals & Notebooks 1947 - 1963, by Susan Sontag. Picador, page 83. This quotation is from 1956.

“This is why speech is so much easier + more copious compared to the labor of keeping a journal + the pathetic paucity of entries over months of time as compared to all that one says in a single evening.”

From Reborn: Journals & Notebooks 1947 - 1963, by Susan Sontag. Picador, page 80. This quotation is from 1955.

aseaofquotes:

Paul Auster, Winter Journal

“Trying to write about love is ultimately like trying to have a dictionary represent life. No matter how many words there are, there will never be enough.”

If you don’t feel like celebrating Noah Webster’s birthday (National Dictionary Day) by curling up with your edition of Merriam-Webster, try David Levithan’s The Lover’s Dictionary instead.

“The masculinization of homosexuality—no longer alienated; no longer identify with culture (against nature).  Being homosexual no longer facilitates a critical attitude to society.  Now h’s affirm some of the worst, +most conventional, tastes of his society:  sexism (hatred of women), consumerism, brutality, promiscuity  emotional dissociation.”

From As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh:  Journals and Notebooks 1964-1980, by Susan Sontag. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, page 506. This quotation is from 1980.

I believe:

(a) That there is no personal god or life after death

(b) That the most desirable thing in the world is free to be true to oneself, i.e., Honesty

(c)  That the only difference between human beings is intelligence

(d) That the criterion of an action is its ultimate effect on making the individual happy or unhappy

(e) That it is wrong to deprive any man of life

From Reborn:  Journals and Notebooks 1947-1963, by Susan Sontag. Picador, page 3. This quotation is from 1947.