“ Inconveniently, books are all the pages in them, not just the ones you choose to read.
— Don Paterson, The Book of Shadows
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“ Often then, still, now, always, if I can use the book as a compass I can right my way. Reading calms me and it clears my head. In the company of a book my mind expands and I find myself less anxious and more aware.
— Jeanette Winterson, A Bed. A Book. A Mountain.
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Anonymous asked: A really random question, but how do you keep books in such pristine condition in your bag? Mine tend to get bumped around and badly scuffed up!
I think I’m just careful and I don’t care too much. I always carry at least one book around with me, so I long ago made peace with the fact that I’ll crease a couple of corners, or dent some pages, etc. I don’t mind if it happens by accident. I do try and put my book in a separate compartment to the rest of my stuff, but I also have a lot of bags where I don’t have compartments. I’m also not really one who “throws” stuff in her bag, I always put my bag down before I put my book in or out, ditto with my purse, keys, and knick-knacks. So… yep. No secret to it, just being a wee bit careful.
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“ Books work from the inside out. They are a private conversation happening somewhere in the soul.
— Jeanette Winterson, A Bed. A Book. A Mountain.
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“ You can possess a book without really owning it, though. Beyond ownership in a commercial or legal sense, there’s ownership of an emotional or metaphysical kind — when a book speaks so powerfully to us that we feel it’s ours exclusively: that it exists just tor us. People we meet sometimes have this effect too; they look into our eyes, and speak in a hushed, intimate voice, and make us feel we’re uniquely important to them — before going on to do the same to someone else. In life, we call these people flirts. The best books are flirtatious, too, since they seem to be ours alone when in reality they’re anyone’s.
— Blake Morrison, Twelve Thoughts About Reading
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“ Books are the true daemons: not the imaginary animals of Pullman’s brilliant imagination, but solid blocks of paper and print pottering along with you every moment of the day. There for you. Books are shields against a terror of boredom, that curse of most childhoods. What they offer does not change, and if the human race was separated from words and thoughts and stories, it would die. I took that legacy from my childhood, but more: a habit of comfort and enquiry. If something happened to me, if I felt something, I would go to books to read about others’ experiences, others’ thoughts, to find out what to do and what to think. Books tell you jokes, make you laugh, laugh with you.
— Carmen Callil, True Daemons
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