“This is every reader's catch-22: the more you read, the more you realize you haven't read; the more you yearn to read more, the more you understand that you have, in fact, read nothing. There is no way to finish,… — Pamela Paul Copy Share Image
“Built-in shelves line my bedroom, adjacent to my Japanese platform bed, purchased for its capacious rim, the better to hold those books that must be immediately accessible. Yet still they pile on my nightstand, and the grid of shelves continues… — Pamela Paul Copy Share Image
“When I come home and look back through my Book of Books I see a personal narrative I didn’t recognize at the time. I went from escaping into books to extracting things from them, from being inspired by books to trying to do things that inspired me—many of which I first encountered in stories. I went from wishing I were… — Pamela Paul Copy Share
“When I look through Bob, the actual stories between his mottled covers may have been written by others, but they belong to me now. Nobody else on the planet has read this particular series of books in this exact order and been affected in precisely this way. Each of us could say the same about our respective reading trajectories. Even… — Pamela Paul Copy Share
“I went from escaping into books to extracting things from them, from being inspired by books to trying to do things that inspired me—many of which I first encountered in stories. I went from wishing I were like a character in books to being a character in my books. I went from reading books to wrestling with them to writing… — Pamela Paul Copy Share
“Choosing a book is so gratifying, it’s worth dragging out the process, starting even before finishing the current one. As the final chapters approach, you can pile up the possibilities like a stack of travel brochures. You can lay out three books and let them linger overnight before making a final decision in the morning. You can Google the reviews;… — Pamela Paul Copy Share
“At this point, there is no human way that I could read even those books I've deliberately marked as absolute must-reads. [ . .… — Pamela Paul Copy Share Image
“At the office I worked in before that, my required all employees to take a personality test that divided us neatly into one of four quadrants: Doers, Creators, Deciders, or Thinkers, categories that would then define our roles in the department. Most of the others were Doers; there were a couple of Deciders, too. I was the only Thinker. My… — Pamela Paul Copy Share
“For a girl who often felt like she lived more in the cozy world of books than in the unforgiving world of the playground,… — Pamela Paul Copy Share Image
“To whom do books belong? The books we read and the books we write are both ours and not ours. They're also theirs.” — Pamela Paul Copy Share Image
“All of us are writers reading other people's writing, turning pages or clicking to the next screen with pleasure and admiration. All of us absorb other people's words, feeling like we have gotten to know the authors personally in our own ways, even if just a tiny bit. True, we may also harbor jealousy or resentment, disbelief or disappointment. We… — Pamela Paul Copy Share
“Whenever one of us introduced an old favorite, we savored the other's first delight like a shared meal eaten with a newly acquired gusto,… — Pamela Paul Copy Share Image
“This is every reader's catch-22: the more you read, the more you realize you haven't read; the more you yearn to read more, the… — Pamela Paul Copy Share Image
“To quote Virginia Woolf, “If we could banish all such preconceptions when we read, that would be an admirable beginning. Do not dictate to… — Pamela Paul Copy Share Image