One of the great things about books is you can afford to do anything.
George R. R. MartinRead
I was born in Bayonne, New Jersey. I grew up in the projects. I never went anywhere. But I have lived a thousand lives and I’ve loved a thousand loves. I’ve walked on distant worlds and seen the end of time. Because I read.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Reading broadens our experiences and allows us to live multiple lives through stories.
In this quote, George R. R. Martin emphasizes the transformative power of reading. Despite his humble beginnings and limited physical experiences, he reveals that through literature, he has journeyed to different worlds, experienced various lives, and engaged in countless adventures and romances. Reading provides a gateway to imagination and experience that transcends the limitations of one's physical existence.
Themes
ReadingExperienceImaginationLiteratureAdventure
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be used in a speech about the importance of reading in education.
More from George R. R. Martin
All quotes →I hate outlines. I have a broad sense of where the story is going; I know the end, I know the end of the principal characters, and I know the major turning points and events from the books, the climaxes for each book, but I don't necessarily know each twist and turn along the way. That's something I discover in the course of writing and that's what makes writing enjoyable. I think if I outlined comprehensively and stuck to the outline the actual writing would be boring.
George R. R. MartinRead
There is only one god and his name is Death. And there is only one thing we say to Death: “Not today.
George R. R. MartinRead
I did not do it. Yet now I wish I had.’ He turned to face the hall, that sea of pale faces. ‘I wish I had enough poison for you all. You make me sorry that I am not the monster you would have me be, yet there it is. I am innocent, but I will get no justice here.
George R. R. MartinRead
But a voice inside her whispered, There are no heroes, and she remembered what Lord Petyr had said to her, here in this very hall. 'Life is not a song, sweetling,' he'd told her, 'You may learn that one day to your sorrow.' In life, the monsters win, she told herself.
George R. R. MartinRead
I write from this tight third-person viewpoint, where each chapter is seen through the eyes of one individual character. When I'm writing that character, I become that character and identify with that character.
George R. R. MartinRead
Similar quotes
The purpose of education is to replace an empty mind with an open one.
Malcolm ForbesRead
The reader must come armed , in a serious state of intellectual readiness. This is not easy because he comes to the text alone. In reading, one's responses are isolated, one'sintellect thrown back on its own resourses. To be confronted by the cold abstractions of printed sentences is to look upon language bare, without the assistance of either beauty or community. Thus, reading is by its nature a serious business. It is also, of course, an essentially rational activity.
Neil PostmanRead
Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak.
John BergerRead
May blessings be upon the head of Cadmus, the Phoenicians, or whoever it was that invented books.
Thomas CarlyleRead
[If a book were] very innocent, and one which might be confided to the reason of any man; not likely to be much read if let alone, but if persecuted, it will be generally read. Every man in the United States will think it a duty to buy a copy, in vindication of his right to buy and to read what he pleases.
Thomas JeffersonRead
To improve at chess you should in the first instance study the endgame.
Jose Raul CapablancaRead