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What I call my 'self' now is hardly a person at all. It's mainly a meeting place for various natural forces, desires, and fears, etcetera, some of whi...more

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Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.

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Those of us who are blamed when old for reading childish books were blamed when children for reading books too old for us.

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When the voice of your friend or the page of your book sinks into democratic equality with the pattern of the wallpaper, the feel of your clothes, you...more

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Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this ...more

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You may have noticed that the books you really love are bound together by a secret thread. You know very well what is the common quality that makes yo...more

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Our experience is coloured through and through by books and plays and the cinema, and it takes patience and skill to disentangle the things we have re...more

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It must be a really great book because one can read it as a boy in one way, and then re-read it in middle life and get something very different out of...more

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We do not enjoy a story fully at the first reading.

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No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally – and often far more – worth reading at the age of fifty and beyond.

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Naturally, since I myself am a writer, I do not wish the ordinary reader to read no modern books. But if he must read only the new or only the old, I ...more

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You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.

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A clever schoolboy's reaction to his reading is most naturally expressed by parody or imitation.

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A children's story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children's story in the slightest.

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Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need th...more