Quotes about books
page 16

“When I pictured myself, it was always like just an outline in a coloring book, with the inside not yet completed. All the standard features were there. but the colors, the zigzags and plaids, the bits and pieces that made up me, Halley, weren't yet in place. Scarlett's vibrant reds and golds helped some, but I was still waiting.”

Sarah Dessen (1970) American writer

Someone Like You (1998)

Color, Waiting, Help

“What's your favorite book?
"The last one I read.”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Reading

“The job of the first eight pages is not to have the reader want to throw the book at theduring the first eight pages.”

David Foster Wallace (1962–2008) American fiction writer and essayist

“If I were to name the three most precious resources of life, I should say books, friends, and nature….”

John Burroughs (1837–1921) American naturalist and essayist

Life, Nature

“A good book is an education of the heart. It enlarges your sense of human possibility what human nature is of what happens in the world. It's a creator of inwardness.”

Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist

World, Education, Nature, Sense

“I crawled into my book and pulled the pages over my head…”

Laurie R. King (1952) American novelist

“That is a good book it seems to me, which is opened with expectation and closed with profit.”

Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888) American novelist

“I remember the feeling. Whenever my father got so absorbed in a book that we might have been in visible I felt like taking a pair of scissors and cutting it up.”

Cornelia Funke (1958) author

Feeling

“Professors of literature collect books the way a ship collects barnacles, without seeming effort.”

Carolyn G. Heilbrun (1926–2003) Academic, novelist

Source: Death in a Tenured Position

Way, Literature, Effort

“Dreams are illustrations… from the book your soul is writing about you.”

Marsha Norman (1947) American playwright, screenwriter and novelist

Source: The Fortune Teller

Dreams, Soul

“It is a melancholy illusion of those who write books and articles that the printed word survives. Alas, it rarely does.”

Eric Hobsbawm (1917–2012) British academic historian and Marxist historiographer

Source: How to Change the World: Reflections on Marx and Marxism

“You could put your confusion and upset and worries into whatever book you were reading. You could sort of set them down in there, and you could come out with your head on a little straighter. I don't why stories worked that way, but they did.”

Deb Caletti (1963) American writer

Source: The Story of Us

Way, Reading

“The Book had in a high degree excited us to self-activity, which is the best effect of any book.”

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

Bk. I, ch. 4.
1830s, Sartor Resartus (1833–1834)

“You have a book that’s also a face?”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Source: City of Heavenly Fire

“My books hold between their covers every story I've ever known and still remember, or have now forgotten, or may one day read; they fill the space around me with ancient and new voices.”

Alberto Manguel (1948) writer

Source: The Library at Night

Reading

“No book can be appreciated until it has been slept with and dreamed over.”

Eugene Field (1850–1895) American writer

Dreams

“What's the best part about writing a book?
Finishing it.”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

Parting

“And when I was young, did I ever tell you, I always wanted to get inside
a book and never come out again? I loved reading so much I wanted
to be a part of it, and there were some books I could have stayed in
for ever.”

Peter Ackroyd (1949) English author

Source: First Light

Love, Reading, Parting

“You live like this, sheltered, in a delicate world, and you believe you are living. Then you read a book (Lady Chatterley, for instance), or you take a trip, or you talk with Richard, and you discover that you are not living, that you are hibernating. The symptoms of hibernating are easily detectable: first, restlessness. The second symptom (when hibernating becomes dangerous and might degenerate into death): absence of pleasure. That is all. It appears like an innocuous illness. Monotony, boredom, death. Millions live like this (or die like this) without knowing it. They work in offices. They drive a car. They picnic with their families. They raise children. And then some shock treatment takes place, a person, a book, a song, and it awakens them and saves them from death.”

Anaïs Nin book The Diary of Anaïs Nin

The Diary of Anaïs Nin , Volume One 1931-1934
Diary entries (1914 - 1974)

Death, Children, Pleasure, World

“Coloured people don't like. Burn it. White people don't feel good about. Burn it. Someone's written a book on tobacco and cancer of the lungs? The cigarette people are weeping? Burn the book.”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Source: Fahrenheit 451

People, Feeling

“This was the time in her life that she fell upon books as the only door out of her cell. They became half her world.”

Michael Ondaatje book The English Patient

Source: The English Patient

Life, World, Time

“It takes a heap of loafing to write a book.”

Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) American art collector and experimental writer of novels, poetry and plays

“To her-
Hand in hand we come
Christopher Robin and I
To lay this book in your lap.
Say you're surprised?
Say you like it?
Say it's just what you wanted?
Because it's yours-
because we love you.”

A.A. Milne book Winnie-the-Pooh

Source: Winnie-the-Pooh

Love

“Do you know what they call people who hoard books? Smart.”

