Quotes about books

page 14

“It [the book] was spinning a magic spell around her heart, sticky as a spider's web and enchantingly beautiful..”

“I fell asleep reading a dull book, and I dreamed that I was reading on, so I awoke from sheer boredom.”

“I think a good book is a good book forever.
I don't think they get less good because times change.”

“She always carried a book, though, in case she needed to read a few pages to avoid unwanted conversation.”

“Listen you have to read a book three times before you know it.”

“All good research-whether for science or for a book-is a form of obsession.”

“I love the smell of book ink in the morning.”

“And although she was sometimes dissatisfied with herself, she felt unable to go beyond her own limitations. Books were safer.”

“That's right, I am a book kisser.”

“If a book is well written, I always find it too short.”

“A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition.”

“Every new book I read comes to be a part of that overall and unitary book that is the sum of my readings… if you need little to set the imagination going, I require even less: the promise of reading is enough.”

“I'd had years of practise looking dumb when people threw out Greek names I didn't know. It's a skill of mine. Annabeth keeps telling me to read a book of Greek myths, but I don't see the need. It's easier just to have folks explain stuff.”

“There's no beauty without poignancy and there's no poignancy without the feeling that it's going, men, names, books, houses--bound for dust--mortal”

“Readers, censors know, are defined by the books they read.”

“Hands down, the biggest thrill is to get a letter from a kid saying, I loved your book. Will you write me another one?”

“…the book creates meaning, the meaning creates life.”

“Books say: She did this because. Life says: She did this. Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren't. I'm not surprised some people prefer books.”

“Without story books is like a person with no soul.”

“Sad stories make good books”

“Prescription: 'Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes. Take ten pages, twice a day, til end of course.”

“It's like looking at all the students and wondering who's had their heart broken that day, and how they are able to cope with having three quizzes and a book report on top of that.”

“We live for books.”

“Books are like flypaper, memories cling to the printed pages better than anything else.”

“Love made you admire funny things about a person, like how good she was at remembering to return her library books and at slicing cucumbers very thin. She was a veritable wonder at pulling a splinter out of her foot.”

“Art is amoral; so is life. For me there are no obscene pictures or books; there are only poorly conceived and poorly executed ones.”

“When I was little, I had this science book. There was a section on 'What would happen to the world if there was no friction?' Answer: 'Everything on earth would fly into space from the centrifugal force of revolution.' That was my mood.”

“Didn't books say that too: that there is always price to pay for happiness?”

“Readers understand that the books celebrate female power. In the romance novel, the woman always wins. With courage, intelligence and gentleness she brings the most dangerous creature on the earth, the human male, to his knees.”

“Did you read the book or did you just read the words in order?”

“I know she is coming
I know she will look
And that is the longing
And this is the book.”

“And each book has to receive your best effort every single time. No slacking.”

“Booksellers are the most valuable destination for the lonely, given the numbers of books that were written because authors couldn't find anyone to talk to.”

“Books everywhere. On the shelves and on the small space above the rows of books and all along the floor and under chairs, books that I have read, books that I have not read.”

“The covers of this book are too far apart.”

“How can you not care?"
"Practice," Magnus said, looking back to his book and turning the page.”

“But the books brought me things. This is my point. They made me feel less alone.”

“For books are more than books, they are the life
The very heart and core of ages past,
The reason why men lived and worked and died,
The essence and quintessence of their lives.”

“I have never been able to resist a book about books.”

“The dirtiest book of all is the expurgated book.”

“Only in books the flat and final happens,
Only in dreams we meet and interlock….”

“Doughboy," I said. "What is this scroll?"
"A spell lost in time!" he pronounced. "Ancient words of tremendous power!"
"Well?" I demanded. "Does it tell how to defeat Set?"
"Better! The title reads: The Book of Summoning Fruit Bats!”

“I tell you what's really ridiculous--going into a bookstore and there's all these books about yourself. In a way, it feels like you're already dead.”

“I drank coffee and read old books and waited for the year to end.”

“Lately, I feel like my life is a book written in a language I don't know how to read.”

“Nobody reads a book to get to the middle.”

“Now, 75 years [after], in an abundant society where people have laptops, cell phones, iPods, and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books.

[Open Letter,, July 2006]”

“And how shall I think of you?' He considered a moment and then laughed. 'Think of me with my nose in a book!”

“No; that doesn't interest me.'
'That's because you never read a book about it.”

“One day I looked at Gat, lying in the Clairmont hammock with a book, and he seemed, well, like he was mine. Like he was my particular person.”

“If there are no books. There is no civilization.”

“History proves there is no better advertisement for a book than to condemn it for obscenity.”

“Good books, like good friends, are few and chosen; the more select, the more enjoyable.”

“It is very risky. But each time a child opens a book, he pushes open the gate that separates him from Elsewhere.”

“Each book is a mind alive, a life revealed, a world awaiting exploration, but living people are all those things, as well—and more, because their stories haven’t yet been completely told.”

“I had found my religion: nothing seemed more important to me than a book. I saw the library as a temple.”

“It's strange to describe reading a book as a really great experience, but that's kind of how it felt.”

“There are some awful things in the world, it's true, but there are also some great books.”

“You can cover a great deal of country in books.”

“Writers are really people who write books not because they are poor, but because they are dissatisfied with the books which they could buy but do not like.”

“I am self-educated from genre books.”

“Books are delightful society. If you go into a room and find it full of books - even without taking them from the shelves they seem to speak to you, to bid you welcome.”

“I've developed a great reputation for wisdom by ordering more books than I ever had time to read, and reading more books, by far, than I learned anything useful from, except, of course, that some very tedious gentlemen have written books.”

“There's a serendipity to real life that the Internet can't duplicate. Do you use the library? For anything? Well, sometimes you end up picking up the book next to the one you were looking for, and it's that book that changes your life.”

“The book is true, and if evidence seems to condtradict it, it is the evidence that must be thrown out not the book.”

“Come to a book as you would come to an unexplored land. Come without a map. Explore it, and draw your own map…. A book is like a pump. It gives nothing unless first you give to it.”

“I attempted briefly to consecrate myself in the public library, believing every crack in my soul could be chinked with a book.”

“You know you've read a good book when you turn the last page and feel a little as if you have lost a friend.”

“What’s the Nephilim motto again?”
“ ‘We are dust and shadows,’ ” said Ty, not looking up from his book.
“Some of us are very handsome dust,” Jace added”

“I suddenly had a little epiphany: all the books we own, both read and unread, are the fullest expression of self we have at our disposal.”

“Books turn people into isolated individuals, and once that's happened, the road only grows rockier. Books wire you to want to be Steve McQueen, but the world wants you to be SMcQ23667bot@hotmail. com.”

“Sometimes Matilda longed for a friend, someone like the kind, courageous people in her books.”

“A book had always been a door to another world… a world much more interesting and fantastical than reality. But she had finally discovered that life could be even more wonderful than fantasy.

And that love could fill the real world with magic.”

“Too bad you got so bogged down in books. You've got the spirit of a warrior.”

“No book, however good, can survive a hostile reading.”

“I’m asking the questions tonight.” One day I was going to write a book: How to Dictate to a Dictator
and Evade an Evader, subtitled How to Handle Jericho Barrons.”

“The book that I shall make people read is the book of the heart, which holds the key to the mystery of life.”

“Bad books engender bad habits, but bad habits engender good books.”

“Food. Drink. Sleep. Books. They are all drugs.”

“She read books quickly and compulsively, paperback after paperback, as if she might drift away without the anchor of the printed page.”

“Also, I designed a pretty fascinating bracelet, where you put a rubber band around your favorite book of poems for a year, and then you take it off and wear it.”

“Why be so bloody miserable when you can pick up a good book or watch a great television drama?”

“my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways" from the book of Isaiah”

“It is only by struggling with difficult books, books over one's head, that anyone learns to read.”

“So up I got in anger,
And took a book I had,
And put a ribbon on my hair
To please a passing lad.
And, "One thing there's no getting by --
I've been a wicked girl," said I;
But if I can't be sorry, why,
I might as well be glad!”

“He was someone whom everyone admired and liked but whom nobody knew. He was like a book that you could feel good holding, that you could talk about without ever having read, that you could recommend.”

“The wise man reads both books and life itself.”

“I'm writing a book. I've got the page numbers done.”

“I've always believed in writing without a collaborator, because where two people are writing the same book, each believes he gets all the worries and only half the royalties.”

“A book is a device to ignite the imagination.”

“opening the book, i inhaled. the smell of old books, so sharp, so dry you can taste it.”

“For all the books in his possession, he still failed to read the stories written plain as day in the faces of the people around him.”

“I like the idea of someone else’s love safely sealed in a song or a book.”

“Most people call it The Book of the Dead,” he told me. “Rich Egyptians were always buried with a copy, so they could have directions through the Duat to the Land of the Dead. It’s like an Idiot’s Guide to the Afterlife.”

“A book comes and says, 'Write me.”

“I walked into my own book, seeking peace.
It was night, and I made a careless movement inside the dream; I turned too brusquely the corner and I bruised myself against my madness.”

“This boy thinks I am not of his species, that I am some other kind of creature, one that can be crushed under the weight of a phone book.

The pain is not great, but the symbolism is disagreeable.”

“I'm done. I'm going to go to bed and read important books about theater."
"It would would be easier if you just said porn," Scarlett said.
"No idea what you're talking about. But knock first if you need me.”

“Just because life is hard and always ends in a bad way doesn't mean that all stories have to. Even if that's what they tell us in school and the New York Book Review.”