girlandlovelynotebook: On books part deux.

My "On books" post got quite a bit of feedback with friends through my inbox, so I thought I'd give you a bit more. ;) My great love of books came at around the age of eight years old, when I actively chose them over toys, television and even being social. Yes. I'd often (admittedly) find books more exciting than Barbie dolls and sometimes even friends, which admittedly had me wondering why as it seemed so different. Once I opened a book however; I'd be immersed in it for days, and would often sit on the swings out back reading until darkness would fall, then continue inside until my eyes could no longer remain open. Summers were obviously the best time for reading because school never interrupted the stories.

When I was a bit older, my father would drop me off at the book store returning for me literally four hours later. I'd hop into the car, both content and pleasantly exhausted from my new book finds, and then read even more after returning home. I believe (like so many others) that the way books can fuel and feed your imagination by both creating characters as real as anyone and painting stories in your mind page by page is truly magical, and I worry that children in the future will not be reading tangible books quite the same way they did before. Books are of course to blame for my love of writing, and I believe that's most likely true with anyone who craves reading the way I do.

"Once I began a book, I couldn't put it down. It was like an addiction; I read while I ate, on the train, in bed until late at night, in school, where I'd keep the book hidden so I could read during class. But I had almost no desire to talk to anyone about the experience I had through books and music. I felt content just being me and no one else."

-Haruki Murakami

"The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: a human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive. To him…a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death. Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create…so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, his very breath is cut off from him. He must create, must pour creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency he is not really alive unless creating."

— Pearl Buck

"I'd rather have a mind opened by wonder

than closed by belief."

-unknown

"Sometimes I want to drown in books and words and crackling paper
and authors and syntax and details and just die of happiness right there."

-unknown

"Tell me a fact and I'll learn. Tell me a truth and I'll believe.

But tell me a story and it will live in my heart forever."

-Indian proverb

"I have frequently seen people become neurotic when they content themselves with inadequate or wrong answers to the questions of life. They seek position, marriage, reputation, outward success of money, and remain unhappy and neurotic even when they have attained what they were seeking. Such people are usually confined within too narrow a spiritual horizon. Their life has not sufficient content, sufficient meaning. If they are enabled to develop into more spacious personalities, the neurosis generally disappears."

-Carl Jung

"There are certain emotions in your body that not even your best friend can sympathize with, but you will find the right film or right book, and it will understand you."

-Bjork

"I met a wonderful new man,

He's fictional but you can't have everything."

-unknown

"You should write because you love the shape of stories and sentences and the creation of different words on a page. Writing comes from reading and reading is the finest teacher of how to write."

-Annie Proulx