We must form our minds by reading deep rather than wide.
Reading
Jeremiah is a most melancholy prophet. He wails from beginning to end; he is often childish, is rarely indecent, and although it may be blasphemy to say so, he and his ‘Lamentations’ are really not worth reading.
My personal hobbies are reading, listening to music, and silence.
To feel most beautifully alive means to be reading something beautiful, ready always to apprehend in the flow of language the sudden flash of poetry.
I’m snobby about books that aren’t crime fiction: if I start reading a literary novel and there’s no mystery emerging in the first few pages, I’m like, ‘Gah, this obviously isn’t a proper book. Why would I want to carry on reading it?’
In question-and-answer sessions after a reading or during an interview, I forget the question if I’m giving too long an answer. And at the end, I can’t remember any of the questions. The more anxious I am about remembering, the more likely I am to forget.
In reading plays, however, it should always be remembered that any play, however great, loses much when not seen in action.
I wrote some bad poetry that I published in North African journals, but even as I withdrew into this reading, I also led the life of a kind of young hooligan.
When I was twelve, I started reading Eudora Welty, Thomas Wolfe, Flannery O’Connor, James Agee, and – do we dare breathe the name – William Faulkner.
The pleasure of reading is doubled when one lives with another who shares the same books.