Quotes about books
page 13

“Book lovers will understand me,
and they will know too that part of the pleasure
of a library lies in its very existence.”

Jan Morris (1926) British historian

Pleasure, Lovers, Understanding, Parting

“Hey… You.. What's life without eyebrows, freak? Got a new listing for your bingo book right here!! A guyis going to be the next lord hokage of Konohagakure village. Uzumaki Naruto! Konoha-school NINJA!”

Masashi Kishimoto book Naruto

Source: Naruto, Vol. 02: The Worst Client

Life, School

“… what will we someday do, I always wonder, without the pleasures of turning through books and stumbling on things we never meant to find?”

Elizabeth Kostova book The Swan Thieves

Source: The Swan Thieves

Pleasure

“I can promise you books and conversation and all my heart.”

Gabrielle Zevin (1977) American writer

Source: The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

Heart

“People disagreeing everywhere you look
Makes you wanna stop and read a book”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits Vol. II (1971), Watching the River Flow

People, Reading

“Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody can read.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

As quoted in "Literary Censorship in England" in Current Opinion, Vol. 55, No. 5 (November 1913), p. 378; this has sometimes appeared on the internet in paraphrased form as "Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody reads"
1910s
Context: Any public committee man who tries to pack the moral cards in the interest of his own notions is guilty of corruption and impertinence. The business of a public library is not to supply the public with the books the committee thinks good for the public, but to supply the public with the books the public wants. … Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody can read. But as the ratepayer is mostly a coward and a fool in these difficult matters, and the committee is quite sure that it can succeed where the Roman Catholic Church has made its index expurgatorius the laughing-stock of the world, censorship will rage until it reduces itself to absurdity; and even then the best books will be in danger still.

Reading

“With my eyes closed, I would touch a familiar book and draw its fragrance deep inside me. This was enough to make me happy.”

Haruki Murakami book Norwegian Wood

Source: Norwegian Wood

Drawing, Happiness

“If the real world were a book, it would never find a publisher. Overlong, detailed to the point of distraction-and ultimately, without a major resolution.”

Jasper Fforde book Something Rotten

Source: Something Rotten

World

“I'd much prefer my books to shoes… In the summer I sometimes take walks without shoes but never without a novel.”

Nathan Englander (1970) American short story writer and novelist

Shoe, Summer

“I cannot remember a time when I was not in love with them--with the books themselves, cover and binding and the paper they were printed on, with their smell and their weight and with their possession in my arms, captured and carried off to myself.”

Eudora Welty book One Writer's Beginnings

One Writer's Beginnings(1984)
Context: It had been startling and disappointing to me to find out that story books had been written by people, that books were not natural wonders, coming up of themselves like grass. Yet regardless of where they came from, I cannot remember a time when I was not in love with them -- with the books themselves, cover and binding and the paper they were printed on, with their smell and their weight and with their possession in my arms, captured and carried off to myself.

Love, Time

“Like me, he has a searing belief that books are sacred. They might not be to other people, but when you have a passion, you hold on to it. You defend it. You dont pretend it isn't important at the risk of offending others." -Carrie.”

Candace Bushnell book Summer and the City

Source: Summer and the City

People, Passion

“That was one thing about books: once you read them they couldn’t be unread.”

Lev Grossman book The Magician's Land

Source: The Magician's Land

Reading

“Books don’t change people; paragraphs do; sometimes even sentences.”

John Piper (1946) American writer

Variant: Books don't change people; paragraphs do, Sometimes even sentences.
Source: A Godward Life: Savoring the Supremacy of God in All of Life

People, Change

“Books are to me as homemade tattoos are to an inmate. Can't get enough of them.”

Laurie Notaro American writer

Source: I Love Everybody

Tattoo

“I always think of books as being like people. Even the dull ones are worthy of decent respect, but you don't have to seek them out and spend time with them.”