Lisa Scottoline (1955) American writer

Source: My Nest Isn't Empty, It Just Has More Closet Space: The Amazing Adventures of an Ordinary Woman

People

“How marvelous books are, crossing worlds and centuries, defeating ignorance and, finally, cruel time itself.”

Gore Vidal book Julian

Source: 1960s, Julian (1964), Chapter 1, Libanius to Priscus, Antioch March 380

World, Time

“When I read a book, I want you to be reading it at the same time. I want to know what would Amelia think of it. I want you to be mine. I can promise you books and conversation and all my heart, Amy.”

Gabrielle Zevin (1977) American writer

Source: The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

Thinking, Time, Reading, Heart

“Books are the most tolerant of friends.”

Richard Paul Evans (1962) American writer

“My philosophy is pretty simple – any day nobody’s trying to kill me is a good day in my book.”

Karen Marie Moning book Darkfever

Source: Darkfever

“Look! A trickle of water running through some dirt! I'd say our afternoon just got booked solid!”

Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist

Water

“I do not read a book; I hold a conversation with the author.”

Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915) American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher fue el escritor del jarron azul

Reading

“Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson book Experience

1840s, Essays: Second Series (1844), Experience
Variant: Nature and books belong to all who see them.

Nature

“A book, I was taught long ago in English class, is a living and breathing document that grows richer with each new reading.”

Malcolm Gladwell (1963) journalist and science writer

Source: The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference

Reading

“To paint comic books as childish and illiterate is lazy. A lot of comic books are very literate — unlike most films.”

Alan Moore (1953) English writer primarily known for his work in comic books

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/alan-moore-the-reluctant-hero-64407.html <br class="br">Context: If I write a crappy comic book, it doesn't cost the budget of an emergent Third World nation. When you've got these kinds of sums involved in creating another two hours of entertainment for Western teenagers, I feel it crosses the line from being merely distasteful to being wrong. To paint comic books as childish and illiterate is lazy. A lot of comic books are very literate — unlike most films.

Painting

“Books are like truth serum-- if you don't read, you can't figure out what's real.”

Rodman Philbrick book Freak the Mighty

Source: Freak the Mighty

Truth, Reading

“Rest, nature, books, music…such is my idea of happiness.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

Happy, Music, Idea, Nature

“Books and beer are the best and worst defense.”

Sherman Alexie book The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven

Source: The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven

Beer

“My soul found ease and rest in the companionship of books.”

Pat Conroy (1945–2016) American novelist

Soul

“I suppose books mean more than people to me anyway”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book Flappers and Philosophers

Source: Flappers and Philosophers

People

“She wanted a book to take her places she couldn't get to herself.”

Jeffrey Eugenides book The Marriage Plot

Source: The Marriage Plot

“… I believe it important to emphasize how strongly I feel that books, just like people, have a destiny. Some invite sorrow, others joy, some both.”

Elie Wiesel book Night

Source: Night

People, Feeling, Joy

“Nobody steals books but your friends.”

Roger Zelazny book The Guns of Avalon

Source: The Guns of Avalon

“When my father would yell at me, I told myself someday I'd use it in a book.”

Paula Danziger (1945–2004) American children's writer

“An active mind didn't need distractions in its physical environment. It needed a collection of outstanding books and a good lamp. Maybe some cheese and crackers.”

Jessica Bird book Lover Unbound

Variant: See, this was his kind of decorating. An active mind don't need distractions in its physical environment. It needed a collection of outstanding books and a good lamp. Maybe some cheese and crackers
Source: Lover Unbound

“Remember, despite the fact that this book is being sold as a 'fantasy' novel, you must take all of the things it says extremely seriously, as they are quite important, are in no way silly, and always make sense.

Rutabaga.”

Brandon Sanderson Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians

Source: Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians

Way, Sense

“There's a hunger for stories in all of us, adults too. We need stories so much that we're even willing to read bad books to get them, if the good books won't supply them.”

Philip Pullman (1946) English author

Hunger, Reading

“If I ever saw my muse she would be an old woman with a tight bun and spectacles poking me in the middle of the back and growling, "Wake up and write the book!”

Kerry Greenwood (1954) Australian crime writer

“I don't browse in bookshops, I browse in libraries, where you can take a book home and read it, and if you like it you go to a bookshop and buy it.”

Helene Hanff book 84, Charing Cross Road

Source: 84, Charing Cross Road

Home, Reading

“The helpful thought for which you look
Is written somewhere in a book.”

Edward Gorey (1925–2000) American writer, artist, and illustrator

Help

“He lies like a book. And he reads a lot of books.”

