A favorite quote of mine...
"You should date a girl who reads.
Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money
on books instead of clothes, who has problems with closet space because she has
too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has
had a library card since she was twelve.
Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does
because she will always have an unread book in her bag. She’s the one lovingly
looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when
she has found the book she wants. You see that weird chick sniffing the pages
of an old book in a secondhand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never
resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow and worn.
She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee
shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is
floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the
author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read
do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.
Buy her another cup of coffee.
Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if
she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says
she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound
intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.
It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for
her birthday, for Christmas, for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in
poetry and in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that
you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference
between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a
little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.
She has to give it a shot somehow.
Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will
understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value,
nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.
Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure
always leads up to the climax. Because girls who read understand that all
things must come to end, but that you can always write a sequel. That you can
begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a
villain or two.
Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls
who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the
Twilight series.
If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you
find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup
of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always
come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real,
because for a while, they always are.
You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock
concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype.
You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart
hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of
your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce
your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will
walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her
breath while you shake the snow off your boots.
Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You
deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can
only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re
better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl
who reads.
Or better yet, date a girl who writes.”
~Rosemarie Urquico
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