One of my personal aims has been to try to bring the word back to people who are dispossessed of it. So when people come along and say, I don't normally read, but somebody gave me one of your books and now I have read all of them, that, for me, is a great victory. Because, of course, they won't stop with my books; they'll read other people's too.
To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark.
The very best science fiction ultimately winds up being a collaboration between author and reader, in which both create, and enjoy doing it: joy is the essential and final ingredient of science fiction, the joy of discovery of newness.
I am always reading immoral books on the sly, and then selfishly trying to prevent other people from having the same wicked good time.
Though public libraries have an imposing air, and doubtless contain invaluable volumes, yet, somehow, the books that prove most agreeable, grateful, and companionable, are those we pick up by chance here and there; those which seem put into our hands by Providence; those which pretend to little, but abound in much.
I consider books to be good for our health, and also our spirits, and they help us to become poets or scientists, to understand the stars or else to discover them deep within the aspirations of certain characters, those who sometimes, on certain evenings, escape from the pages and walk among us humans, perhaps the most human of us all.
He and I should not in the least agree, of course, in our ideas of novels and heroines. Pictures of perfection, as you know, make me sick and wicked; but there is some very good sense in what he says, and I particularly respect him for wishing to think well of all young ladies; it shows an amiable and a delicate mind. And he deserves better treatment than to be obliged to read any more of my works.
Here is Joyce writing what a woman thinks to herself. Can he, does he really know her innermost thoughts? But after I read the whole book, I could better understand that Joyce is an artist who could penetrate the souls of people, male or female. It really doesn't matter that Joyce doesn't have... or never felt a menstrual cramp. To me Leopold Bloom is a central character. He is the despised Irish Jew, married to an Irish Catholic woman. It is through them Joyce develops much of what he wants to say.
One cannot review a bad book without showing off.
When I read, it is not acted literature; but what I write is written acting.