Quotes about books
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“One reads books in order to gain the privilege of living more than one life….”

Garrison Keillor (1942) American radio host and writer

“The book smelled dusty and old but also carried a sweet tang, a hint of something inviting. She opened to the first page and started to read, pronouncing the words in a reverent whisper.”

Shannon Hale (1974) American fantasy novelist

Reading

“Never did she find anything so difficult as to keep herself from losing her temper when she was suddenly disturbed while absorbed in a book.”

Frances Hodgson Burnett A Little Princess

Source: A Little Princess

“Books make me feel safe. Books make me feel normal.”

Gary Paulsen (1939) American writer and musher

Feeling

“All you do is to look / At a page in this book / Because that's where we always will be. / No book ever ends / When it's full of your friends / The Giraffe and the Pelly and me.”

Roald Dahl book The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me

Source: The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me

“our lives change in two ways :through the people we meet and the books we read”

Harvey Mackay (1932) American businessman and journalist

People, Way, Change, Reading

“We are as liable to be corrupted by books as we are by companions.”

Henry Fielding (1707–1754) English novelist and dramatist

“All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they really happened and after you are finished reading one you feel that it all happened to you and after which it all belongs to you.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

A Letter from Cuba (1934)
Context: All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you; the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse, and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was.
Context: All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you; the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse, and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer.

Feeling, Reading

“There is no reason why the same man should like the same books at eighteen and at forty-eight”

Ezra Pound (1885–1972) American Imagist poet and critic

“I wandered through the stacks, running my hands along the spines of the books on the shelves, they reminded me of cultured or opinionated guests at a wonderful party, whispering to each other.”

Janet Fitch book White Oleander

Source: White Oleander

“What are you reading?" Owen asks.
"Charlotte's Web," Liz says. "It's really sad. One of the main characters just died."
"You ought to read the book from end to beginning," Owen jokes. "That way, no one dies, and it's always a happy ending.”

Gabrielle Zevin book Elsewhere

Source: Elsewhere

Sadness, Way, Reading, Happiness

“Betsy returned to her chair, took off her coat and hat, opened her book and forgot the world again.”

Maud Hart Lovelace book Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown

Source: Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown

World

“The book thief has struck for the first time – the beginning of an illustrious career.”

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

Source: The Book Thief

Time

“Books are educational; so you can buy as many as you want." Sophie Kinsella, shopping at the Limelight Marketplace”

Sophie Kinsella (1969) British writer

Education

“It is a terrible thing for an author to have a lot of people running about his book without any invitation from him at all.”

A.A. Milne (1882–1956) British author

People

“You learned this,” Kabsal said, lifting up her drawing of Jasnah, “from a book.”
“Er…yes?”
He looked back at the picture. “I need to read more.”

Brandon Sanderson book The Way of Kings

Source: The Way of Kings

Learning, Reading, Drawing

“Anxiety, the next gumption trap, is sort of the opposite of ego. You're so sure you'll do everything wrong you're afraid to do anything at all. Often this, rather than "laziness," is the real reason you find it hard to get started. This gumption trap of anxiety, which results from over-motivation, can lead to all kinds of errors of excessive fussiness. You fix things that don't need fixing, and chase after imaginary ailments. You jump to wild conclusions and build all kinds of errors into the machine because of your own nervousness. These errors, when made, tend to confirm your original underestimation of yourself. This leads to more errors, which lead to more underestimation, in a self-stoking cycle. The best way to break this cycle, I think, is to work out your anxieties on paper. Read every book and magazine you can on the subject. Your anxiety makes this easy and the more you read the more you calm down.”

Robert M. Pirsig book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 26
Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

Way, Error, Motivation, Thinking

“Don’t you, when strangers and friends come to call, straighten the cushions, kick the books under the bed and put away the letter you were writing? How many of us want any of us to see us as we really are? Isn’t the mirror hostile enough?”

Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer

Hostility

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

Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593) English dramatist, poet and translator

Reading, Envy

“Maybe this is why we read, and why in moments of darkness we return to books: to find words for what we already know.”

Alberto Manguel (1948) writer

Source: A Reading Diary: A Passionate Reader's Reflections on a Year of Books

Reading

“Great books are the ones we need”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Source: The Last Night of the Earth Poems

“All right, the pendulum isn’t working. Sometimes you need an accelerant to help it.” – Death
“Like gasoline?” – Nick
“Yes, Nick. We’re going to set the book and your pendulum on fire and then use them ’cause we’re just that intelligent.” – Death”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Invincible

Death, Intelligence, Help

“Only library books speak with such wordless eloquence of the power good stories hold over us.”

Stephen King book 'Salem's Lot

Source: 'Salem's Lot

“There, in the tin factory, in the first moment of the atomic age, a human being was crushed by books.”

John Hersey book Hiroshima

Source: Hiroshima

Age

“Their house had real hard-cover books in it, and you often saw them lying open on the sofa, the words still warm from being read.”

David Sedaris book Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls

Variant: Their house had real hardcover books in it, and you often saw them lying open on the sofa, the words still warm from being read.
Source: Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls

Lying, Reading, Housing

“Never trust a man who reads only one book.”

