Reading Plus Answers Quotes & Sayings

Another case for the dumbness of reading, however, is that books do not contain answers, but rather pose more questions. And asking questions makes you look dumber, not smarter.
I thought Alice's Adventures in Wonderland would be a delightful romp through a child's subconscious, but while reading it I started to ask questions like "How do you really speak to other humans when our language often means the opposite of what is intended?" and "How do I really know anyone?" And so on, until I was asking the question "Why even exist at all?"
That didn't make me smarter! That made me wish for death, and being dead looks way dumber than being alive. — Dan Wilbur

Yes, she answers and does not move. She might, at this moment, be nothing but a floating intelligence; not even a brain inside a skull, just a presence that perceives, as a ghoast might. Yes, she thinks, this is probably how it must feel to be a ghost. It's a little like reading, isn't it-that same sensation of knowing people, settings, situations, without playing any particular part beyond that of the willing observer. — Michael Cunningham

A book is a map ... There will be times in your life when you will feel lost and confused. The way back to yourself is through reading. There is not a problem in existence that has not been eased, somewhere and at some time, by a book ... The answers have all been written. And the more you read, the more you will know how to find your way through those difficult times. — Matt Haig

In Berkeley and San Francisco, the revolution didn't seem to far away. A lot of white radicals, hippies, Chicanos, Blacks, and Asians were ready to get down. But i hadn't forgotten the hard hats and the red necks and the bible belt and the so called middle amerikans who had elected Nixon. I couldn't imagine how the "new left" was talking to those people, much less organizing and changing their minds. I decided the only way i would come up with answers was to on keep studying and struggling. I didn't know how half of what i was studying would fit in but i figured it would all come in handy some day. I read about guerrilla warfare and clandestine struggle without having the faintest idea that one day i would go underground. It's kind of funny when i think about it because reading that stuff had probably saved my life a million times. — Assata Shakur

Astragalomancy was a method of divining the future or learning hidden knowledge by rolling dice. A ceromancer dropped melted wax into cold water and interpreted the figures thus produced. Halomancy required the reading of the shapes made by casting a handful of salt on a flat surface. A necromancer sought answers by communicating with the dead. — Dean Koontz

Authors do not need to offer us the answers to such weighty questions such as how to live and prepare us to accept death. The aim of a writer's is to frame worldly questions that allow all readers too independently and jointly explore life-altering questions in a way that satisfies the fabric of thought corresponding to our respective times. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Whenever we talk about darkness and light, the terms seem so abstract that many consider the answers to be found in meditation and yoga, but I'm here to tell you that the answers are in the books you will never read, waiting all your life in the libraries you ignored and the bookstores you didn't visit. I'm here to tell you as well that you are your own Satan and evil can't possibly interfere more in your life than what you're already doing to yourself by remaining ignorant. Until you choose the light, darkness is your personal choice, and there's no reason to feel any empathy for you. — Robin Sacredfire

Julia could form no opinion of Robert, the bespectacled middle child, for he passed the entire journey with his nose stuck in a book, returning only monosyllabic answers to any questions put to him — Sheri Cobb South

A copy of Thoreau's Walden ... which Chris has never heard and which can be read a hundred times without exhaustion. I try always to pick a book far over his head and read it as a basis for questions and answers, rather than without interruption. I read a sentence or two, wait for him to come up with his usual barrage of questions, answer them, then read another sentence or two. Classics read well this way. They must be written this way. Sometimes we have spent a whole evening reading and talking and discovered we have only covered two or three pages. It's a form of reading done a century ago ... when Chautauquas were popular. Unless you've tried it you can't imagine how pleasant it is to do it this way. I — Robert M. Pirsig

I write because it's a way of puzzling out answers to situations in the world that I don't understand. The act of writing a book gives me the same experience that I hope reading it gives readers. It forces me to sort through the various points of view on a given issue or situation and ultimately come to a conclusion. Doing that might not change my mind, but it almost always gives me a stronger sense of why my opinion is what it is - a question we rarely ask ourselves. — Jodi Picoult

To read as if your life depended on it would mean to let into your reading your beliefs, the swirl of your dreamlife, the physical sensations of your ordinary carnal life; and simultaneously, to allow what you're reading to pierce routines, safe and impermeable, in which ordinary carnal life is tracked, charted, channeled. Then, what of the right answers, the so-called multiple-choice examination sheet with the number 2 pencil to mark one choice and one choice only? — Adrienne Rich

I already read everything. I read poems and plays and novels and newspapers and comic books and magazines. I read tins in supermarkets and leaflets that come through the door, unsolicited mail. None of it lasts long and it doesn't give me answers. Reading too fast is not soothing. — Janice Galloway