Elfriede Jelinek book Wonderful, Wonderful Times

Source: Wonderful, Wonderful Times

Reading

“Books have a unique way of stopping time in a particular moment and saying: Let’s not forget this.”

Dave Eggers (1970) memoirist, novelist, short story writer, editor, publisher

Way, Time, Forgetting

“Books are, let's face it, better than everything else.”

Nick Hornby book The Polysyllabic Spree

Source: The Polysyllabic Spree

“Make no mistake, those who write long books have nothing to say.
Of course those who write short books have even less to say.”

Mark Z. Danielewski book House of Leaves

Source: House of Leaves

“This is where you and I are headed…. Look for us in history books and you'll find us in the margins. Look for us in legends and you might just find us celebrated”

Scott Lynch (1978) American writer

History

“I am a writer of books in retrospect. I talk in order to understand; I teach in order to learn”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

Understanding, Learning

“I could read the great books but the great books don't interest me.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Source: The Last Night of the Earth Poems

Reading

“This will never be a civilized country until we expend more money for books than we do for chewing gum.”

Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915) American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher fue el escritor del jarron azul

Money, Country

“Beware
Those Who
Are ALWAYS
READING
BOOKS”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Source: The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems, 1946-1966

Reading

“A book is a collaboration between the one who reads and what is read and, at its best, that coming together is a love story like any other.”

Siri Hustvedt book The Summer Without Men

Source: The Summer Without Men

Love, Reading

“I like to think that when I fall,
A rain-drop in Death's shoreless sea,
This shelf of books along the wall,
Beside my bed, will mourn for me.”

Robert W. Service Ballads of a Bohemian

Source: Ballads of a Bohemian

Death, Thinking, Sea

“I used to sleep with my books in piles all over my bed and sometimes they were the only thing keeping me warm and always the only thing keeping me alive. Books are the best and worst defense.”

Sherman Alexie book The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven

Source: The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven

Sleep

“Writers don't write from experience, although many are hesitant to admit that they don't…. If you wrote from experience, you'd get maybe one book, maybe three poems. Writers write from empathy.”

Nikki Giovanni (1943) American writer and academic

“Close, close all night
the lovers keep.
They turn together
in their sleep,

Close as two pages
in a book
that read each other
in the dark.

Each knows all
the other knows,
learned by heart
from head to toes.”

Elizabeth Bishop (1911–1979) American poet

Source: Edgar Allan Poe & The Juke-Box: Uncollected Poems, Drafts, and Fragments

Lovers, Sleep, Learning, Reading

“On way. He OK? Aeron
Coming. Something wrong? Lucian
Take me out of your address book. William”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Source: The Darkest Secret

Way

“Since the age of five I had been one of those people who was an indefatigable reader, more inclined to go off by myself with a book than do any of the dozens of things that children usually do to amuse themselves. I never aged out of it.”

Anna Quindlen (1952) journalist, Novelist

Source: Imagined London: A Tour of the World's Greatest Fictional City

Children, People, Age

“The first time I read an excellent book, it is to me just as if I had gained a new friend. When I read a book over I have perused before, it resembles the meeting with an old one.”

Oliver Goldsmith (1728–1774) Irish physician and writer

Source: The Citizen of the World, Or, Letters from a Chinese Philosopher, Residing in London, to His Friends in the Country, by Dr. Goldsmith

Time, Reading

“Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove anything.”

Jane Austen book Persuasion

Source: Persuasion

Men, Education

“A book that one has not read yet is always more exciting than a book one has memorized.”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Source: City of Lost Souls

Reading

“The governess was not much liked in the village. She was too tall, too fond of books, too grave, and, a curious thing, never smiled unless there was something to smile at.”

Susanna Clarke book The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories

Source: The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories

Smile

“The bastard form of mass culture is humiliated repetition: content, ideological schema, the blurring of contradictions—these are repeated, but the superficial forms are varied: always new books, new programs, new films, news items, but always the same meaning.”

Roland Barthes (1915–1980) French philosopher, critic and literary theorist

La forme bâtarde de la culture de masse est la répétition honteuse: on répète les contenus, les schèmes idéologiques, le gommage des contradictions, mais on varie les formes superficielles: toujours des livres, des émissions, des films nouveaux, des faits divers, mais toujours le même sens.
"Modern," in The Pleasure of the Text (1975)

“Look. (Grown-ups skip this paragraph) I'm not about to tell you this book has a tragic ending. I already said in the very first line how it was my favorite in all the world. But there's a lot of bad stuff coming.”

William Goldman book The Princess Bride

Source: The Princess Bride

World

“Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

Reading, Help

“Books were my pass to personal freedom. I learned to read at age three, and there discovered was a whole world to conquer that went beyond our farm in Mississippi.”

Oprah Winfrey (1954) American businesswoman, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist

Age, World, Freedom, Learning

“My grandfather always says that's what books are for," Ashoke said, using the opportunity to open the volume in his hands. “To travel without moving an inch.”

Jhumpa Lahiri book The Namesake

Source: The Namesake, (2003) p. 16.

Travel

“My love of books was all that saved me.”

Robin S. Sharma (1965) Canadian self help writer

Source: The Leader Who Had No Title: A Modern Fable on Real Success in Business and in Life

Love

“Bruises mapped my body from bumping into tables and tripping over curbs while walking with a book in my hand, my eyes focused on the pages instead of the live space around me.”

Rachel Cohn (1968) American writer

Source: You Know Where to Find Me

“… a book need never die and should not be killed; books were the immortal part of man.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Farnham's Freehold

Source: Farnham's Freehold

Parting

“A good title is the title of a successful book.”

Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) Novelist, screenwriter

Success

“I have always been accused of taking the things I love - football, of course, but also books and records - much too seriously, and I do feel a kind of anger when I hear a bad record, or when someone is lukewarm about a book that means a lot to me.”

Nick Hornby Fever Pitch

Source: Fever Pitch

Love, Feeling, Football, Anger

“Who are these people who think a book comes with a guarantee that they will like it?”

Gabrielle Zevin (1977) American writer

Source: The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

People, Thinking

“Life's too slippery for books, Clarice; anger appears as lust, lupus presents as hives.”

Thomas Harris The Silence of the Lambs

Source: The Silence of the Lambs

Life, Appearance, Anger

“It is the same with anything - you have to learn through your own experience, paying your own way. You can't learn it from a book.”

Haruki Murakami book Sputnik Sweetheart

Source: Sputnik Sweetheart

Way, Learning

“Back to culture. Yes, actually to culture. You can’t consume much if you sit still and read books.”

Aldous Huxley book Brave New World

Variant: You can't consume much if you sit still and read books.
Source: Brave New World (1932), Ch. 3

Reading

“I have lost all sense of home, having moved about so much. It means to me now--only that place where the books are kept.”

John Steinbeck (1902–1968) American writer

Home, Sense

“You took out a book on blow-job technique from the British Library? They shouldn't have books like that in there!”

Sarra Manning (1950) British writer

Source: You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

“Almost seventy years later I remember clearly how the magic of translating the words in books into images enriched my life, breaking the barriers of time and space…”

Mario Vargas Llosa (1936) Peruvian writer, politician, journalist, and essayist

Life, Time

“Books have souls. Or so romantics like me tend to think.”

Douglas Rushkoff (1961) writer, American media theorist

Soul, Thinking

“Summer came.
For the books thief, everything was going nicely.
For me, the sky was the color of Jews.”

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

Source: The Book Thief

Color, Summer

“What she was finding also was how one book led to another, doors kept opening wherever she turned and the days weren't long enough for the reading she wanted to do.”

Alan Bennett book The Uncommon Reader

Source: The Uncommon Reader

Reading

“Thus I rediscovered what writers have always known (and have told us again and again): books always speak of other books, and every story tells a story that has already been told.”

Umberto Eco (1932–2016) Italian semiotician, essayist, philosopher, literary critic, and novelist

Source: Postscript to the Name of the Rose

“I have a real soft spot in my heart for librarians and people who care about books.”

Ann Richards (1933–2006) American politician

People, Heart

“When you read to a child, when you put a book in a child's hands, you are bringing that child news of the infinitely varied nature of life. You are an awakener.”

Paula Fox (1923–2017) Amercian book author

Life, Nature, Reading

“I should infinitely prefer a book…”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice

“I would rather be governed by the first 2000 people in the Manhattan phone book than the entire faculty of Harvard.”

William F. Buckley Jr. (1925–2008) American conservative author and commentator

People

“You can't eat books, sweetheart.”

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

Source: The Book Thief

“His books were the closest thing he had to furniture and he lived in them the way other men live in easy chairs.”

Laura Hillenbrand book Seabiscuit: An American Legend

Source: Seabiscuit: An American Legend

Men, Way

“She didn't read books so she didn't know that she was the world and the heavens boiled down to a drop.”

Zora Neale Hurston book Their Eyes Were Watching God

Source: Their Eyes Were Watching God

World, Reading

“Books let us into their souls and lay open to us the secrets of our own.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

"The Sick Chamber," The New Monthly Magazine (August 1830), reprinted in Essays of William Hazlitt, selected and edited by Frank Carr (London, 1889)
Source: Essays of William Hazlitt: Selected and Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by Frank Carr

Secret, Soul