Quotes about books
page 17

“Every reader exists to ensure for a certain book a modest immortality. Reading is, in this sense, a ritual of rebirth.”

Alberto Manguel (1948) writer

Source: The Library at Night

Sense, Reading

“When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said "Let us pray." We closed our eyes. When we opened them, we had the Bible and they had the land.
:This quote, often attributed to Jomo Kenyatta, was first written in a fiction play published by holocaust doubter Rolf Hochhuth, in his controversial The Deputy, a Christian tragedy (1964), Grove Press, p. 144. No reference to any historical or original source was given. Other citations are found in books written by critics of religion, such as Christos Tzanetakos's "The Life and Work of an Atheist Pioneer", iUniverse; and Jack Huberman's "Quotable Atheist: Ammunition for Nonbelievers, Political Junkies, Gadflies, and Those Generally Hell-Bound" (2008), 175. No references are given.
: In Desmond Tutu: A Biography (2004) by Steven Gish, p. 101; is clarified Tutu used it as a joke which was not of him.”

Desmond Tutu (1931) South African churchman, politician, archbishop, Nobel Prize winner

Misattributed

Life, Religion, Quotes, Hell

“Every body is a book of blood;
Wherever we're opened, we're red.”

Clive Barker (1952) author, film director and visual artist

Clive Barker's Books of Blood
Source: Books of Blood: Volumes One to Three

“Open the book. (The gilt rubs off the edges of the pages and pollinates the fingertips.)”

Elizabeth Bishop (1911–1979) American poet

“This book will take you two days to read. Did you even see the cover? It’s mostly pink. If you’re reading this book every night for months, something is not right.”

Mindy Kaling book Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

Source: Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

Reading, Night

“Don't you ever mind," she asked suddenly, "not being rich enough to buy all the books you want?”

Edith Wharton book The House of Mirth

Source: The House of Mirth

“But when you read a book, what you see are black squiggles on pulped wood or, increasingly, dark pixels on a pale screen. To transform these icons into characters and events, you must imagine. And when you imagine, you create.”

Mohsin Hamid book How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia

Source: How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia

Imagination, Reading

“It's not just the books under fire now that worry me. It is the books that will never be written.”

Judy Blume (1938) American children's writer

As quoted in Literature for Today's Young Adults (1997) by Kenneth L. Donelson and Alleen Pace Nilsen, p. 392
Context: It's not just the books under fire now that worry me. It is the books that will never be written. The books that will never be read. And all due to the fear of censorship. As always, young readers will be the real losers.

“They defy gravity, as good books should.”

David Levithan Boy Meets Boy

Source: Boy Meets Boy

“Life's harder, the deeper you feel things, was all I could think as I put the books away. Feelings, who needs them? Sometimes they're like a gift, when you feel love or happiness. Sometimes they're a curse.”

John Marsden (1950) author

Source: The Dead of Night

Love, Life, Feeling, Thinking

“The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The reader became the book; and summer night
Was like the conscious being of the book.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

"The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm"
Transport to Summer (1947)
Context: The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The reader became the book; and summer night
Was like the conscious being of the book.
The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The words were spoken as if there was no book,
Except that the reader leaned above the page,
Wanted to lean, wanted much most to be
The scholar to whom the book is true, to whom
The summer night is like a perfection of thought.
The house was quiet because it had to be.
The quiet was part of the meaning, part of the mind:
The access of perfection to the page.
And the world was calm. The truth in a calm world,
In which there is no other meaning, itself
Is calm, itself is summer and night, itself
Is the reader leaning late and reading there.

World, Summer, Housing, Night

“Even as a kid, my memories are of books taking me out of myself.”

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

Memory

“Books have great value, actions have greater value.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: The Well of Ascension

“The world is your exercise book, the pages on which you do your sums. It is not reality, though you may express reality there if you wish. You are also free to write lies, or nonsense, or to tear the pages.”

Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer

Source: Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

World, Exercises, Reality, Tear

“Every beginning, after all, is nothing but a sequel, and the book of events is always open in the middle.”

Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) Polish writer

“Books are always obviously having conversations with other books, and some times they're amiable and sometimes not.”

China Miéville book The City & the City

Source: The City & the City

Time

“Books are keys that open many doors.”

James Rollins (1961) American writer

“It doesn't matter. I have books, new books, and I can bear anything as long as there are books.”

Jo Walton book Among Others

Source: Among Others

“We can buy you one of those books they have for little kids 'Timmy Has Two Dads'. Except I don't think they have one called 'Timmy Has Two Dads and One of Them Was Evil'. That part you're just going to have to work through on your own.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Fallen Angels

Source: City of Fallen Angels

Thinking, Evil, Parting

“But at night, when the library lamps are lit, the outside world disappears and nothing but the space of books remains in existence.”

