Bobbie Ann Mason Quotes

Revisiting much-loved childhood novels is never easy.

When I take up a book I have read before, I know what to expect; the satisfaction is not lessened by being anticipated. I shake hands with, and look our old tried and valued friend in the face,--compare notes and chat the hour away.

I know that when I watch TV, I want to be transformed and transported, not just by the characters that I grow to love over the hours and seasons of watching but also the world that it plants me into.

'The Office' is not one of those things you move away from. I don't want it to go away.

I want my readers to feel, to think, sometimes to laugh. But most of all I want them to enjoy a good read.

I always feel sad when I come to the end of a book.

I tend to think of the reading of any book as preparation for the next reading of it. There are always intervening books or facts or realizations that put a book in another light and make it different and richer the second or the third time.

I am very grateful to the electronic world for making my life easier, but there is something about holding a book - the smell and the world of association. Even when e-books are perfected, as they surely will be, it will be like being in bed with a very well-made robot rather than a warm, soft, human being whom you love.

If you don't love something, it's not functional, in my opinion.

There are some movies I can watch over and over, never get sick of. I'll put one of those on and be puttering around the house. Then a certain scene will come on and I'll just have to go over and watch.

The audiobooks I buy are never first-time reads - only rereadings of books I know well that I find intoxicating.

We write to taste life twice: in the moment and in retrospection.

What I like best is a book that's at least funny once in a while. What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though.

I'm not a hoarder, I'm a collector: if you have something you like, every time you see it, you have a little happy hit.

When someone says to me, 'I love your book - I read it in a day,' I want to tell them to go back and read it again.

I remember when I was reading 'The Bear,' I was reading as a kid. All these years later, one returns to that for an entirely different reason.

I wish that we all would have slowed down and savored the moment, loved what was happening and then appreciate it. It was going by so fast. Whatever the record told us to do, we'd do. We were just constantly touring, and then MTV happened and that kicked things up a notch for everybody.

I have big plans to read books over again, but I've never re-read anything. The only books I've read over again are the books I didn't pay attention to in high school.

I think I'm learning how to release every day. Recognizing that everything you encounter, touch, or love can become part of you, and in essence never disappears, as long as you can recall it to memory or heart. It's all so connected that we lose everything, but also, we never lose anything.

Sydney has taken my money, Melbourne has my respect, but Adelaide has taken my heart; I shall return.

Nothing makes us love something more than the loss of it.

It's good when someone comes to a book or a movie and interacts with it. It's the difference between an illustration and a painting. An illustration serves a specific purpose, and a painting is something you can immerse yourself in.

Not reading a beautiful book again because you've already read it, that is, as if you were not visiting a dear friend again because you know him already.

When we finish a book, why do we hold it in both hands and gaze at it as if it were somehow alive?

I feel lucky that I read so many books as a kid because I know that no matter how much I appreciate a book now, and I can love a book very much, it's never going to be that childhood passion for a book. There's some element, something special about the way they're reading books and experiencing books that's finite.