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A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.

Franz Kafka

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Kafka, Franz. Letter to Oskar Pollak. 27 Jan. 1904.

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Current Citation

Kafka, Franz. Franz Kafka: Letters to Friends, Family, and Editors, translated by Richard and Clara Winston. Schocken, 1990.

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When you reread a classic you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in you than there was before.

Clifton Fadiman

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Fadiman, Clifton. Any Number Can Play. The World Publishing Company, 1957.

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From a child I was fond of reading, and all the little money that came into my hands was ever laid out in books.

Benjamin Franklin

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

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Original Citation

Franklin, Benjamin. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, edited by Charles W. Elliot. P. F. Collier & Son, Co., 1909.

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Current Citation

Franklin, Benjamin. "The Autobiography." Benjamin Franklin: Autobiography, Poor Richard, and Later Writings, edited by J. A. Leo Lemay. Library of America, 2005, pt. 1.

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A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone.

Tyrion Lannister

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Game of Thrones

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"The Kingsroad." Game of Thrones, written by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss and George R.R. Martin, directed by Timothy Van Patten, season 1, episode 2, Television 360 and Grok! Studio, 2011.

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The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.

Oscar Wilde

The Picture of Dorian Gray

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Original Citation

Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray. London: Ward, Lock and Co., 1891, ch. 19.

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Current Citation

Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray, edited by Robert Mighall. Penguin Classics, 2003, ch. 19.

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Books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are.

John Milton

Areopagitica

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Original Citation

Milton, John. Areopagitca; a speech of Mr. John Milton for the Liberty of Unlicenc'd Printing, to the Parlament of England. London, 1644.

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Current Citation

Milton, John. "Areopagitica." John Milton: Major Works, edited by Stephen Orgel and Jonathan Goldberg. Oxford University Press, 2008.

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

Haruki Murakami

Norwegian Wood

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Murakami, Haruki. ノルウェイの森 [Norwegian Wood]. Kodansha, 1987.

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Medicine for the soul.

The inscription over the library of the tomb complex of Ramses II.

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Library inscription. Quoted in Library of History, by Diodorus Siculus, translated by C. H. Oldfather. Loeb Classical Library, 1933, bk. I, par. 49, l. 3. Originally quoted in Library of History, by Diodorus Siculus. c. 30 BC, bk. I, par. 49, l. 3.

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The reading of good books is like a conversation with the best men of past centuries-in fact like a prepared conversation, in which they reveal only the best of their thoughts.

René Descartes

Discourse on Method

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Original Citation

Descartes, René [published anonymously]. Discours de la Méthode: Pour bien conduire sa raison, et chercher la vérité dans les sciences [Discourse on Method: To Conduct Reason Well, and Seek Truth in the Sciences]. Leiden, 1637, pt. 1.

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Current Citation

Descartes, René. Discourse on the Method, translated by Ian Maclean. Oxford University Press, 2008, pt. 1.

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I discovered me in the library.

Ray Bradbury

Quoted in Paris Review

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Bradbury, Ray. "Ray Bradbury, The Art of Fiction No. 203." Interviewed by Sam Weller. Paris Review, Spring 2010.

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The failure to read good books both enfeebles the vision and strengthens our most fatal tendency-the belief that the here and now is all there is.

Allan Bloom

The Closing of the American Mind

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Bloom, Allan. The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students. Simon & Schuster, 1987.

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Age, that Age appeared
to be best in four things: Old
Wood best to burn, Old Wine to drink, Old
Friends to trust, and old Authors to read.

Francis Bacon

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Bacon, Francis. Apophthegms New and Old. London: Hanna Barret/Richard Whittaker, 1625, no. 36.

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Reach for the book: It is a weapon.

Bertolt Brecht

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Original Citation

Brecht, Bertolt. Die Mutter. Lebed der Revolutionärin Pelagea Wlassowa aus Twer. [The mother. Life of the Revolutionary Pelagea Vlassova from Tver.] 17 Jan. 1932, omödienhaus am Schiffbauerdamm, Berlin, Germany.

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Current Citation

Brecht, Bertolt. The Mother. Grove Press, 1994.

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I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us... We need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.

Franz Kafka

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Original Citation

Kafka, Franz. Letter to Oskar Pollak. 27 Jan. 1904.

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Current Citation

Kafka, Franz. "To Oscar Pollack, January 27, 1904." Letters to Friends, Family and Editors, translated by Richard and Clara Winston. Schocken, 1990.

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A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.

Italo Calvino

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Original Citation

Calvino, Italo. "Perché leggere i classici? [Why Read the Classics?]" L'Espresso, 28 June 1981.

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Current Citation

Calvino, Italo. Why Read the Classics? Penguin Classics, 2009.

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God be thanked for books. They are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages.

William Ellery Channing

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Channing, William Ellery. "Self Culture." Franklin Lecture. Sept. 1838, Boston, MA, USA.

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Sometimes I think of the books I'll never read that would have changed my life.

Jonathan Safran Foer

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Foer, Jonathan Safran. "The Hum Inside the Skull, Revisited," New York Times, 16 Jan. 2005, www.nytimes.com/2005//01/16/books/review/the-hum-inside-the-skull-revisited.html

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