Quotes about books
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“An autobiography is a book a person writes about his own life and it is usually full of all sorts of boring details.”

Roald Dahl book Boy

Source: Boy: Tales of Childhood

Life, Personality

“The book's always better than the movie.”

Richelle Mead book Last Sacrifice

Source: Last Sacrifice

“But it's writing, damn it, not washing the car or putting on eyeliner. If you can take it seriously, we can do business. If you can't or won't, it's time for you to close the book and do something else.

Wash the car, maybe.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

Source: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

Cars, Business, Time

“When she wanted to escape her life, she read books”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Source: Between the Lines

Life, Reading

“We need books… because we are all, in the private kingdoms of our hearts, desperate for the company of a wise, true friend.”

Steve Almond (1966) American writer

Heart

“Sometimes when you open a book, time stops.”

Ned Vizzini (1981–2013) American writer

Source: The Other Normals

Time

“If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Reading

“I'm old-fashioned and think that reading books is the most glorious pastime that humankind has yet devised.”

Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) Polish writer

Source: Nonrequired Reading

Fashion, Thinking, Reading

“How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book.”

Henry David Thoreau book Walden ou la vie dans les bois

Source: Walden

Life, Reading

“All literature consists of whatever the writer thinks is cool. The reader will like the book to the degree that he agrees with the writer about what’s cool.”

Steven Brust (1955) American fantasy and science fiction author

Source: The Paths of the Dead

Literature, Thinking

“We have never heard the devil's side of the story, God wrote all the book.”

Anatole France (1844–1924) French writer

God

“Sometimes when I'm in a bookstore or library, I am overwhelmed by all the things that I do not know. Then I am seized by a powerful desire to read all the books, one by one.”

Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008) British science fiction writer, science writer, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host

Reading

“The best life for a writer is the life which helps him write the best books he can.”

Julian Barnes book Flaubert's Parrot

Source: Flaubert's Parrot

Life, Help

“I don't know, maybe you'd be more interested in me if I were a book.”

Joe Hill (1879–1915) Swedish-American labor activist, songwriter, and member of the Industrial Workers of the World

Source: NOS4A2

“The older I grow, the more I am convinced that there is no education which one can get from books and costly apparatus that is equal to that which can be gotten from contact with great men and women.”

Booker T. Washington (1856–1915) African-American educator, author, orator, and advisor

Women, Men, Education

“People who know and love the same books as you, have the road map to your soul.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Love, People, Soul

“The shelf was filled with books that were hard to read, that could devastate and remake one's soul, and that, when they were finished, had a kick like a mule.”

Mark Helprin book Winter's Tale

Source: Winter's Tale

Soul, Reading

“I grabbed my book and opened it up. I wanted to smell it. Heck, I wanted to kiss it. Yes, kiss it. That's right, I am a book kisser. Maybe that's kind of perverted or maybe it's just romantic and highly intelligent.”

Sherman Alexie book The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Source: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Intelligence, Kiss

“Don't ask where the rest of this book is!" It is a shrill cry that comes from an undefined spot among the shelves. "All books continue in the beyond…”

Italo Calvino (1923–1985) Italian journalist and writer of short stories and novels

Source: If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

Cry

“Shall we for ever make new books, as apothecaries make new mixtures, by pouring only out of one vessel into another?”

Laurence Sterne book The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

Source: The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

“Is this a kissing book?”

William Goldman (1931–2018) American novelist, screenwriter and playwright

Kiss

“I learned to write by reading the kind of books I wished I'd written.”

Barbara Kingsolver (1955) American author, poet and essayist

Learning, Reading

“When you read a great book, you don't escape from life, you plunge deeper into it.”

Julian Barnes (1946) English writer

Life, Reading

“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.”

Eudora Welty (1909–2001) American author

People, Disappointment, Nature, Grass

“Do they sense it, these dead writers, when their books are read? Does a pinprick of light appear in their darkness? Is their soul stirred by the feather touch of another mind reading theirs? I do hope so.”

Diane Setterfield book The Thirteenth Tale

Source: The Thirteenth Tale

Hope, Soul, Sense, Light

“I do not so much write a book as sit up with it, as a dying friend. I hold its hand and hope it will get better.”

Annie Dillard (1945) American writer

Source: The Writing Life

Hope

“Beware the man of a single book.”
Hominem unius libri timeo. / Timeo hominem unius libri.

Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) Italian Dominican scholastic philosopher of the Roman Catholic Church

As quoted by Leonard Sweet, The Greatest Story Never Told http://books.google.gr/books?id=KuTRcjWL91AC&dq=, section: "The Gift of Lyrics", Abingdon Press, 2012<br>Variant: "Beware the man of one book."<br>See also: Homo unius libri <br class="br">Disputed <br class="br">Variant: I fear the man of a single book.

“Do you ever read any of the books you burn?"
He laughed. "That's against the law!"
"Oh. Of course.”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Source: Fahrenheit 451

Law, Reading

“Oh! I am delighted with the book! I should like to spend my whole life in reading it.”

Jane Austen book Northanger Abbey

Source: Northanger Abbey

Life, Reading

“They're afraid of change, and we must change. They're afraid of the young, and we are the young. They're afraid of music, and music is our life. They're afraid of books, and knowledge, and ideas. They're most afraid of our magic.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: Witch & Wizard

Life, Music, Idea, Knowledge

“Boys think girls are like books, If the cover doesn't catch their eye they won't bother to read what's inside.”

Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) American actress, model, and singer

Variant: Boys think girls are like books, If the cover doesn't catch their eye they won't bother to read what's inside.

Girl, Boy, Thinking, