No doubt most of you think biography dull reading. You would much rather sit down with a good story. But have you ever thought what a story is? It is nothing but a bit of make-believe biography. – Burton E. Stevenson, A Guide to Biography for Young Readers: American — Me

There are books from which one inhales an exquisite air. – Joseph Joubert (1754–1824), translated from French by George H. Calvert, 1

There is reading, and there is reading. Reading as a means to an end, for information, to cultivate oneself; reading as an end in itself, a process, a compulsion. – Sven Birkerts (b.1951), “Notes from a Confession,” The Agni Review, No.22 (1985)