We live for books. A sweet mission in this world dominated by disorder and decay.
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco, 1980. Translated by William Weaver.
A work of literature was not taught in isolation, as an artifact produced by some person long dead whose particular intention we must now recover, but as an ever-rolling stream accumulating and adapting over time as it is collated with its multitude of readers. Collatio means all these things: bringing together of texts, conversations about texts, and feeding upon texts as one feeds at a community meal.
Mary Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture, 1992.
Seneca wrote: ‘We ought to imitate bees, as they say, which fly about and gather [from] flowers suitable for making honey, and then arrange and sort into their cells whatever nectars they have collected.’ Composition begins in reading, culled, gathered, and laid away distinctively in separate places, ‘for such things are better retained if they are kept separate’; then, using our own talent and faculties, we blend their variety into one savour which, even if it is still apparent whence it was taken, will yet be something different from its source.
Mary Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture, 1992.
“The Library of Babel,” Jorges Luis Borges// “Songs in the key of strife: the musician putting anxiety centrestage,” Keaton Henson
How could one tell her that books are like having a bath or sleeping, or eating bread-- absolute necessities which one never thinks of in terms of appreciation.
The Brontës Went to Woolworths by Rachel Ferguson
She turned back to the beginning of the book and began wildly to read it all, as though her self depended on it.
The Virgin in the Garden by A.S. Byatt