What is more natural than that a solidity, a complicity, a bond should be established between Reader and Reader, thanks to the book? You can leave the bookshop content, you, a man who thought that the period where you could still expect something from life had ended. You are bearing with you two different expectations, and both promise days of pleasant hopes; the expectation contained in the book - of a reading experience you are impatient to resume - and the expectation contained in that telephone number - of hearing again the vibrations, a times treble and at times smoldering, of that voice, when it will answer your first phone call in a while, in fact tomorrow, with the fragile pretext of the book, to ask her if she likes it or not, to tell her how many pages you have read or not read, to suggest to her that you meet again.. Italo Calvino
About This Quote

This quote is from the novel “A Moveable Feast” by Ernest Hemingway. It is spoken by the character, the main protagonist of the book, who is waiting for his girlfriend's brother to call him back with an invitation to dinner. It shows how easily people can get affected by the books they read. The protagonist has spent so much time reading about other people's adventures that he expects his own life to follow in their footsteps. Of course, it won't be the same.

Source: If On A Winters Night A Traveler

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  1. If one wanted to depict the whole thing graphically, every episode, with its climax, would require a three-dimensional, or, rather, no model: every experience is unrepeatable. What makes lovemaking and reading resemble each other most is that within both of them times and spaces open,...

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  3. I was living and dying in all the fibers of what is chewed and digested and in all the fibers that absorb the sun, consuming and digesting. Under the thatched arbor of a restaurant on a river-bank, where Olivia had waited for me, our teeth...

  4. What matters is not the enclosure of the work within a harmonious figure, but the centrifugal force produced by it -- a plurality of language as a guarantee of a truth that is not merely partial.

  5. It's better not to know authors personally, because the real person never corresponds to the image you form of him from reading his books.

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