“I am simply a 'book drunkard.' Books have the same irresistible temptation for me that liquor has for its devotee. I cannot withstand them.”

“Whether or not the soul is immortal is a fact in nature and cannot be changed by any book whatever. If I am immortal, I am. If am not, no book can render me so. It is no more wonderful that I should live again than that I do live.”

“Books, books, books. It was not that I read so much. I read and re-read the same ones. But all of them were necessary to me. Their presence, their smell, the letters of their titles, and the texture of their leather bindings.”

“Never lend books, for no one ever returns them; the only books I have in my library are books that other folks have lent me.”

“Liquor infatuates me until I am in capable of following rules and regulations. Liquor's character is wild and unrestrained; its temperament is to talk without thinking.”

“I have a covenant with God. I cannot ask for anything outside what is written in the covenant. What I will achieve in this world is in a book I am carrying everyday; I just have to open the pages. Outside the book is not mine.”

“I am Envy… I cannot read and therefore wish all books burned.”

“I am an unrepentant book lover, and so soaked am I in the love of books that I feel – poor twentieth-century shopkeeper that I am – I feel that Pliny is a man I know, for all the eighteen centuries and more that lie between us. Pliny used to say (you will see it in a translation I have on my shelves) that no book was so bad that some good might be got out of it, and that is my feeling. I – and Pliny – born and bred so differently, feel the same about books and it gives me a flattering sense of rightness – sitting here in this shop among books that Pliny could not have imagined – books written in a language which was not then evolved – the thought makes me feel thrilled. There is no other word for it, but I dare not tell it to anyone. It is an astonishing secret to me that I must enjoy alone.”

“Pouring out liquor is like burning books.”

“Personally, I am a hedonistic reader; I have never read a book merely because it was ancient. I read books for the aesthetic emotions they offer me, and I ignore the commentaries and criticism.”