Knowledge is like money: to be of value it must circulate, and in circulating it can increase in quantity and, hopefully, in value.
For one who reads, there is no limit to the number of lives that may be lived, for fiction, biography, and history offer an inexhaustible number of lives in many parts of the world, in all periods of time.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Reading opens up endless possibilities and experiences through the stories of others.
This quote by Louis L'Amour highlights the transformative power of reading, suggesting that through literature—be it fiction, biography, or history—individuals can explore countless lives and experiences that expand their understanding of the world. It emphasizes that books allow readers to live vicariously through diverse characters and real historical figures, thus enriching their own lives with the wisdom and experiences found in these narratives.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a school presentation about the importance of reading, this quote could highlight the benefits of engaging with different texts.
More from Louis L'Amour
All quotes →One who returns to a place sees it with new eyes. Although the place may not have changed, the viewer inevitably has. For the first time things invisible before become suddenly visible.
Once you have read a book you care about, some part of it is always with you.
If you wait for inspiration, you're not a writer, but a waiter.
Books are the perfect Time Machine. By the simple act of opening a book you can, in an instant, be travelling up a jungle river without once being bitten by mosquitoes, or you can almost die of thirst in the desert while holding a cold drink in your hand, or dine in the finest restaurants and never have to worry about paying the bill, or ride the wild country of our western frontier and never worry about losing your scalp to a raiding party.
Adventure is just a romantic name for trouble. It sounds swell when you write about it, but it's hell when you meet it face to face in a dark and lonely place.
Similar quotes
It is a pity, in my opinion, that no prize exists for the writer who best refrains from adding to the world's bad books.
Until the 20th century it was generally assumed that a writer had said what he had to say in his works.
He constructed a vast labyrinthine of periods, made impassable by the piling-up of clauses upon clauses-clauses in which oversight and bad grammar seemed manifestations of disdain.
Is 'The Wind in the Willows' a children's book? Is 'Alice in Wonderland?' Is 'Treasure Island?' These are masterpieces which we read with pleasure as children, but with how much more pleasure when we are grown-up.
My father, if anything, first and last, was a man of words. He loved stories; he didn't live for stories, exactly, but I think he lived through stories. I think, like many writers, he loved stories about things he had experienced as much as, if not more than, he loved the experiences themselves.
Every word a woman writes changes the story of the world, revises the official version.