Quotes by Maureen Corrigan

“Reality TV, blogging and self-publishing are all evidence of a societys or cultures desire to be more public. And thats a sign of a healthy or energetic culture.”

“Leave Me Alone, Im Reading: Finding and Losing Myself in Books”

“My mailman and the UPS guy - I always have to tip them lavishly at holiday times, because theyre carrying all these books every day,”

“Leave Me Alone, Im Reading”

“The book wrestles with the questions modern mothers face about the merits of professional work versus life spent with children. It paints a picture of the trials and tribulations of 21st century motherhood.”

Its not that I dont like people. Its just that when Im in the company of others - even my nearest and dearest - there always comes a moment when Id rather be reading a book.

The danger in reviewing and teaching literature for a living (is) you can develop a kind of knee-jerk superiority to the material youre decoding

I think the influence of books is neither direct and more predictable. Books themselves are too unruly, and so are readers.

The child who gets lost in a book can emerge from the experience a changeling.

Luckily, my job demands constant reading, otherwise Id have to figure out some other excuse.

My own mother, whos always dazzled by my faculty and answering questions in the literature a category on Jeopardy whenever we watch it together, keeps urging me to try to get on the show to make all those years spent reading finally pay off. Leave me alone Im reading

Its a gift of tranquility when your adult desires mesh with your childhood background. I dont quite know why mine didnt, although I think books, again, are partly to blame.

Meekly swallowing and assimilating the customs of the more powerful has always been a strategy by which the less powerful have tried to fit in.

Those straight-spined parishioners could justify their exhibitionism by telling themselves that they were setting an example, even educating the rest of us.

Given the consumer-pleasing politics of todays universities, I have, in effect, seventy new bosses each semester; theyre sitting at the desk in front of me.

Edmondson has incisively discussed the ways college campuses have grown akin to upscale retirement homes for the very young, where the promise of intellectually demanding courses ranks far below the lure of new gymnastic facilities.

Like overzealous religious converts, climbers originally from the lower rungs of society tend to go overboard when they ape the upper class.

Reading, my earliest refuge in the unknown world, made me want to venture into it.

One of the many drawbacks of this I teach what I am approach is that it stifles classroom discussion. Any disagreement with the professors expertise comes off as an ad hominem attack.

Generations of readers, bored with their own alienating, repetitious jobs, have been mesmerized by Crusoes essential, civilization-building chores.