Orson Scott Card Treasure Box

Source: Treasure Box

People, Thinking, Time

“The book she had been reading was under her pillow, pressing its cover against her ear as if to lure her back into its printed pages.”

Cornelia Funke Inkheart trilogy

Source: Inkheart

Reading

“Books have been my classroom and my confidant. Books have widened my horizons. Books have comforted me in my hardest times. Books have changed my life.”

Po Bronson (1964) American writer

Life, Confidence, Change, Time

“You cannot write for children… They're much too complicated. You can only write books that are of interest to them.”

Maurice Sendak (1928–2012) American illustrator and writer of children's books

As quoted in Boston Globe interview (4 January 1987)

Children

“The real war will never get in the books.”

Walt Whitman (1819–1892) American poet, essayist and journalist

War

“Some people read books for fun.”

Richelle Mead Shadow Kiss

Source: Shadow Kiss

People, Reading

“Who wants to be used? I love to read, so books are my main friends. They're always available, always friendly, and always interesting, and they never make me choose sides.”

Lurlene McDaniel (1944) American writer

Love, Reading

“I lived in the royal library, among all the books."
"You resided in a… library?"
"Theresuites inside and great balconies that overlooked the city, but yes. I was most content among those shelves, so one night, I simply never left.”

Kresley Cole American writer

Source: Shadow's Claim

Night

“There is a technical term for someone who confuses the opinions of a character in a book with those of the author. That term is idiot.”

S.M. Stirling book Conquistador

Conquistador (2003)

“Books do furnish a room.”

Anthony Powell (1905–2000) English novelist

Source: Dance to the Music of Time

“When she came to write her story, she would wonder when the books and the words started to mean not just something, but everything.”

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

Source: The Book Thief

“Books are the blessed chloroform of the mind.”

Oswald Chambers (1874–1917) British missionary

“Many people, myself among them, feel better at the mere sight of a book.”

Jane Smiley (1949) American novelist

Source: Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel

People, Feeling

“Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them in: but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book Parerga and Paralipomena

Vol. 2, Ch. 23, § 296a
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), Counsels and Maxims
Source: Counsels and Maxims (The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer)

Time, Reading

“I have my books and my poetry to protect me”

Paul Simon (1941) American musician, songwriter and producer

“I guess there are never enough books.”

John Steinbeck (1902–1968) American writer

Source: A John Steinbeck Encyclopedia

“Usually a feeling of disappointment follows the book, because what I hoped to write is not what I actually accomplished. However, it becomes a motivation to write the next book.”

Anita Desai (1937) Indian novelist

Hope, Disappointment, Feeling, Motivation

“Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.”

Francis Bacon book Essays

Essays (1625)
Context: Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.

Of Studies

“Lord Peter Wimsey: Books…are like lobster shells, we surround ourselves with 'em, then we grow out of 'em and leave 'em behind, as evidence of our earlier stages of development.”

Dorothy L. Sayers book The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club

The Unpleasantness at The Bellona Club (1928)
Source: The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club

“In this age of censorship, I mourn the loss of books that will never be written, I mourn the voices that will be silenced-writers' voices, teachers' voices, students' voices-and all because of fear.”

Judy Blume (1938) American children's writer

Source: Places I Never Meant To Be: Original Stories by Censored Writers

Age, Fear, Silence, Teachers

“We live in a primitive time—don’t we, Will?—neither savage nor wise. Half measures are the curse of it. Any rational society would either kill me or give me my books.”

Thomas Harris Red Dragon

Source: Red Dragon

Time

“Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that a single book is not. A book is not an isolated entity: it is a narration, an axis of innumerable narrations. One literature differs from another, either before or after it, not so much because of the text as for the manner in which it is read.”

Jorge Luis Borges book Other Inquisitions

"Note on (toward) Bernard Shaw"
Variant translation: A book is not an autonomous entity: it is a relation, an axis of innumerable relations. One literature differs from another, be it earlier or later, not because of the texts but because of the way they are read: if I could read any page from the present time — this one, for instance — as it will be read in the year 2000, I would know what the literature of the year 2000 would be like.
Other Inquisitions (1952)

Literature, Reading

“A book burrows into your life in a very profound way because the experience of reading is not passive.”