Alberto Manguel (1948) writer

Source: The Library at Night

World, Night

“There are books which one should not attempt before having passed the age of forty.”

Marguerite Yourcenar book Memoirs of Hadrian

Source: Memoirs of Hadrian

Age

“[ Woe be to him that reads but one book. ]”

George Herbert (1593–1633) Welsh-born English poet, orator and Anglican priest

Jacula Prudentum (1651)

Reading

“Nevertheless, the book gave Jack a feeling he had never had before, that the past was like a story, in which one thing led to another, and the world was not a boundless mystery, but a finite thing that could be comprehended.”

Ken Follett book The Pillars of the Earth

Source: The Pillars of the Earth

World, Feeling, Past

“When we read a story, we inhabit it. The covers of the book are like a roof and four walls. What is to happen next will take place within the four walls of the story. And this is possible because the story's voice makes everything its own.”

John Berger (1926–2017) British painter, writer and art critic

Source: Keeping a Rendezvous

Reading

“A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition. Like money, books must be kept in constant circulation. Lend and borrow to the maximum.”

Henry Miller (1891–1980) American novelist

Money, Lying

“The books that have helped me most are the ones I reacted to, not just read”

Rick Warren (1954) Christian religious leader

Reading, Help

“Where shadows dim with shadows mate,
in caverns deep and dark.
Where old books dream of bygone days,
when they were wood and bark…”

Walter Moers book The City of Dreaming Books

Source: The City of Dreaming Books

Dreams

“This book, when I am dead, will be
A little faint perfume of me.
People who knew me well will say,
She really used to think that way.”

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950) American poet

Source: Collected Poems

People, Way, Thinking, Dead

“A thirteen-year-old is a kaleidoscope of different personalities, if not in most ways a mere figment of her own imagination. At that age, what and who you are depends largely on what book you happen to be reading at the moment.”

Jessica Mitford book Hons and Rebels

Source: Hons and Rebels

Age, Way, Imagination, Reading

“Luckily, I always travel with a book, just in case I have to wait on line for Santa, or some such inconvenience.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

Travel, Waiting

“Of course I loved books more than people.”

Diane Setterfield book The Thirteenth Tale

Source: The Thirteenth Tale

Love, People

“And how could anyone consent to give up the smell of open books, old or new?”

Elizabeth Kostova book The Swan Thieves

Source: The Swan Thieves

“the moment you don't feel like praying, get on your knees. And the moment you don't feel like reading your bible, you'd better get that Book open.”

Lori Wick American writer

Source: Where the Wild Rose Blooms

Feeling, Reading

“To own a certain book - and to choose it without help - is to define yourself.”

Julian Barnes (1946) English writer

Source: A Life with Books

Help

“I wanted to live among books.”

Alberto Manguel (1948) writer

Source: A History of Reading

“I still find each day too short for all the thoughts I want to think, all the walks I want to take, all the books I want to read, and all the friends I want to see.”

John Burroughs (1837–1921) American naturalist and essayist

Thinking, Reading

“As a child, my number one best friend was the librarian in my grade school. I actually believed all those books belonged to her.”

Erma Bombeck (1927–1996) When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent le…

School

“It is is better to know one book intimately than a hundred superficially.”

Donna Tartt book The Secret History

Source: The Secret History

“There are adventures of the spirit and one can travel in books and interest oneself in people and affairs. One need never be dull as long as one has friends to help, gardens to enjoy and books in the long winter evenings.”

D.E. Stevenson (1892–1973) British writer

Source: Listening Valley

People, Travel, Winter, Help

“And books, they offer one hope -- that a whole universe might open up from between the covers, and falling into that universe, one is saved.”

Anne Rice book Blackwood Farm

Source: Blackwood Farm (2002)
Context: "No, but one can feel desperate at any age, don't you think? The young are eternally desperate," he said frankly. "And books, they offer one hope – that a whole universe might open up from between the covers, and falling into that universe, one is saved.

Hope, Universe

“Hard is trying to rebuild yourself, piece by piece, with no instruction book, and no clue as to where all the important bits are supposed to go.”

Nick Hornby book A Long Way Down

Source: A Long Way Down

“It's a rare book that wins the battle against drooping eyelids.”

Tracy Chevalier (1962) American writer

“You see? I know where every single book used to be in the library.' She pointed to the shelf opposite. 'Over there was, which was a hugely popular fishing book and one of a series, I believe.”

Jasper Fforde (1961) British novelist

Source: Shades of Grey

Fish

“You mean old books?"

"Stories written before space travel but about space travel."

"How could there have been stories about space travel before --"

"The writers," Pris said, "made it up.”

