# Quote — Maureen Corrigan, Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading

> We read literature for a lot of reasons, but two of the most compelling ones are to get out of ourselves and our own life stories and—equally important—to find ourselves by understanding our own life stories more clearly in the context of others’.

- Author: [Maureen Corrigan](https://www.leafyquotes.com/maureen-corrigan.md)
- Book: [Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading](https://www.leafyquotes.com/maureen-corrigan/leave-me-alone-im-reading.md)
- Page: 34
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Maureen_Corrigan#Leave_Me_Alone,_I'm_Reading_(2005)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/maureen-corrigan/leave-me-alone-im-reading/we-read-literature

## More from this book

> “Mr. Wonderful isn’t just going to knock on the door,” a girlfriend once said, chiding me. “Why not?” I thought. That’s the way people often meet in books—effortlessly, without guile or strategizing.

p. 95 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/maureen-corrigan/leave-me-alone-im-reading/mr-wonderful-isnt.md)

> 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.

p. 184 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/maureen-corrigan/leave-me-alone-im-reading/such-is-the.md)

> As I reread these Catholic autobiographies and novels, their odd pridefulness became clearer to me. Much of the Catholic juvenilia I so dearly remembered preached a cover story of self-denial along with a covert sermon about the spiritual and worldly superiority that would result from this self-denial. Writhe and shine.

p. 139 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/maureen-corrigan/leave-me-alone-im-reading/as-i-reread.md)