Our gift is to be a series of puzzles. In reading our clues and seeking our answers, we hope and pray you will find a future as well. A morrow filled with reasons to live, and a purpose grand enough to bestow upon you the gift of hope. For you deserve it all, my dear Brian. All the hope a tomorrow worth living can bring. Here, then, is the first clue: From the hope tossed skyward on your beloved's happiest day, in a grand palace made to make a child feel grander still, search for the heart, search for the heart, search for the heart of your beloved. Yours ever, Heather. — Davis Bunn

People love books because they're searching for answers to deep, unconscious questions - and books get as close as it's possible to get. — Carla H. Krueger

We no longer just take religious identity from our parents, so what's going on? Why are people going to this series, why are people reading so many books about religion? It's because they want answers. The answers are no longer just passed down from generation to generation. It's harder for people. In effect, you have to roll up your sleeve and ask the questions. But if you do it, if you forge your own identity, it can be much more personal and much more meaningful to you. — Bruce Feiler

As an atheist evolving to agnosticism, and seeking answers to whether or not belief in God is potentially rational, my life was turned upside down 35 years ago by reading C. S. Lewis's Mere Christianity. — Francis Collins

To gain more from your time in the Scripture, you should read and reread the passage. You must know what the passage says before you can understand what it means and how it applies to you and your ministry. You should: Read to determine, "What does this passage say to me?" Begin by reading the passage to determine what the Scripture is all about. Record what you see. It is extremely important that you write some notes and keep a record of your insights and questions. Mark unfamiliar words or phrases that you do not understand; and write your answers in your journal or study notes. — Bishop Noel Jones

Libraries allow children to ask questions about the world and find the answers. And the wonderful thing is that once a child learns to use a library, the doors to learning are always open. — Laura Bush

If you begin to read, you find the answers you seek. — Lailah Gifty Akita

She remembered one of her boyfriends asking, offhandedly, how many books she read in a year. "A few hundred," she said.
"How do you have the time?" he asked, gobsmacked.
She narrowed her eyes and considered the array of potential answers in front of her. Because I don't spend hours flipping through cable complaining there's nothing on? Because my entire Sunday is not eaten up with pre-game, in-game, and post-game talking heads? Because I do not spend every night drinking overpriced beer and engaging in dick-swinging contests with the other financirati? Because when I am waiting in line, at the gym, on the train, eating lunch, I am not complaining about the wait/staring into space/admiring myself in reflective surfaces? I am reading!
"I don't know," she said, shrugging. — Eleanor Brown

The big idea we start with is: "How is the genome interpreted, and how are stable decisions that affect gene expression inherited from one cell to the next?" This is one of the most competitive areas of molecular biology at the moment, and the students are reading papers that in some instances were published this past year. As a consequence, one of the most common answers I have to give to their questions is, "We just don't know." — Shirley M. Tilghman

Looking at someone else's relationship for the answers was like reading about a romance novel hero and expecting to find a carbon copy in real life — Maya Banks

Dust off that Bible. It has the answers you are looking for, and its delights await you. — Elizabeth George

One of the pleasures of reading old letters is the knowledge that they need no answer. — Lord Byron

If a psychologist could do mind-reading, he would not need the answers he actually never needed. — Robin Sacredfire

He proposed an imitation game. There would be a man (A), a woman (B) and an interrogator (C) in a separate room, reading the written answers from the others, trying to work out which was the woman. B would be trying to hinder the process. Now, said Turing, imagine that A was replaced by a computer. Could the interrogator tell whether they were talking to a machine or not after five minutes of questioning? He gave snatches of written conversation to show how difficult the Turing Test would be: Q: Please write me a sonnet on the subject of the Forth Bridge. A: Count me out on this one. I never could write poetry. To imitate that a computer would need deep knowledge of social mores and the use of language. To pass the Turing Test the computer would have to do more than imitate. It would have to be a learning entity. — David Boyle

Books are like Tarot decks. They provide answers and guidance but more importantly, they are doorways and portals to the otherworld and the imagination. They leave their imprint and keep whispering to us long after we close the pages or shuffle the deck. — Sasha Graham

Every phase and question of life is brought more and more into the limelight. Theatres, cinemas, the radio, and even lectures, assist the process. But they do not, and should not replace reading, because when we are just watching and listening, somebody is taking very good care that we should not stop and think. The danger in this age is not of our remaining ignorant; it is that we should lose the power of thinking for ourselves. Problems are more and more put before us, but, except to crossword puzzles and detective mysteries, do we attempt to find the answers for ourselves? Less and less. The short cut seems ever more and more desirable. But the short cut to knowledge is nearly always the longest way round. There is nothing like knowledge, picked up by or reasoned out for oneself. — John Galsworthy

For many years I was trying to find answers only through books but then I realized that basically, life is about experience and the thing that you have to do is experience life instead of only reading about it. Reading is very important, but it's not enough. After reading, you have to take some decisions in your hands and move forward and be the human being that you are, and then going and meeting people and work. — Paulo Coelho

There was no answer, no solution, no sop, no deliverance. What, then, did I do? I read faster. — Leo Rosten