Arturo Pérez-Reverte (1951) Spanish writer and journalist

Source: Purity of Blood

Reading

“The man that I named The Giver passed along to the boy knowledge, history, memories, color, pain, laughter, love, and truth. Every time you place a book in the hands of a child, you do the same thing.”

Lois Lowry book The Giver

Source: The Giver

Love, Pain, Truth, Color

“Men of learning are those who have read the contents of books. Thinkers, geniuses, and those who have enlightened the world and furthered the race of men, are those who have made direct use of the book of the world.”

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German philosopher

"Thinking for Oneself" http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/s/schopenhauer/arthur/essays/chapter8.html <br class="br">Essays

Men, World, Learning, Reading

“You know how it is when you're reading a book and falling asleep, you're reading, reading… and all of a sudden you notice your eyes are closed? I'm like that all the time.”

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

Time, Reading

“The best books come from someplace deep inside…. Become emotionally involved. If you don't care about your characters, your readers won't either.”

Judy Blume (1938) American children's writer

“To start with, look at all the books.”

Jeffrey Eugenides book The Marriage Plot

Source: The Marriage Plot

“To be a book-collector is to combine the worst characteristics of a dope fiend with those of a miser.”

Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist

“In books I have traveled, not only to other worlds, but into my own.”

Anna Quindlen (1952) journalist, Novelist

Source: How Reading Changed My Life

World, Travel

“I can't pass a bookstore without slipping inside, looking for the next book that will burn my hand when I touch its jacket, or hand me over a promissory note of such immense power that it contains the formula that will change everything about me.”

Pat Conroy (1945–2016) American novelist

Source: My Reading Life

Change

“Off I go, rummaging about in books for sayings which please me.”

Michel De Montaigne (1533–1592) (1533-1592) French-Occitan author, humanistic philosopher, statesman

Source: The Complete Essays

“She never said, "No, don't buy that trash," or "Pick a real book." She knew they were all real books. This is how great a librarian she was. And how great a mom.”

David Lubar (1954) Children's writer and game programmer

Moms

“There are times when the human face and body can express the yearning of the heart so accurately that you can, as they say, read them like a book. Do not abandon me.”

Diane Setterfield book The Thirteenth Tale

Source: The Thirteenth Tale

Time, Reading, Heart

“There's nothing wrong with reading a book you love over and over. When you do, the words get inside you, become a part of you, in a way that words in a book you've read only once can't.”

Gail Carson Levine (1947) American writer

Source: Writing Magic: Creating Stories that Fly

Love, Way, Reading, Parting

“A bad book is as much of a labor to write as a good one; it comes as sincerely from the author's soul.”

Aldous Huxley book Point Counter Point

Variant: A bad book is as much of a labour to write as a good one; it comes as sincerely from the author's soul.
Source: Point Counter Point

Soul, Sincerity

“I'm not interested in creating a book that is read once and then placed on the shelf and forgotten. I am very happy when people have worn out my books, or that they're held together by Scotch tape.”

Richard Scarry (1919–1994) author and illustrator from the United States

People, Reading, Happiness

“I know some who are constantly drunk on books as other men are drunk on whiskey.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

Men

“Only now that my son was gone did I realize how much I'd been living for him. When I woke up in the morning it was because he existed, and when I ordered food it was because he existed, and when I wrote my book it was because he existed to read it.”

Nicole Krauss The History of Love

Source: The History of Love

Food, Reading

“Cripes Miss Wilcox, they're not guns,' I said.
No, they're not Mattie, they're books. And a hundred times more dangerous.”

Jennifer Donnelly A Northern Light

Source: A Northern Light

Time

“Censors never go after books unless kids already like them. I don’t even think they know to go after books until they know that children are interested in reading this book, therefore there must be something in it that’s wrong.”

Judy Blume (1938) American children's writer

Children, Thinking, Reading

“We're talking about the novel, right? But maybe we're not. We're talking about ourselves. And I guess that's what can start to happen when you talk about a book.”

Meg Wolitzer (1959) American writer

Source: Belzhar

“A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.”

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

Beauty, Peaceful

“I thought… that we could at least talk about books.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince

“What kind of life can you have in a house without books?”

Sherman Alexie book Flight

Source: Flight

Life, Housing

“Books, the children of the brain.”

Jonathan Swift book A Tale of a Tub

Sect. 1
A Tale of a Tub (1704)
Source: A Tale Of A Tub And Other Writings

Children

“Only when a book is written out of passion is there much hope of its being read with passion.”

Jean Fritz (1915–2017) American children's writer

Hope, Passion, Reading

“The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life — and one is as good as the other.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald (4 September 1929); published in Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters 1917–1961 (1981) edited by Carlos Baker

Life, Parting

“I just got out of the hospital. I was in a speed reading accident. I hit a book mark and flew across the room.”

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

Reading, Speed

“Books are the carriers of civilization… They are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind. Books are humanity in print.”

Barbara W. Tuchman (1912–1989) American historian and author

Variant: Books are... companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of mind. Books are humanity in print.