Erica Jong (1942) Novelist, poet, memoirist, critic

Life, Way, Reading

“Once she read a book but found it distasteful because it contained adjectives.”

Lois Lowry (1937) American writer

Source: The Willoughbys

Reading

“Children aren't coloring books. You don't get to fill them with your favorite colors.”

Khaled Hosseini book The Kite Runner

Rahim Khan, Ch. 3
Variant: Rahim Khan laughed. “Children aren’t coloring books. You don’t get to fill them with your favorite colors.
Source: The Kite Runner (2003)

Children, Color

“How do you press a wildflower into the pages of an e-book?”

Lewis Buzbee (1957) American writer

Source: The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop: A Memoir, a History

“If you are going to get anywhere in life you have to read a lot of books.”

Roald Dahl (1916–1990) British novelist, short story writer, poet, fighter pilot and screenwriter

Life, Reading

“As it is she will probably turn out to be one of these acid-faced virgins that sit behind little desks in public libraries and stamp dates in books.”

Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) Novelist, screenwriter

“Vampires. They wrote the book on possessive.”

Charlaine Harris book Dead to the World

Source: Dead to the World

“The books - the generous friends who met me without suspicion - the merciful masters who never used me ill!”

Wilkie Collins book Armadale

Source: Armadale

“Do you understand now why books are hated and feared? Because they reveal the pores on the face of life. The comfortable people want only the faces of the full moon, wax, faces without pores, hairless, expressionless.”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Source: Fahrenheit 451

Life, Hate, People, Fear

“Book love, my friends, is your pass to the greatest, the purest, and the most perfect pleasure that God has prepared for His creatures.”

Anthony Trollope (1815–1882) English novelist (1815-1882)

Speech at the opening of an art exhibition at Bolton Mechanics' Institution (7 December 1868)

Love, God, Pleasure, Perfection

“No matter what you do, somebody always imputes meaning into your books.”

Dr. Seuss (1904–1991) American children's writer and illustrator, co-founder of Beginner Books

“What kind of thoughtless creep would burn a book?”

James Patterson (1947) American author

“Character, I think, is the single most important thing in fiction. You might read a book once for its interesting plot—but not twice.”

Diana Gabaldon (1952) American author

Thinking, Reading

“My chest of books divide amongst my friends.”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

Keats' last poem which doubled as his last will and testament

“In a few minutes I heard the books' voices: a low, steady, unsupressible hum. I'd heard it many times before. I've always had a finely tuned ear for a library's accumulations of echo and desire. Libraries are anything but hushed.”

Martha Cooley book The Archivist

Source: The Archivist

Time

“A book is as private and consensual as sex.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Haunted

Source: Haunted (2005)

Sex

“Knowledge exists in two forms - lifeless, stored in books, and alive, in the consciousness of men. The second form of existence is after all the essential one; the first, indispensable as it may be, occupies only an inferior position.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Men, Knowledge

“I cannot imagine a sorrier pursuit than struggling for years to write a book that attempts to appeal to people who do not read in the first place.”

Annie Dillard (1945) American writer

Source: The Writing Life

People, Imagination, Reading

“I want an infinitely blank book and the rest of time…
… why didn't I learn to treat everything like it was the last time, my greatest regret is how much I believed in the future.”

Jonathan Safran Foer (1977) Novelist

Learning, Time, Future

“It's like you're a character in this book that everyone around you is writing, and suddenly you have to say, 'I'm sorry, but this role isn't right for me'. And you have to start writing your own life and doing your own thing.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: How They Met, and Other Stories

Life

“An unread book does nobody any good. Stories happen in the mind of a reader, not among symbols printed on a page.”

