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 g… - Maureen Corrigan

Such is the power of words, of writing, of books. Words you loved and will always yearn for. They can inspire you with possibilities you otherwise would have never imagined; they can fill your head with misleading fantasies. They can give you back your seemingly seamless past and place it right alongside your chaotic present.
“But that only happens in books,” my mother, pretty much immune to the power of the written word, would say.
Exactly. That’s why I can’t stop reading them.

Angels in the house always die in the books they preside over because early ascension into heaven is their reward—and because their goodness makes them boring.

Now, given the consumer-pleasing politics of today’s universities, I have, in effect, seventy new bosses each semester; they’re sitting at the desks in front of me. If a teacher is not entertaining or lenient enough and her teaching evaluations plummet, she could lose the job.