"It is usual to speak in a..." - Quote by C S Lewis
It is usual to speak in a playfully apologetic tone about one's adult enjoyment of what are called 'children's books.' I think the convention a silly one. No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally (and often far more) worth reading at the age of fifty-except, of course, books of information. The only imaginative works we ought to grow out of are those which it would have been better not to have read at all. A mature palate will probably not much care for crème de menthe: but it ought still to enjoy bread and butter and honey.
More by C S Lewis
“Before we can be cured we must want to be cured. Those who really wish for help will get it; but for many modern people even the wish is difficult.”
“But as long as you know you're nobody special, you'll be a very decent sort of Horse, on the whole, and taking one thing with another.”
“One is given strength to bear what happens to one, but not the 100 and 1 different things that might happen.”
More on Reading
“You imagine a reader and try to keep the reader interested. That's storytelling. You also hope to reward the reader with a sense of a completed design, that somebody is in charge, and that while life is pointless, the book isn't pointless. The author knows where he is going. That's form.”
“This week I've been reading a lot and doing little work. That's the way things ought to be. That's surely the road to success.”
“Now, one cannot read nonsense with impunity.”
More on Books
“In the first place, all books that get fairly into the vital air of the world were written by the successful class, by the affirming and advancing class, who utter what tens of thousands feel though they cannot say.”
“The best books... are those that tell you what you know already.”
“Books can not be killed by fire. People die, but books never die. No man and no force can abolish memory... In this war, we know, books are weapons. And it is a part of your dedication always to make them weapons for man's freedom.”