Teachers

“stories make you think and dream; books make you want to ask questions”

Michael Morpurgo (1943) British children's writer

Source: I Believe in Unicorns

Dreams, Question, Thinking

“The true University of these days is a Collection of Books.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Man of Letters
Source: On Heroes, Hero Worship and the Heroic in History

Universe

“It’s good.’ She chirps the last bit as if that were all to say about a book: It’s good or it’s bad. I liked it or I didn’t. No discussions of the writing, the themes, the nuances, the structure. Just good or bad. Like a hot dog.”

Gillian Flynn book Gone Girl

Source: Gone Girl

Dogs

“We never stop reading, although every book comes to an end, just as we never stop living, although death is certain.”

Roberto Bolaño book Last Evenings on Earth

Dentist
Source: Last Evenings on Earth (2006)

Death, Reading

“Definition of a classic: a book everyone is assumed to have read and often thinks they have.”

Alan Bennett (1934) English actor, author

Thinking, Reading

“In the planning stage of a book, don't plan the ending. It has to be earned by all that will go before it.”

Rose Tremain (1943) English author, chancellor of the University of East Anglia

“Xander, don't speak Latin in front of the books.”

Joss Whedon (1964) American director, writer, and producer for television and film

“Please, no matter how we advance technologically, please don't abandon the book. There is nothing in our material world more beautiful than the book."

(Acceptance speech,, November 17, 2010)”

Patti Smith (1946) American singer-songwriter, poet and visual artist

World, Beauty

“… how false the most profound book turns out to be when applied to life.”

William Faulkner book Light in August

Source: Light in August

Life, Falseness

“You destroy buildings, fight monsters openly in the streets of the city, work with the police, show up in newspapers, advertise in the phone book, and ride zombie dinosaurs down Michigan Avenue, and think that you work in the shadows? Be reasonable.”

Jim Butcher book Skin Game

Source: Skin Game

Thinking, Fight

“People are best on records and books because you can turn them off or put them back on the shelf.”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

Source: Solipsist

People

“I want to urge you very strongly to travel as much as you can, and to evolve yourself as an internationalist. It's as important a part of your education as a radical as the reading of any book.”

Christopher Hitchens Letters to a Young Contrarian

Source: Letters to a Young Contrarian

Education, Travel, Reading, Parting

“Haven't you ever happened to come across in a book some vague notion that you've had, some obscure idea that returns from afar and that seems to express completely your most subtle feelings?”

Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary

Source: Madame Bovary

Feeling, Idea

“I had rather be shut up in a very modest cottage with my books, my family and a few old friends, dining on simple bacon, and letting the world roll on as it liked, than to occupy the most splendid post, which any human power can give.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Letter to Alexander Donald (7 February 1788)
1780s
Source: Letters of Thomas Jefferson

World, Family

“Old books exert a strange fascination for me -- their smell, their feel, their history; wondering who might have owned them, how they lived, what they felt.”

Lauren Willig (1977) American author

Feeling, History

“My greatest wish -- other than salvation -- was to have a book. A long book with a never-ending story. One I could read again and again, with new eyes and a fresh understanding each time.”

Yann Martel book Life of Pi

Source: Life of Pi

Understanding, Time, Reading

“I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of anything than of a book!”

Jane Austen (1775–1817) English novelist

Reading

“A great book is a homing device
For navigating paradise.

A good book somehow makes you care
About the comfort of a chair.

A bad book owes to many trees
A forest of apologies.”

J. Patrick Lewis (1942) American children's writer and poet

Home, Tree

“As you grow ready for it, somewhere or other you will find what is needful for you in a book.”

George MacDonald (1824–1905) Scottish journalist, novelist

Source: The Marquis of Lossie

“Lists of books we re-read and books we can't finish tell more about us than about the relative worth of the books themselves”

Russell Banks (1940) American author

Reading

“You may be real, but you're still stuck in a book.”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Source: Between the Lines

“I'm not really sure which parts of myself are real and which parts are things I've gotten from books.”

Beatrice Sparks (1917–2012) American writer

Variant: …I’d have died without them [books]. Even now I’m not really sure which parts of myself are real and which parts are things I’ve gotten from books.
Source: Go Ask Alice

Parting

“I get a warm feeling among my books.”

Anthony Powell (1905–2000) English novelist

Feeling

“The point is, it didn’t really matter what the book was about. It was what it meant that was important.”

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

Source: The Book Thief

“Take some books and read; that’s an immense help; and books are always good company if you have the right sort.”

Louisa May Alcott book Little Women

Source: Little Women

Reading, Help

“The reason why so few good books are written is, that so few people that can write know anything.”

Walter Bagehot (1826–1877) British journalist, businessman, and essayist

Shakespeare
Literary Studies (1879)
Context: The reason why so few good books are written is, that so few people that can write know anything. In general an author has always lived in a room, has read books, has cultivated science, is acquainted with the style and sentiments of the best authors, but he is out of the way of employing his own eyes and ears. He has nothing to hear and nothing to see. His life is a vacuum.

People