I like to read things I've read before. It's like listening over and over to your favorite song.
Interpretation
Revisiting familiar texts can evoke comfort and joy, similar to listening to a beloved song repeatedly.
Anne Rice's quote emphasizes the pleasure and fulfillment that comes from re-engaging with familiar literature. Just as a favorite song can evoke nostalgia and comfort, rereading books allows readers to reconnect with stories and ideas that resonate deeply with them, offering a sense of security and joy in their familiarity.
In practice
In a book club discussion about favorite genres.
From my stone pillow I have dreamed dreams of the mortal world above. I have heard its voices, its new music, as lullabies as I lie in my grave. I have envisioned its fantastical discoveries. I have known its courage in the timeless sanctum of my thoughts. And though it shuts me out with its dazzling forms, I long for one with the strength to roam it fearlessly, to ride the Devil's Road through its heart.
We all suffer under a curse, the curse that we know more than we can endure, and there is nothing, absolutely nothing we can do about the force and the lure of this knowledge.
And so this young one, this young one whom I had so loved, I had to forsake, no matter how broken my heart, no matter how lonely my soul, no matter how bruised my intellect and spirit.
Dear God, help me. Do not forget me on this tiny cinder lost in a galaxy that is lostβa heart no bigger than a speck of dust beating, beating against death, against meaninglessness, against guilt, against sorrow.
The vampires have always been metaphors for me. They've always been vehicles through which I can express things I have felt very, very deeply.
In the very depths of Hell, do not demons love one another?
Education must not simply teach work-it must teach life.
My childhood was surrounded by books and writing. From a very early age I was fascinated by storytelling, by the printed word, by language, by ideas. So I would seek them out.
An article can be timely, topical, engaged in the issues and personalities of the moment; it is likely to be stale within the month. In five years, it may have acquired the quaint aura of a rotary phone. An article is usually Siamese-twinned to its date of birth.
Children love this idea that their brain is like a muscle that gets stronger as they use it.
A good part of 'The Information' is about the transition from an oral to a literary culture. Books effected such a great transformation in the way we think about the world, our history, our logic, mathematics, you name it. I think we would be greatly diminished as a people and as a culture if the book became obsolete.
The idea of education has been so tied to schools, universities, and professors that many assume there is no other way, but education is available to anyone within reach of a library, a post office, or even a newsstand.
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