The books and magazines streamed in. He could buy them all, they piled up around him and even while he read, the number of those still to be read disturbed him. … they stood in rows, weighing down his life like a possession which he did not succeed in subordinating to his personality. Thomas Mann
About This Quote

In this quote, Charles Bukowski writes about the negative effects of his dependence on the written word. He was a man who had a strong personality and yet he felt powerless over his books. Bukowski was a writer but he wanted to be a poet, a painter, a musician and a novelist. But he felt that his work was not up to the standards of the literary world.

So he stopped doing it. It was as if all of his unfinished unfinished projects were too much for him to handle at one time. He started feeling overwhelmed by his own work and how he should fit into the literary world.

In this quote, he states that there is no satisfaction in reading if there is nothing you can do with what you read once you finish it.

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  3. We shouldn't teach great books we should teach a love of reading. Knowing the contents of a few works of literature is a trivial achievement. Being inclined to go on reading is a great achievement. - B.F. Skinner
  4. Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live. - Gustave Flaubert
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More Quotes By Thomas Mann
  1. It is love, not reason, that is stronger than death.
  2. Nothing is more curious and awkward than the relationship of two people who only know each other with their eyes – who meet and observe each other daily, even hourly and who keep up the impression of disinterest either because of morals or because of...
  3. Forbearance in the face of fate, beauty constant under torture, are not merely passive. They are a positive achievement, an explicit triumph.
  4. Laughter is a sunbeam of the soul.
  5. He took in the squeaky music, the vulgar and pining melodies, because passion immobilizes good taste and seriously considers what soberly would be thought of as funny and to be resented.
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