The life you have led doesn't need to be the only life you have.
Anna QuindlenRead
How is it that, a full two centuries after Jane Austen finished her manuscript, we come to the world of Pride and Prejudice and find ourselves transcending customs, strictures, time, mores, to arrive at a place that educates, amuses, and enthralls us? It is a miracle. We read in bed because reading is halfway between life and dreaming, our own consciousness in someone else's mind.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects the timeless impact of literature on human experience, bridging reality and imagination.
Anna Quindlen highlights the enduring influence of Jane Austen's 'Pride and Prejudice' over the centuries, suggesting that literature allows readers to transcend societal norms and connect with deeper human experiences. She emphasizes the power of reading, which serves as a form of escapism that merges life with dreaming, offering profound insights into the human condition through the lens of another's thoughts.
Themes
LiteratureReadingImaginationJane AustenPride And Prejudice
In practice
Example use cases
Using this quote during a literary discussion about the timelessness of classic novels.
More from Anna Quindlen
All quotes →The future is built on brains, not prom court, as most people can tell you after attending their high school reunion. But you'd never know it by talking to kids or listening to the messages they get from the culture and even from their schools.
Anna QuindlenRead
I read and walked for miles at night along the beach, writing bad blank verse and searching endlessly for someone wonderful who would step out of the darkness and change my life. It never crossed my mind that that person could be me.
Anna QuindlenRead
With reference to the younger generation..."If the experience of their exhausted, insomniac, dispirited elders makes them decide they'd prefer not to go straight from the classroom to the cubicle to the coffin, it doesn't mean they're lazy. It means they're sane."
Anna QuindlenRead
Ideas are only lethal if you suppress and don't discuss them. Ignorance is not bliss, it's stupid. Banning books shows you don't trust your kids to think and you don't trust yourself to be able to talk to them.
Anna QuindlenRead
I conveniently forgot to remember that people only have two hands, or, as another parent once said of having a third child, it's time for a zone defense instead of man-to-man.
Anna QuindlenRead
Similar quotes
Sentences must stir in a book like leaves in a forest, each distinct from each despite their resemblance.
Gustave FlaubertRead
The central problem of novel-writing is causality.
Jorge Luis BorgesRead
I would solve a lot of literary problems just thinking about a character in the subway, where you can't do anything anyway.
Toni MorrisonRead
I think that an author who speaks about his own books is almost as bad as a mother who talks about her own children.
Benjamin DisraeliRead
People ask me if there are going to be stories of Harry Potter as an adult. Frankly, if I wanted to, I could keep writing stories until Harry is a senior citizen, but I don't know how many people would actually want to read about a 65 year old Harry still at Hogwarts playing bingo with Ron and Hermione.
J. K. RowlingRead
Here was a woman about the year 1800 writing without hate, without bitterness, without fear, without protest, without preaching. That was how Shakespeare wrote, I thought, looking at Antony and Cleopatra; and when people compare Shakespeare and Jane Austen, they may mean that the minds of both had consumed all impediments; and for that reason we do not know Jane Austen and we do not know Shakespeare, and for that reason Jane Austen pervades every word that she wrote, and so does Shakespeare.
Virginia WoolfRead