books [Theme]

- Here is the first Philokalia for you. You and I will begin our path to monasticism with this book, we will learn gratitude to God for everything and patience. This is enough for you for now.

Life consists of millions of stories; life itself is one continuous story.

Having settled with my grandmother, I immersed myself in reading. There was not just another world there - there were many other worlds there. And each one called with his own special voice, beckoning with his own colors and aromas, unlike others.

The older I get, the more convinced I am that the community of a book is more pleasant and conversation with it is more useful than the community and conversation of people.

Stories and novels are not souvenir T-shirts or wooden football players. These are relics, remnants of an undiscovered pre-existing world. The writer’s job is to use the tools in his toolbox to get them out of the ground, damaging them as little as possible. Sometimes the fossil is small, just a shell. Sometimes huge, a Tyrannosaurus rex with all its giant ribs and bared teeth. In any case - a short story or a thousand-page novel - the excavation technique is essentially the same.

This may seem like snobbish boasting, but reading Nabokov pierces me. I can't say it's like me, but that's how I feel. Although I can't explain it. I'm a member of Nabokov. First of all, before the Lolita period. I was once forced to write either 30 or 50 favorite books. “The gift” was in first place for me.

I slowly began to feel that I was seeing worse. TV series are replacing reading novels. There is a wonderful writer Guzel Yakhina. Her first book is about the exodus of her people. I remember what I read, but now I won’t say what was discussed. Here’s an amazing thing: it’s extremely difficult for me to stay focused. Does not work. I'm reading, but I don't remember what happened five pages ago? It was washed away, I don’t know.

Before Carrie, I wrote other novels - Fury, The Long Walk and The Running Man were later published. Of these, "Rage" is the most problematic, "The Long Walk" is the best. But none of them taught me what I learned from Carrie White. The most important thing is that the author's perception of a character can be just as erroneous as the reader's perception of him. The next thought is that quitting your job because it is emotionally or imaginatively difficult is not worth it. Sometimes you have to continue even if you really don’t want to, and sometimes good work happens even when it seems like you’re shoveling crap while sitting down.

I had to live many more years - too many, I think - ashamed of what I wrote. It seems that only when I was forty [years old] did I realize that almost every author of fiction who published at least a line in his life was accused by someone of wasting his God-given talent on nonsense. If you write (books, or paintings, or sculpt, or sing - it doesn’t matter), someone will definitely try to instill in you a feeling of shame for it. I'm not philosophizing - I'm just stating a fact.

Let's clear something up right now, okay? There is no Landfill of Ideas, no Central Repository, no Island of Lost Bestsellers. Good story ideas literally come out of nowhere, falling straight out of the blue: two completely separate thoughts mesh together and something new emerges under the sun. Your job is not to look for these ideas, but to recognize them when they appear.

I’m not judging, of course, you can live your life without having a clue about Dostoevsky or Steinbeck, really not liking or even just not hearing Rachmaninoff’s Second Concerto, you can know nothing about Goya and not suspect the existence of Joyce, but still be a good person. But if possible, why not read or listen?

Never deprive your child of reading as a punishment: “If you don’t clean the room, you won’t have any stories before bed!” Neither your own children nor your students should think that reading aloud is a privilege that must be earned.

Don't read books to your child that you don't like. The child will certainly feel your attitude towards the book, and this will not allow you to achieve your goal.

From time to time, choose a book to read that is a little more difficult to understand than the child is used to. This contributes to his intellectual development.