Reading is a Bloodsport

Indestructible and abiding as the stars, these experiences, though forgotten, could never be erased. Their series was the story of my life, their starry light the undying value of my being.

- Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf

What do the circumstances of your life matter if your dreams make you lord paramount of time and space.

- W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

Suddenly he realized that he had lost also that burden of responsibility which made every action of his life a matter of urgent consequence. He could breathe more freely in a lighter air. He was responsible only to himself for the things he did. Freedom! he was his own master at last. From old habit, unconsciously he thanked God that he no longer believed in Him.

- W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

And do you find it more poetic when you don’t quite know what it means? I thought it was only in revealed religion that a mistranslation improved the sense.

- W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

Insensibly he formed the most delightful habit in the world, the habit of reading: he did not know that thus he was providing himself with a refuge from all the distress of life; he did not know either that he was creating for himself an unreal world which would make the real world of every day a source of bitter disappointment.

- W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

Knowledge has its dangers, yes, but is the response to be a retreat from knowledge? Are we prepared then to return to the ape and forfeit the very essence of humanity? Or is knowledge to be used as itself a barrier against the danger it brings?

- Isaac Asimov, from the introduction to The Rest of the Robots

After three days of waiting for the sight of some human face, Decoud caught himself entertaining a doubt of his own individuality. It had merged into the world of cloud and water, of natural forces and forms of nature. In our activity alone do we find the sustaining illusion of an independent existence as against the whole scheme of things of which we form a helpless part.

- Joseph Conrad, Nostromo

The change from the agitation, the passions and the dangers, from the sights and sounds of the shore, was so complete that it would have resembled death had it not been for the survival of his thoughts. In this foretaste of eternal peace they floated vivid and light, like unearthly clear dreams of earthly things that may haunt the souls freed by death from the misty atmosphere of regrets and hopes.

- Joseph Conrad, Nostromo

The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it to much.

- Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

The long afternoon of eternity wore on, that long golden road of an afternoon that would somewhen lead to everlasting night. Motion there was, but motion without event - except for those negligible events that seemed so large to the creatures participating in them.

- Brian Aldiss, Hothouse