If you only read the books
that everyone else is reading,
you can only think
what everyone else is thinking.”

Haruki Murakami

You think your pain and your heartbreak
are unprecedented in the history of the world,
but then you read.
It was books that taught me
that the things that tormented me most
were the very things that connected me
with all the people who were alive,
who had ever been alive.”

James Baldwin

There is something about words.
In expert hands, manipulated deftly,
they take you prisoner.
Wind themselves around your limbs
like spider silk, and when
you are so enthralled you cannot move,
they pierce your skin, enter your blood,
numb your thoughts.
Inside you they work their magic.”

Diane Setterfield

Love never dies a natural death.
It dies because we don’t know
how to replenish its source.
It dies of blindness and errors
and betrayals.
It dies of illness and wounds;
it dies of weariness,
of witherings, of tarnishings.”

Anais Nin

The difference between
the poet and the mathematician
is that the poet tries to
get his head into the heavens
while the mathematician
tries to get the heavens into his head.”

G.K. Chesterton

I can never read all the books I want;
I can never be all the people I want
and live all the lives I want.
I can never train myself
in all the skills I want.
And why do I want?
I want to live and feel
all the shades, tones and variations
of mental and physical experience
possible in my life.
And I am horribly limited.”

Sylvia Plath