A Reader on Reading Quotes

“القارئ المثالي يخلخل النص، ولا يسلّم بكلمات الكاتب. القارئ المثالي هو قارئ تراكمي: كل قراءة لكتاب من الكتب تضفي على السرد طبقة جديدة من الذاكرة”
― Alberto Manguel, A Reader on Reading

“Over the years, my experience, my tastes, my prejudices have changed: as the days go by, my memory keeps reshelving, cataloguing, discarding the volumes in my library, my words and my world - except for a few constant landmarks - are never one and the same. Heraclitus’s bon mot about time applies equally well to my reading: “You never dip into the same book twice.”
― Alberto Manguel, A Reader on Reading

“A day or so before his death, Borges called Bioy from Geneva. Bioy said that he sounded infinitely sad. “What are you doing in Geneva? Come home,” Bioy said to him. “I can’t,” Borges answered. “And anyway, any place is good enough to die in.” Bioy said that in spite of their friendship, he felt, as a writer, hesitant to touch such a good exit line.”
― Alberto Manguel, A Reader on Reading

“Reality deals in specifics under the guise of generalities. Literature does the contrary...”
― Alberto Manguel, A Reader on Reading

“Words tell us what we, as a society, believe the world to be”
― Alberto Manguel, A Reader on Reading

“Instead, I practiced different forms of reading. The possibilities offered by books are legion. The solitary relationship of a reader with his or her books breaks into dozens of further relationships: with friends upon whom we urge the books we like, with booksellers (the few who have survived in the Age of Supermarkets) who suggest new titles, with strangers for whom we might compile an anthology. As we read and reread over the years, these activities multiply and echo one another. A book we loved in our youth is suddenly recalled by someone to whom it was long ago recommended, the reissue of a book we thought forgotten makes it again new to our eyes, a story read in one context becomes a different story under a different cover. Books enjoy this modest kind of immortality.”
― Alberto Manguel, A Reader on Reading

“...the Bush administration may, in future years, be remembered 'for bringing peace to the Middle East' (as Condoleezza Rice has pronounced). History may be the mother of truth, but it can also give birth to illegitimate children.”
― Alberto Manguel, A Reader on Reading

“قد يبزغ عصرٌ، ربما بعد سنوات...
محظوظ أكثر منا نحن،
ستعمّه الحكمة من دون قسوة
و المرحُ من دون طيش.

لماثيو آرنولد في ألبرتو مانغويل، فن القراءة.”
― Alberto Manguel, A Reader on Reading

“Each technology has its own merits, and therefore it may be more useful to leave aside this crusading view of the electronic word vanquishing the printed one and explore instead each technology according to its particular merits. Perhaps”
― Alberto Manguel, A Reader on Reading

“To say “I” is to draw a circle in which writer and reader share a common existence within the margins of the page, where reality and unreality rub off each other, where words and what the words name contaminate each other.”
― Alberto Manguel, A Reader on Reading