Books that recount ordeals are precious because an ordeal is what we most fear, and the stories that tell us how to survive them reassure us about wh…

- Ramona Koval

But, in the end, the books that surround me are the books that made me, through my reading (and misreading) of them; they fall in piles on my desk, t…

- Ramona Koval

I learned that books could be collected, that they were important enough to keep and that a story that seemed to be over could be part of a bigger on…

- Ramona Koval

We read to find out what the world is like, to experience lots of lives, not just the one we live. If it is true that our lives are chaotic and we cr…

- Ramona Koval

That's what reading was for my mother, and became for me - a way to escape, a private time machine, a place that began with moral instruction but soo…

- Ramona Koval

True browsing means that we discover shelves and subjects that we could not have anticipated when we started. And the books we read introduce us to o…

- Ramona Koval

Not only does art imitate life but life imitates art. Perhaps we not only learn about life from stories, perhaps we make our lives through the storie…

- Ramona Koval

That's what is so precious in reading this way - you can plumb the depths of another's experience while sitting still with a book in your hands.

- Ramona Koval

It was disconcerting for the novel to seem so different when I re-read it. Of course we are a different person each time we open a book to read it ag…

- Ramona Koval