A Quote by Terrance Hayes

The summer I got to Pittsburgh for graduate school, I house-sat for a Ph.D. student who had a lot of books. One of the books that I found was 'Lolita' by Vladimir Nabokov. That was eye opening. I've probably read it every other year since my 20s.
After so many attempts to mount a musical version of 'Lolita,' the project was well and truly dead by the summer of 1971. Chief among those relieved: Vladimir Nabokov.
Have you really read all those books in your room?” Alaska laughing- “Oh God no. I’ve maybe read a third of ‘em. But I’m going to read them all. I call it my Life’s Library. Every summer since I was little, I’ve gone to garage sales and bought all the books that looked interesting. So I always have something to read.
It may be true too that I would not have encountered the most important books and art and ideas of my life had I not chased down a Ph.D. I've thought about that a lot....MAYBE I would have found the same books on my own, but I can't know for sure.
When I got out of the military, I finished up my education at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, and I had some mentors who said, 'You got what it takes. You should consider going to graduate school, getting a Ph.D. in neuroscience.' I didn't think I had what it took until somebody who had a Ph.D. told me I had what it takes.
Nabokov began writing 'Lolita' before he ever knew of Florence 'Sally' Horner, an 11-year-old who was kidnapped from Camden, New Jersey, in the summer of 1948.
I left school my senior year to do a play at the Alley Theatre in Houston, Texas. Then while I was doing a play, I auditioned for Juilliard. I got in over the summer, and they told me, 'You have to graduate high school to come here. You don't need the SATs, but you do need to graduate high school.' I finished over the summer through correspondence.
I remember one letter from a girl in a midwestern town who read one of my books and thought she had discovered it- that no one had ever read it or knew about it. Then one day in her local library she found cards for one or two of my other books. They were full of names- the books were borrowed all the time. She resented this a bit and then walked around the town looking in everybody's face and wondering if they were the ones who were reading my books. That is someone I write for.
School did give me one of the greatest gifts of my life, though. I learned how to read, and for that I remain thankful. I would have died otherwise. As soon as I was able, I read, alone. Under the covers with a flashlight or in my corner of the attic—I sought solace in books. It was from books that I started to get an inkling of the kinds of assholes I was dealing with. I found allies too, in books, characters my age who were going through or had triumphed against the same bullshit.
We had library books in our house, but not our own. So you had 14 days to read them. There would be eight books a fortnight in our house and I'd read as many of those as I could.
I actually don't read comic books. I did when I was a kid - I used to read a lot of 'X-Men' comic books. I read a couple 'Scott Pilgrim' this past year, and those are really good, but I don't read in general, unfortunately.
We give scholarships to high school kids and a new library of books to every preschool child in the county where I was born. I didn't have books at home so I did all my reading at school. I love books and I believe that helping kids to read gives them a great start in life.
I grew up in a house without many books. The books the nuns made us read in school didn't interest me.
We had absolutely no experience in writing kids books and its a very competitive market. But we buy and read a lot of children's books and we felt that our books had that extra something we were always looking for.
Until I read Anne Frank's diary, I had found books a literal escape from what could be the harsh reality around me. After I read the diary, I had a fresh way of viewing the both literature and the world. From then on, I found I was impatient with books that were not honest or that were trivial and frivolous.
By the time I got to school, I had already read a couple hundred books. I knew in the first grade that they were lying to me because I had already been exposed to other points of view. School is basically about one point of view -- the one the teacher has or the textbooks have. They don't like the idea of having different points of view, so it was a battle. Of course I would pipe up with my five-year-old voice.
What I did do a lot as a child was read, and I particularly remember reading all the 'Hardy Boys' books, a set of history books called the 'Landmark Books,' and a series of science books called the 'All About Books.'
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