A Quote by Carol Shields
Open a book this minute and start reading. Don’t move until you’ve reached page fifty. Until you’ve buried your thoughts in print. Cover yourself with words. Wash yourself away. Dissolve.
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My problem is that while other people are reading fifty books I'm reading one book fifty times. I only stop when at the bottom of page 20, say, I realize I can recite pages 21 and 22 from memory. Then I put the book away for a few years.
It isn’t until you come to a spiritual understanding of who you are that you can begin to take control of yourself. As you learn to control yourself, you will get control of your life. If you want to move the world, you first have to move yourself.
I don't know if [Samuel] Beckett is something you ever bring to the beach - get out of the water, towel off, and start reading some of "The Unnamable." Although, because it's the kind of book you can open to any page and start reading, it is beach reading in that way.
The true felicity of a lover of books is the luxurious turning of page by page, the surrender, not meanly abject, but deliberate and cautious, with your wits about you, as you deliver yourself into the keeping of the book. This I call reading.
You must be ready in mind, body, and spirit before you can make a change. People cannot convince you to do it. You cannot force you to do it. Everything you think, say, and do until that happens is just preparation. So love yourself right now. Honor yourself. Keep talking to yourself. Keep thinking ready thoughts. In the meantime, try to remember you will not be ready until you are ready.
When you go on book tour, you're always talking about yourself and your book from the time you get up in the morning until you go out at night. You, you. You get really sick of yourself.
When you open yourself to the continually changing, impermanent, dynamic nature of your own being and of reality, you increase your capacity to love and care about other people and your capacity to not be afraid. You're able to keep your eyes open, your heart open, and your mind open. And you notice when you get caught up in prejudice, bias, and aggression. You develop an enthusiasm for no longer watering those negative seeds, from now until the day you die. And, you begin to think of your life as offering endless opportunities to start to do things differently.
Don't even wait until you've lost a pound. The minute you can push the plate away with food still on it, give yourself a pat on the back.
...You have to accept yourself, who you are. You don't believe. You still fight who you are. Until you accept yourself, until you believe, you won't be able to call forth your Han, your power, except in great anger.
Do be kind to yourself. Fill pages as quickly as possible; double space, or write on every second line. Regard every new page as a small triumph. Until you get to page 50. Then calm down, and start worrying about the quality. Do feel anxiety - it's the job.
John Bunyan, author of the classic book the Pilgrim’s Progress, said “You have not lived today until you have done something for someone who cannot pay you back.” Make a decision that you will live to give. Be on the lookout each day for somebody you can bless. Don’t’ live for yourself; learn to give yourself away, and your life will make a difference.
I got very famous for a minute and then it just all went away, you know? And for the last 20 years - you've got to pick yourself up and dust yourself off and then go on your merry way and start again, in a sense, and that's what I've been doing.
I see all of us reading ourselves away from ourselves, straining in circles of light to find more light until the line of words becomes a trail of crumbs that we follow across a page of fresh snow.
A lot of people are quite discouraged by the process of getting healthy because, one, they think they can't afford it, and two, it's daunting. I wanted to start a dialogue. Because you won't be able to even get there until you actually accept yourself and start connecting with yourself.
The American people are incredibly generous and even playful when you open yourself up and feed the media beast until it goes away satisfied.
Reading is merely a surrogate for thinking for yourself; it means letting someone else direct your thoughts. Many books, moreover, serve merely to show how many ways there are of being wrong, and how far astray you yourself would go if you followed their guidance. You should read only when your own thoughts dry up, which will of course happen frequently enough even to the best heads; but to banish your own thoughts so as to take up a book is a sin against the holy ghost; it is like deserting untrammeled nature to look at a herbarium or engravings of landscapes.
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