Philip K. Dick book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Source: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Travel

“Look, don’t get me wrong. I worship the ground this guy walks on. I’m excited to meet him tonight. I’m dying to meet him tonight. If he wanted to carry me off and make me his love slave, I’d do it, so long as I got advance copies of his books.”

Richelle Mead (1976) American writer

Source: Succubus Blues

Love, Guy

“Books fall open, you fall in. When you climb out again, you're a bit larger than you used to be.”

Gregory Maguire (1954) Novelist

“The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us.”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Source: Fahrenheit 451

Universe

“I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us.”

Franz Kafka (1883–1924) author

Thinking, Reading

“This is my favorite book in all the world, though I have never read it.”

William Goldman book The Princess Bride

Source: The Princess Bride

World, Reading

“Does G get angry because it follows F in the alphabet? Does page 68 in a book start a revolution because it follows 67?”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore

“If you want a happy ending, it just depends on where you close the book!”

Orson Welles (1915–1985) American actor, director, writer and producer

From the published screenplay for "The Big Brass Ring" (Santa Barbara, Calif.: Santa Teresa Press, 1987)
Variant: If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story.

Dependency, Happiness

“Books swept me away, this way and that, one after the other; I made endless vows according to their lights for I believed them.”

Annie Dillard (1945) American writer

Way, Light

“I wanted to read all these books, but I would have to have been in a rest home or something to do that (p. 37,).”

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

Home, Reading

“If one reads enough books one has a fighting chance. Or better, one's chances of survival increase with each book one reads.”

Sherman Alexie (1966) Native American author and filmmaker

Chance, Reading, Fight

“College: two hundred people reading the same book. An obvious mistake. Two hundred people can read two hundred books.”

John Cage (1912–1992) American avant-garde composer

Source: M: Writings '67-'72

People, Reading

“Remember to get the weather in your damn book--weather is very important.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Weather

“If something burns your soul with purpose and desire, it’s your duty to be reduced to ashes by it. Any other form of existence will be yet another dull book in the library of life.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Life, Soul

William Sleator (1945–2011) Young adult science fiction novelist

Source: The Beasties

People, Learning

“the Real-World was a sprawling mess of a book in need of a good editor.”

Jasper Fforde book One of Our Thursdays Is Missing

Source: One of Our Thursdays Is Missing

World

“She thought of the library, so shining white and new; the rows and rows of unread books; the bliss of unhurried sojourns there and of going out to a restaurant, alone, to eat.”

Maud Hart Lovelace book Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown

Source: Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown (1943)

“This was but a prelude;
where books are burnt
human-beings will be burnt
in the end”

Heinrich Heine (1797–1856) German poet, journalist, essayist, and literary critic

“I am always glad when any of my books can be put into an inexpensive edition, because I like to think that any people who might wish to read them can do so. Surely books ought to be within reach of everybody.”

Pearl S. Buck book The Good Earth

Source: The Good Earth

People, Thinking, Reading

“Books, for me, are a home. Books don’t make a home – they are one, in the sense that just as you do with a door, you open a book, and you go inside. Inside there is a different kind of time and a different kind of space.”

Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer

Source: Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

Home, Sense, Time

“A book is a loaded gun.”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Part 1
Variant: A book is a loaded gun in the house next door.
Source: Fahrenheit 451 (1953)

“There's nothing that makes you so aware of the improvisation of human existence as a song unfinished. Or an old address book.”

Carson McCullers (1917–1967) American writer

“In spite of the seven thousand books of expert advice, the right way to disciplne a child is still a mystery to most fathers and… mothers Only your grandmother and Genghis Khan know how to do it.”

Bill Cosby (1937) American actor, comedian, author, producer, musician, activist

Way

“None of [the books are] worth reading. There are no fairy tales, no faerie tails, no sword-swinging princesses or lightning-throwing gods.”

Laurie Halse Anderson Wintergirls

Source: Wintergirls

God, Reading, Princess

“Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed; if we permit the last virgin forests to be turned into comic books and plastic cigarette cases; if we drive the few remaining members of the wild species into zoos or to extinction; if we pollute the last clear air and dirty the last clean streams and push our paved roads through the last of the silence, so that never again will Americans be free in their own country from the noise, the exhausts, the stinks of human and automotive waste. And so that never again can we have the chance to see ourselves single, separate, vertical and individual in the world, part of the environment of trees and rocks and soil, brother to the other animals, part of the natural world and competent to belong in it. … We need wilderness preserved — as much of it as is still left, and as many kinds — because it was the challenge against which our character as a people was formed. The reminder and the reassurance that it is still there is good for our spiritual health even if we never once in ten years set foot in it.”

Wallace Stegner (1909–1993) American historian, writer, and environmentalist

Wilderness Letter http://wilderness.org/bios/former-council-members/wallace-stegner (1960) <br class="br">Source: The Sound of Mountain Water

People, Health, World, Nature

“When you re-read a classic you do not see in the book more than you did before. You see more in you than there was before.”

