Amedeo loved thick tomes, and in tackling them he felt the physical pleasure of undertaking a great task. Weighing them in his hand, thick, closely printed, squat, he would consider with some apprehension the number of pages, the length of the chapters, then venture into them, a bit reluctant at the beginning, without any desire to perform the initial chore of remembering the names, catching the drift of the story; then he would entrust himself to it, running along the lines, crossing the grid of the uniform page, and beyond the leaden print the flame and fire of battle appeared, the cannonball that, whistling through the sky, fell at the feet of Prince Andrei, and the shop filled with engravings and statues where Frederic Moreau, his heart in his mouth, was to meet the Arnoux family. Beyond the surface of the page you entered a world where life was more alive than here on this side… . Italo Calvino
About This Quote

The short story writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez was the first to describe the experience of reading "as if it were a dream. When you read you are not actually reading. You are allowing yourself to be swept away by the words, dreams intrude, strange images drift through your mind. The more deeply you read, the more deeply you are carried away. The more deeply you are carried away, the less you are aware of what is on the page."

Source: Difficult Loves

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