“I’m reading!”

“You are about to begin reading. . . . Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other thought. Let the world around you fade. Best to close the door; the TV is always on in the next room. Tell the others right away, ‘No, I don’t want to watch TV!’ Raise your voice—they won’t hear you otherwise—‘I’m reading! I don’t want to be disturbed!’ Maybe they haven’t heard you, with all that racket; speak louder, yell: ‘I’m beginning to read!’”

—Italo Calvino, quoted in Antaeus, 20th Anniversary Issue, 1990.

yellow light

“The flower blazed between the angles of the roots. . . . It blazed a soft yellow, a lambent light under a film of velvet; it filled the caverns behind the eyes with light. All that inner darkness became a hall, leaf smelling, earth smelling, of yellow light.”

—Virginia Woolf, Between The Acts, 1941.

Modern writers

“‘Modern writers are the moons of literature; they shine with reflected light, with light borrowed from the ancients.’”

—Ben Johnson, quoted in James Boswell’s Life of Johnson, 1791.

Idleness

“‘Idleness is a disease which must be combated; but I would not advise a rigid adherence to a particular plan of study. I myself have never persisted in any plan for two days together. A man ought to read just as inclination leads him; for what he reads as a task will do him little good. A young man should read five hours in a day, and so may acquire a great deal of knowledge.’”

—Ben Johnson, quoted in James Boswell’s Life of Johnson, 1791.

little things

“There is nothing, Sir, too little for so little a creature as man. It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible.”

—Ben Johnson, quoted in James Boswell’s Life of Johnson, 1791.