The Shelf Quotes

“The banal advice of writ in teachers is "write what you know," but the truth is, you don't know a place until you write it. "Write what you want to know" is more like it.”
― Phyllis Rose, The Shelf: From LEQ to LES: Adventures in Extreme Reading

“More people should visit Antarctica, metaphorically speaking, on their own. That is one of the conclusions I have reached, one of my recommendations: explore something, even if it's just a bookshelf. Make a stab in the dark. Read off the beaten path. Your attention is precious. Be careful of other people trying to direct how you dispense it. Confront your own values. Decide what it is you are looking for an then look for it. Perform connoisseurship. We all need to create our own vocabulary of appreciation, or we are trapped by the vocabulary of others.”
― Phyllis Rose, The Shelf: From LEQ to LES: Adventures in Extreme Reading

“Every reading is a misreading.”
― Phyllis Rose, The Shelf: From LEQ to LES: Adventures in Extreme Reading

“Libraries make strange bedfellows”
― Phyllis Rose, The Shelf: From LEQ to LES: Adventures in Extreme Reading

“Some kinds of literature demand to be treated respectfully. The obligation is on the reader to live up to them and not so much on them to entertain the reader.”
― Phyllis Rose, The Shelf: From LEQ to LES: Adventures in Extreme Reading

“Changes in consciousness begin with art and take shape through discussion of art. But the process takes a long time and involves a lot of people working in many small ways.”
― Phyllis Rose, The Shelf: From LEQ to LES: Adventures in Extreme Reading

“Reading is almost always subversive. From the time you read the next night's fairy tale under the covers by flashlight when you have already had your bedtime story from Daddy and are supposed to be asleep to the time you are an adult reading junk, hoping no one catches you at it, reading is private; that's the most seductive thing about it. It's you and the book.”
― Phyllis Rose, The Shelf: From LEQ to LES: Adventures in Extreme Reading

“Most people should visit Antarctica, metaphorically speaking, on their own. That is one of the conclusions I have reached, one of my recommendations: explore something, even if it's just a bookshelf.”
― Phyllis Rose, The Shelf: From LEQ to LES: Adventures in Extreme Reading