Terrance Hayes Quotes

I was a pretentious child. I grew up without a television. I read a lot of books and I loved Shakespeare. Still do.

'Pnin' by Vladimir Nabokov, which is a literally small book, fit right in my common law book. I would sit in class and read it.

I didn't care for most of the books I was being asked to read in school. I started reading like crazy right after high school when I got a job in a mental hospital. I was working my way through college, and I did a lot of night shifts, and there was nothing to do. So I read like crazy, serious stuff, all the classics.

All summer, I read fiction because you must read for the pleasure and beauty of it, and not only for research. I don't read thrillers, romance or mystery, and I don't read self-help books because I don't believe in shortcuts and loopholes.

Many books have mattered enormously to my life and work. 'David Copperfield' by Charles Dickens would be one of several contenders for 'most influential.' I first read it at 13 and have reread it dozens of times since.

The first book that really knocked me out was the 'Brothers Karamazov.' I read it when I was a senior in high school.

I have been very interested in the number of kids who have read the Sherlock Holmes books after reading the Mary Russell books. That's great. That's more or less how I rediscovered the Holmes books.

Reading was such a formative part of my childhood (along with 'Loony Tunes'), that it is difficult to pin point the most influential book. But, under an interrogation light I would probably have to say 'Jane Eyre' by Charlotte Bronte.

I sort of half read Thomas Hardy's 'The Mayor of Casterbridge.' It was assigned in 10th grade, and I just couldn't get into it. About seven years later, I rediscovered Hardy and consumed four of his novels in a row.

I think most people read and re-read the things that they have liked. That's certainly true in my case. I re-read Pound a great deal, I re-read Williams, I re-read Thomas, I re-read the people whom I cam to love when I was at what you might call a formative stage.

The worst thing about new books is that they keep us from reading the old ones.

Now that my kids are out of the house, I'm finally able to get to the classics I never read: Emily Bronte, Dylan Thomas, Joseph Heller's 'Catch-22.' It's endless. They're all in this gigantic pile next to my bed.

I have lots of gaps in my education, and so I'm often picking up classic books that most people read years ago.

I remember, in school during English lessons, I would ask the teacher what were the most difficult books to read, and when she'd say 'Ulysses' or something, I'd run off to the library to check out a copy, eager to attempt the most difficult mountain.

As the years pass, I find that writers who were once central to me aren't anymore. I revered Yeats's poetry in college. I respect it now and am still ravished by certain lines, but I don't go back to him again and again. I do go back to Emily Dickinson again and again.

He wanted nothing, for the time being, except to understand .... Without advice, assistance or plan, he began reading an incongruous assortment of books; he would find some passage which he could not understand in one book, and he would get another on that subject .... There was no order in his reading; but there was order in what remained of it in his mind.

Her reputation for reading a great deal hung about her like the cloudy envelope of a goddess in an epic.

I made use of the college library by borrowing books other than scientific books, such as all of the plays by George Bernard Shaw, the writing of Edgar Allan Poe. The college library helped me to develop a broader aspect on life.

There is no better indicators of character than the books you have.

Many adults, whether consciously or unconsciously, find it beneath their adult dignity to do anything as childish as read a book, think a thought, or get an idea. Adults are rarely embarrased at having forgotten what little algebra or geography they once learned

If you are open-minded and ready to learn, there are many things which you can learn not only from books and instructors but from the very life experience itself.

Develop into a lifelong self-learner through voracious reading; cultivate curiosity and strive to become a little wiser every day.

Ordinary people have big TVs. Extraordinary people have big libraries.

Self-education is a continuing source of pleasure to me, for the more I know, the fuller my life is and the better I appreciate my own existence

Basically, I'm a perpetual student. I start by finding a subject I really don't know very much, but that I'm curious about. I learn about it through books in a library, by doing interviews with people who know a lot about the subject, and by going out on my own and seeing for myself what's happening.