A Quote by Phyllis McGinley

A bookworm in bed with a new novel and a good reading lamp is as much prepared for pleasure as a pretty girl at a college dance.

Phyllis McGinley

Quote Topics

Bed College Dance Girl Good Good Reading Lamp Much New Novel Pleasure Prepared Pretty Pretty Girl Reading

Quote Author

Phyllis McGinley
American - Author
March 21, 1905 - February 22, 1978

When I was a little girl, I was a real, drippy bookworm. But when I went into fashion, I stopped reading.

Lisa Jewell

To write a novel may be pure pleasure. To live a novel presents certain difficulties. As for reading a novel, I do my best to get out of it.

Karl Kraus

I read my books at night, like that, under the quilt with the overheated reading lamp. Reading all those good lines while suffocating. It was magic.

Charles Bukowski

My guiltiest pleasure is reading a novel with a glass of wine. I love to read voraciously. I always have. And I love to lose myself in a good book.

Kasi Lemmons

In reading a novel, any novel, we have to know perfectly well that the whole thing is nonsense, and then, while reading, believe every word of it. Finally, when we're done with it, we may find - if it's a good novel - that we're a bit different from what we were before we read it, that we have changed a little... But it's very hard to say just what we learned, how we were changed.

Ursula K. Le Guin

The constant habit of perusing devout books is so indispensable, that it has been termed the oil of the lamp of prayer. Too much reading, however, and too little meditation, may produce the effect of a lamp inverted; which is extinguished by the very excess of that ailment, whose property is to feed it.

Hannah More

I actually sing horribly, but I used to dance pretty good. I was a gymnast, and you can usually use those gymnastic tricks with dance. Plus, they're so much fun to do. That wasn't really a big part of my career. It was just a phase.

Robert Englund

There are five dark matters and five lamps. Love of this world is darkness, and the fear of Allaah is its lamp. Sin is darkness, and its lamp is repentance. The grave is darkness, and its lamp is 'none has the right to be worshipped but Allaah, and Muhammad is the messenger of Allaah.' The hereafter is darkness, and its lamp is the good deed. The Siraat is darkness, and its lamp is certainty of faith.

Abu Bakr

Of course there is no denying the possible pleasure of holing up with a fat, slow-moving, mediocre novel; still, we all know that we can indulge ourselves in that fashion only so much. In the end, we read not for reading's sake, but to learn.

Joseph Brodsky

When I was 18, I was moving to New York to start college at The New School. I had done a year of college in Toronto and wasn't happy there. I didn't have any friends in New York City, but I applied and got in. It was pretty overwhelming, but everyone in New York is so ambitious and creative.

Stacey Farber

When writing a novel, that's pretty much entirely what life turns into: 'House burned down. Car stolen. Cat exploded. Did 1500 easy words, so all in all it was a pretty good day.

Neil Gaiman

I think predictability is built into any good novel in some way - you begin reading Anna Karenina and you know pretty much what's going to happen at the end. But that doesn't mean you know what's going to happen in the middle. For me, it's that sense of what happens in the middle that's important.

Scarlett Thomas

I believe we have an obligation to read for pleasure, in private and in public places. If we read for pleasure, if others see us reading, then we learn, we exercise our imaginations. We show others that reading is a good thing.

Neil Gaiman

To justify being listened to, I try to be as well informed as I can. Hence, the travel. Reading is good too. Reading gets you part way there, and I do read pretty voraciously for a guy who's trying to write so much.

Henry Rollins

So welcome 'Damsels in Distress,' an exhilarating gift of a comedy about college, the female intellect, the limitless male ego, inventing a new dance, and suicide prevention... This is the world as Stillman sees it, and to luxuriate for two hours in that retro bubble of sparkling wit is a pleasure not to be missed.