Maureen Corrigan Quotes

• To read Helen Macdonald's memoir, H Is for Hawk, is to feel as though Emily Bronte just turned up at your door, trailing all the windy, feral outdoors into your living room.

  Maureen Corrigan

  Doors, Hawks, Rooms

  46 Copy quote

• The Unfortunate Importance of Beauty is a farcical fictional meditation on female beauty structured as a mash-up of an old episode of Friends, a fairy tale and a murder mystery.

  Maureen Corrigan

  Mash Up, Murder Mysteries, Meditation

  15 Copy quote

• It’s Fitzgerald’s thin-but-durable urge to affirm that finally makes Gatsby worthy of being our Great American Novel. Its soaring conclusion tells us that, even though Gatsby dies and the small and corrupt survive, his longing was nonetheless magnificent.

  Maureen Corrigan

  Longing, Great American, Worthy

  7 Copy quote

• We read literature for a lot of reasons, but two of the most compelling ones are to get out of ourselves and our life stories and – equally important – to find ourselves by understanding our own life stories more clearly in the context of others.

  Maureen Corrigan

  Two, Understanding, Important

  Maureen Corrigan (2007). “Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading: Finding and Losing Myself in Books”, p.55, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

• It's not that I don't like people. It's just that when I'm in the company of others - even my nearest and dearest - there always comes a moment when I'd rather be reading a book.

  Maureen Corrigan

  Book, Reading, People

  Maureen Corrigan (2007). “Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading: Finding and Losing Myself in Books”, p.10, Vintage

  6 Copy quote

• I think, consciously or not, what we readers do each time we open a book is to set off a search for authenticity. We want to get closer to the heart of things, and sometimes even a few good sentences contained in an otherwise unexceptional book can crystallize vague feelings, fleeting physical sensations, or, sometimes, profound epiphanies." pg. xvi

  Maureen Corrigan

  Book, Heart, Thinking

  Maureen Corrigan (2007). “Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading: Finding and Losing Myself in Books”, p.13, Vintage

  6 Copy quote

• All of the disparate books on my list contain characters, scenes or voices that linger long past the last page of their stories.

  Maureen Corrigan

  Book, Character, Past

  4 Copy quote

• According to a Wall Street Journal article some 59 percent of Americans don t own a single book. Not a cookbook or even the Bible.

  Maureen Corrigan

  Wall, Book, Streets

  4 Copy quote

• Flawless . . . Tightly choreographed . . . Shipstead gains entry into exclusive worlds and trains her opera glasses on private social rituals, as well as behind-the-scenes hanky panky . . . Similar to classic ballet, the power of Astonish Me arises out of the pairing of a melodramatic storyline with scrupulously executed range of movement . . . Shipstead sweeps you into this insider world of sweat, narcissism, and short-lived magic . . . Transcendent.

  Maureen Corrigan

  Glasses, Sweat, Ballet

  4 Copy quote

• Reality TV, blogging and self-publishing are all evidence of a society's or culture's desire to be more public. And that's a sign of a healthy or energetic culture.

  Maureen Corrigan

  Reality, Self, Healthy

  4 Copy quote

• In our daily lives, where we're bombarded by the fake and the trivial, reading serves as a way to stop, shut out the noise of the world, and try to grab hold of something real, no matter how small.

  Maureen Corrigan

  Real, Reading, Bombarded By

  Maureen Corrigan (2007). “Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading: Finding and Losing Myself in Books”, p.13, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

• Whatever (its) virtues, (the) writing explores the culture of work but marginalizes work itself.

  Maureen Corrigan

  Writing, Culture, Virtue

  4 Copy quote

• Prolonged travel in the alternate world of books can also make a reader more prone to fantasy thinking and estranged from his or her “real” life.

  Maureen Corrigan

  Real, Book, Thinking

  Maureen Corrigan (2007). “Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading: Finding and Losing Myself in Books”, p.22, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

• A hilarious academic novel that'll send you laughing (albeit ruefully) back into the trenches of the classroom. . . . [A] mordant minor masterpiece. . . . Like the best works of farce, academic or otherwise, Dear Committee Members deftly mixes comedy with social criticism and righteous outrage. By the end, you may well find yourself laughing so hard it hurts.

  Maureen Corrigan

  Hurt, Laughing So Hard, Finding Yourself

  4 Copy quote

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