Hammer's blog: "hammer"

"I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we’re reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is my belief." – Franz Kafka

"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read."
- Groucho Marx

"A book is the only place in which you can examine a fragile thought without breaking it, or explore an explosive idea without fear it will go off in your face.  It is one of the few havens remaining where a man's mind can get both provocation and privacy." - Edward P. Morgan

"Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty. There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all." - Oscar Wilde

"The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries." - Rene Descartes

“So much working, reading, thinking, living to do! A lifetime is not long enough.” ― Sylvia Plath

“Ultimately, literature is nothing but carpentry. With both you are working with reality, a material just as hard as wood.” - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

“The world must be all fucked up," he said then, "when men travel first class and literature goes as freight.” - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

"That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you're not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong." - F. Scott Fitzgerald

"Cut out all of these exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke." - F. Scott Fitzgerald

"What people are ashamed of usually makes a good story." - F. Scott Fitzgerald

"You don’t write because you want to say something, you write because you’ve got something to say."  - F. Scott Fitzgerald 

“Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly -- they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced.” 
― Aldous Huxley

“Some people have a way with words, and other people...oh, uh, not have way.” 
― Steve Martin

“That's what careless words do. They make people love you a little less.” 
― Arundhati Roy

Words can light fires in the minds of men. Words can wring tears from the hardest hearts.” 
― Patrick Rothfuss

“Because even the smallest of words can be the ones to hurt you, or save you.” 
― Natsuki Takaya

“The books transported her into new worlds and introduced her to amazing people who lived exciting lives. She went on olden-day sailing ships with Joseph Conrad. She went to Africa with Ernest Hemingway and to India with Rudyard Kipling. She travelled all over the world while sitting in her little room in an English village.” 
― Roald Dahl

“Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul. When writers make us shake our heads with the exactness of their prose and their truths, and even make us laugh about ourselves or life, our buoyancy is restored. We are given a shot at dancing with, or at least clapping along with, the absurdity of life, instead of being squashed by it over and over again. It's like singing on a boat during a terrible storm at sea. You can't stop the raging storm, but singing can change the hearts and spirits of the people who are together on that ship.” 
― Anne Lamott