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WRITERS FOR WATERBRIDGE OUTREACH
Writers for WaterBridge Outreach: Books + Water is a community of writers who believe that funding books, libraries, clean water, and sanitation projects in areas of need is a vital source in our continuing efforts to promote literacy, education and development. It also allows for a future in a developing world in which adults and children will have the basic opportunities that are so often taken for granted. Join Writers for WaterBridge Outreach in providing books + water to nourish both the mind and the body. Read more about our inaugural project Publishing Books in Kiswahili for The Foundation for Tomorrow in Tanzania
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 Gail Tsukiyama"Ever since I was young I believed that reading a book was like holding an entire world in your hands. Books are our teachers, our companions, our saviors. We have so much to learn about ourselves and the world we live in, and how lucky we are that the simple act of reading has the power to educate and illuminate." |  Karen Joy Fowler"Some of my happiest moments have been spent on the brick road to the Emerald City... in the London of Sherlock Holmes and Charles Dickens...I am one of that legion of kids who read by flashlight under the covers when the bedtime police were out and about and I have the near-sightedness to prove it. And no regrets. " |  Mary Roach"To my mind, books are a basic human need, right alongside water and food. Possibly slightly ahead of food, depending on who's cooking." |
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 Whitney Otto"In the opening lines of The Great Gatsby, Nick's father gives him a piece of advice: "Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone," he told me, "just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had." It is this very concept that allows him to feel compassion for a man Nick may not have been inclined to bother even trying to understand. It's a call to open mindedness and the importance of seeing the world as larger than our own little backyard." |  Gregory Maguire"Reading---along with dreams and, for some, listening to music-----is one of the few antidotes to the imprisonment of the self in time and space and oppressive me-ness. Reading is license and liberty; reading is release and refreshment." |  Lisa See"Books have transported me to other worlds, exposed me to cultures unlike my own, have cut to the bone of my deepest emotions. They have made me laugh and cry and get angry too. Books have made me the woman, wife, mother, friend, and writer I am today." |
 Nancy Horan"Books connected me to a bigger world than the small town I knew as a child. To discover how a girl living a century earlier spent her day, to feel the joy or sorrow of a character utterly different in circumstances and yet like me--these are the ways that books enlarged my imagination and expanded my view of the world." |  Lauren Groff"No tool made by man can map the interior of another human being as gorgeously and precisely as a book can. Only books can lead directly into other human hearts; only books allow us to step inside another person, to live there for a time, and to bear miraculous witness to our shared existence." |  Elizabeth George"I can't imagine a world without books. My earliest memories involve my going to the public library and returning home with an entire pile of books that I began to read on the way back to the house. Books have defined the world for me, and they have made it--and me--all the richer because they exist." |
 Dorothy Allison“It is impossible to overemphasize how important books have been in my life. Over and over again when I was in complete despair or terror or simply pinned down in that sense of helplessness that defined poverty for me, I stumbled on the exact right book to keep me alive and restore my faith in what might happen...Sometimes what we need is not large. Sometimes we just need that moment of being in someone else’s story, a way to reclaim the strength to get back to our own.” |  Erik Larson"The power of books? For me it’s very simple. Books taught me to write, and for that I am forever in their debt." |  Annie Barrows"Kids are people with very little control over their lives. They have almost no choice about the kind or quality of information they get. Books are the exception. They are the only institutionally sanctioned, grownup-approved source of new ideas for kids, the sole means of tunneling into a different mental landscape than the one they were born into. Reading is the escape-hatch. It must be kept open.” |
 Jane Hamilton"When I was growing up I regularly visited my children’s librarian. This was before the age of therapy. She was probably more profound than a therapist. She knew what I liked to read. She therefore knew me deeply. I would stand before her desk and she’d slice open the box of new books, peer inside, and take out the novel that she had ordered for me... She handed me the book and I had perfect happiness." |  Andre Dubus III"I began reading literary fiction when I was 18. At the time, I was living in a depressed mill town with my three siblings and overwhelmed single mother. What fiction began to teach me was this: life is not about being happy. It's about living in the complex gray of it with as much daily joy and search for truth as is possible. Great novels and poems and short stories have also shown me that I'm just one speck in this grand opera, but I'm not alone. None of us are; there is no other." |  Junot Diaz"Books have answered all my deepest questions; have been a mirror and a light, a companion and a faith. Books have taken me across the universe and back and have put me in communion with other human hearts, including my own. Books are the educators of our souls." |
 Gillian Flynn"I am never without a book, and not a day goes by when I don't read. It's more than a hobby, it's a need: I can't think of myself without thinking of the books that made me." |  Ann Patchett"Thanks to books I am never alone. I can slip into lives of other people and see the world through their eyes. Reading has made me a more compassionate and empathetic person, which is exactly what I would wish for everyone." |  Anne LeClaire"I grew up on a farm in rural Massachusetts and am forever grateful for the public library. Each week, from the time I was in kindergarten, my mother drove me to that granite building to choose books for that week, a ritual that continued until I left for college and one that built a foundation for my formal education and expanded my understanding of life. The books I checked out opened a universe beyond my personal geography, a world full of wisdom and possibilities." |
 Manil Suri"Growing up in a one room Bombay apartment shared with three other families, books were a wonderful way to see different worlds, experience different lives. My parents sent me to a better school than they could really afford, which opened up entirely new scientific and mathematical universes. I can personally attest to the fact that education is one of the best investments we can make in children, particularly in the Third World." |
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