Clifton Fadiman (1904–1999) American editor

Source: "Any Number Can Play," 1957

Reading

“You need me as much as I need you. That makes us equal partners in my book.
Well, your book is just wrong.”

Karen Marie Moning book Darkfever

Source: Darkfever

“‎'All we need is a book,' roared Leslie; 'don't panic, hit 'em with a book.”

Gerald Durrell book My Family and Other Animals

Source: My Family and Other Animals

“The great authors were great readers, and one way to understand them is to read the books they read.”

Mortimer J. Adler (1902–2001) American philosopher and educator

Source: How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading

Way, Understanding, Reading

“Luckily, even as a young man not yet become himself, John Bridgens had two things besides indecision that kept him from self-destruction - books and a sense of irony.”

Dan Simmons book The Terror

Source: The Terror

Sense, Indecision

“In my view, nineteen pounds of old books are at least nineteen times as delicious as one pound of fresh caviar.”

Anne Fadiman (1953) American essayist, journalist and magazine editor

Source: Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader

Time

“You should spend more time reading the Good Book and less reading all those novels. What are you going to tell the Lord on Judgement Day when He asks you why you didn't read your bible? Hmm?"I said. To myself.”

Jennifer Donnelly A Northern Light

Source: A Northern Light

Time, Reading

“It's not what you will get out of the books that is so enriching - it is what the books will get out of you that will ultimately change your life”

Robin S. Sharma (1965) Canadian self help writer

Source: The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari: A Fable About Fulfilling Your Dreams Reaching Your Destiny

Life, Change

“My books promised me that life wasn’t just made up of workday tasks and prosaic things. The world is bigger and more colorful and more important than that.”

Laura Amy Schlitz (1955) children's author

Life, World, Color

“My own great-grandfather, who said simply enough, "No wicked man could write such a book as this; and no good man would write it unless it were true and he were commanded of God to do so.”

Jeffrey R. Holland (1940) Mormon leader

God

“Everybody thinks I'm this delicate little girl. But you can't tell a book by it's cover.' To which she added a momentary smile.”

Haruki Murakami book Norwegian Wood

Source: Norwegian Wood

Smile, Girl, Thinking

“Literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disenfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourse of my book friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or awkwardness. The things I have learned and the things I have been taught seem of ridiculously little importance compared with their "large loves and heavenly charities."”

Helen Keller book The Story of My Life

Source: The Story of My Life (1903), Ch. 21

Love, Literature, Sense, Learning

“When I was little there was a picture in one of our books, a dark place into which a single weak ray of light came slanting upon two faces lifted out of the shadow.”

William Faulkner book The Sound and the Fury

Source: The Sound and the Fury

Light

“If I'd learnt one thing from travelling, it was that the way to get things done was to go ahead and do them. Don't talk about going to Borneo. Book a ticket, get a visa, pack a bag, and it just happens.”

Alex Garland book The Beach

Variant: If I'd learnt one thing from travelling, it was that the way to get things done was to go ahead and do them. DOn't talk about going to Borneo. Book a ticket, get a vida, pack a bag, and it just happens.
Source: The Beach

Way, Travel

“To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be who have tried it.”

Herman Melville (1818–1891) American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet

Source: Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“Religious moderation is the direct result of taking scripture less and less seriously. So why not take it less seriously still? Why not admit the the Bible is merely a collection of imperfect books written by highly fallible human beings.”

Sam Harris Letter to a Christian Nation

Source: Letter to a Christian Nation

“I enjoy books as misers enjoy treasures, because I know I can enjoy them whenever I please.”

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

“We are sensitized by the books we read. And the more books we read, and the deeper their lessons sink into us, the more pairs of glasses we have. And those glasses enable us to see things we would have otherwise missed.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Reading

“I'm not an angel, Jace," she repeated. "I don't return library books. I steal illegal music off the internet. I lie to my mom. I am.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Glass

Source: City of Glass

Lie, Music, Angels, Moms

“When I read a book, I put in all the imagination I can, so that it is almost like writing the book as well as reading it - or rather, it is like living it. It makes reading so much more exciting, but I don't suppose many people try to do it.”

Dodie Smith book I Capture the Castle

Source: I Capture the Castle

People, Imagination, Reading

“It is perfectly true, as the philosophers say, that life must be understood backwards. But they forget the other proposition, that it must be lived forwards.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Journals IV A 164 (1843)
See Phenomenology: Critical Concepts in Philosophy, by Dermot Moran (2002)
Variants:
We live forward, but we understand backward.
Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.
1840s, The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, 1840s

Life, Forgetting