Brandon Mull (1974) American fiction writer

“Even today, I hunt for the fabulous books that will change me utterly. I find myself happiest in the middle of a book which I forget that I am reading, but am instead immersed in a made-up life lived at the highest pitch.”

Pat Conroy (1945–2016) American novelist

Source: My Reading Life

Life, Change, Reading, Forgetting

“The books transported her into new worlds and introduced her to amazing people who lived exciting lives.”

Roald Dahl (1916–1990) British novelist, short story writer, poet, fighter pilot and screenwriter

People, World

“What are books but tangible dreams? What is reading if it is not dreaming? The best books cause us to dream; the rest are not worth reading.”

Rikki Ducornet (1949) American writer and artist

Source: The Fan-Maker's Inquisition: A Novel of the Marquis de Sade

Dreams, Reading

“Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry.”

Umberto Eco book The Name of the Rose

William of Baskerville
Source: The Name of the Rose (1980)
Context: Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry. When we consider a book, we mustn't ask ourselves what it says but what it means...

“Back at his chair he cannot remember what he was reading. He feels the books beside him to find the one that is warm.”

Thomas Harris The Silence of the Lambs

Source: The Silence of the Lambs

Feeling, Reading

“You said in your book that at the end of the day, every politician is human. What about during the day?”

Stephen Colbert (1964) American political satirist, writer, comedian, television host, and actor

“If you love books enough, books will love you back.”

Jo Walton book Among Others

Source: Among Others

Love

“Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing.”

Norman Mailer (1923–2007) American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, film maker, actor and political candidate

"Mr. Mailer Interviews Himself" in The New York Times Book Review (17 September 1965)

Men

“Sometimes books don't find us until the right time.”

Gabrielle Zevin (1977) American writer

Source: The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

Time

“When you open a book it's like going to the theater first you see the curtain then it is pulled aside and the show begins.”

Cornelia Funke Inkheart trilogy

Source: Inkheart

“Unrequited love is all right in books and things, but in real life, it completely sucks”

Meg Cabot book Haunted

Source: Haunted

Love, Life

“Give me a man or woman who has read a thousand books and you give me an interesting companion. Give me a man or woman who has read perhaps three and you give me a dangerous enemy indeed.”

Anne Rice The Witching Hour

Source: The Witching Hour (1990)

Reading

“Literature was the only religion her father practiced, when a book fell on the floor he kissed it, when he was done with a book he tried to give it away to someone who would love it.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Love, Religion, Literature, Kiss

“I can't read fiction without visualizing every scene. The result is it becomes a series of pictures rather than a book.”

Alfred Hitchcock (1899–1980) British filmmaker

Reading

“There are too many books I haven’t read, too many places I haven’t seen, too many memories I haven’t kept long enough.”

Irwin Shaw (1913–1984) American politician

Variant: There are too many books I haven't read, too many places I haven't seen, too many memories I haven't kept long enough

Memory, Reading

“As it was, I couldn't escape the feeling that I was out of my element. I found myself thinking of a book I'd left half-read at home and wishing I'd stuck it in my purse so I could pull it out now.”

Charlaine Harris (1951) American writer

Source: Last Scene Alive

Feeling, Home, Thinking, Reading

“Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read.”

Groucho Marx (1890–1977) American comedian

This may be original with Groucho, but the Quote Investigator http://quoteinvestigator.com/category/jim-brewer/ mentions the earliest report found in a 1958 issue of Boy's Life magazine where it is attributed to Jim Brewer. <br class="br">Misattributed <br class="br">Variant: Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read. <br class="br">Source: The Essential Groucho: Writings For By And About Groucho Marx

Funny, For Bestfriend, Dogs, Reading

“As always, one of her books was next to her.”

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

Source: The Book Thief

“If you have read 6,000 books in your lifetime, or even 600, it's probably because at some level you find 'reality' a bit of a disappointment.”

Joe Queenan (1950) American writer

Source: One for the Books

Disappointment, Reality, Reading