# Quote — Walter Tevis, Mockingbird

> “What is it exactly that you do with a book?”
>
> “You read it.”
>
> “Oh,” she said. And then, “What does read mean?”
>
> I nodded. Then I began turning the pages of the book I was holding and said, “Some of these markings here represent sounds. And the sounds make words. You look at the marks and sounds come into your mind and, after you practice long enough, they begin to sound like hearing a person talking. Talking—but silently.”

- Author: [Walter Tevis](https://www.leafyquotes.com/walter-tevis.md)
- Book: [Mockingbird](https://www.leafyquotes.com/walter-tevis/mockingbird.md)
- Page: 56
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Walter_Tevis#Mockingbird_(1980)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/walter-tevis/mockingbird/what-is-it-exactly

## More from this book

> And then I began to feel it, the whole enormous scope of it, in what had begun in some dark antiquity of trees and caves and the plains of Africa; of human life, erect and ape-like, spreading itself everywhere and building first its idols and then its cities. And then dwindling to a drugged trace, a remnant, because of a failed machine. A tiny part of a failed machine. And a more-than-human robot that would not try to repair it.

p. 239 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/walter-tevis/mockingbird/and-then-i-began.md)

> Noticing and thinking are sometimes a strain and a bafflement and I wonder if the Designers were aware of that when they made it almost impossible for the ordinary citizen to make use of a recorder. Or when they had us all taught that earliest learned wisdom: “When in doubt, forget it.”

p. 22 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/walter-tevis/mockingbird/noticing-and-thinking.md)

> Holy Bible begins: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” It does not give the century of the “beginning,” nor is it clear who “God” is, or was. I am not certain whether Holy Bible is a book of history or maintenance or poetry. It names many strange people who do not seem real.

p. 140 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/walter-tevis/mockingbird/holy-bible-begins.md)