Renita D'Silva > Renita's Quotes

“It was good to walk into a library again; it smelled like home.”
― Elizabeth Kostova, The Historian

“She read books as one would breathe air, to fill up and live.”
― Annie Dillard, The Living

“You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.”
― C.S. Lewis

“I read so I can live more than one life in more than one place.”
― Anne Tyler

“I cannot live without reading.”
― Aidan Chambers, This Is All: The Pillow Book of Cordelia Kenn

“Few pleasures, for the true reader, rival the pleasure of browsing unhurriedly among books: old books, new books, library books, other people's books, one's own books - it does not matter whose or where. Simply to be among books, glancing at one here, reading a page from one over there, enjoying them all as objects to be touched, looked at, even smelt, is a deep satisfaction. And often, very often, while browsing haphazardly, looking for nothing in particular, you pick up a volume that suddenly excites you, and you know that this one of all the others you must read. Those are great moments - and the books we come across like that are often the most memorable.”
― Aidan Chambers

“Books swept me away, this way and that, one after the other; I made endless vows according to their lights for I believed them.”
― Annie Dillard

“If books could have more, give more, be more, show more, they would still need readers who bring to them sound and smell and light and all the rest that can’t be in books.
The book needs you.”
― Gary Paulsen, The Winter Room

“Books are a uniquely portable magic.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“What she was finding also was how one book led to another, doors kept opening wherever she turned and the days weren't long enough for the reading she wanted to do.”
― Alan Bennett, The Uncommon Reader

“Eating and reading are two pleasures that combine admirably.”
― C.S. Lewis

“We live for books.”
― Umberto Eco

“A book is really like a lover. It arranges itself in your life in a way that is beautiful.”
― Maurice Sendak

“Books are essential to me. I cannot live without them, because I cannot live without reading.

But, Arry has just said to me, you can always borrow them so why buy them?

I don't buy books just to collect them. I'm not a collector. I'm not interested in them as objects that might be valuable one day, regardless of what they are about, nor do I want to own every book ever written by one particular author or on one particular subject. I buy them because I want to read them, and I keep them because I've read them.

I can't afford to buy all the ones I'd like to, so I have to borrow quite a few, and this has taught me something about myself, which I haven't heard anyone else admit. When I've read a book which I really like, a book which MATTERS, I feel it belongs to me. I mean, the book itself, the copy I've read. It's as if I pour myself onto the pages as I read them, all my thoughts and emotions, so that by the time I've finished that copy holds inside it the essence of my reading.

A borrowed book has to be returned, so I lose this essence of myself when I give it back. Besides which, a borrowed book has inside it something of everyone else who's read it. They've fingered it and pawed over it, breathed on it, done heaven knows what else as well as read it. And knowing this spoils my reading. The other readers get in my way. I can feel their presence on the cover and on the pages. They even make it smell differently from my own books. In fact, to my mind they've polluted the book and everything in it. That is also why I never buy second-hand books.”
― Aidan Chambers, This Is All: The Pillow Book of Cordelia Kenn

“Stories can conquer fear, you know. They can make the heart bigger.”
― Ben Okri

“I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book! -- When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading.”
― William Styron, Conversations with William Styron

“Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers.”
― Charles W. Eliot

“Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“You get a little moody sometimes but I think that's because you like to read. People that like to read are always a little fucked up.”
― Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides

“There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.”
― Joseph Brodsky

“In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.”
― Mortimer J. Adler

“No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.”
― Robert Frost

“What use is status if you have no one to share it with, Dad?”
― Renita D'Silva, Monsoon Memories

“What wouldn’t my people give for a few bites of the biryani she ordered me to throw away yesterday because she said it smelt?”
― Renita D'Silva, Monsoon Memories

“You put cow dung on my face?’ ‘Every day religiously until you were three. Why else do you think your skin is so clear?”
― Renita D'Silva, Monsoon Memories

“What better hiding place than an old, woodlice-ridden album of photographs!”
― Renita D'Silva, Monsoon Memories

“I wash the clothes, rinse them and then scrub them again. Will that square little box do that? I am not using any fancy machines when my hands will do.”
― Renita D'Silva, Monsoon Memories

“She liked the way a ray of mild autumn sun infiltrating the thick cluster of trees caught a reddish orange leaf swirling in the wind and transformed it golden yellow. She liked that it wasn’t a leaf she recognised, that she could name or associate with her past.”
― Renita D'Silva, Monsoon Memories

“I watched the rows and rows of chappals left by devotees outside the Hindu temple and wondered if the homeless boys who sometimes steal our chickens ever steal them, and if they do, are they punished, and if so by whom?”
― Renita D'Silva, Monsoon Memories