Quotes: On reading good books

Christine Weston:

She gazed from the fabulous tides of sunset to the book which she had brought to read on the journey. It still smelled of Dockett’s Book Store. She could see the dusty shelves stretching from floor to ceiling, the long tables stacked with volumes, and the figures which moved like characters in a Kafka novel. That had been in the fall of 1935.
Christine Weston. The Dark Wood. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1946. p. 21.

Anne Perry:

A good book changes you, even if it is only to add a little to the furniture of your mind.
Anne Perry, writing on "The Man Who Was Thursday" by G. K. Chesterton. The Book that Changed my Life: 71 Remarkable Writers Celebrate the Books that Matter Most to Them. Edited by Roxanne J. Coady and Joy Johannessen. New York: Gotham Books, 2007. p. 137.

Virginia Woolf:

Rachel read what she chose, reading with the curious literalness of one to whom written sentences are unfamiliar, and handling words as though they were made of wood, separately of great importance, and possessed of shapes like tables or chairs. In this way she came to conclusions, which had to be remodelled according to the adventures of the day, and were indeed recast as liberally as any one could desire, leaving always a small grain of belief behind them.
Virginia Woolf. The Voyage Out (1915).

Greg Epstein:

Or as the eighth-century Chinese poet Li Po said to his friend and colleague Tu Fu, "Thank you for letting me read your new poems. It was like being alive twice."
Greg Epstein. Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe. William Morrow, 2009. p. 189.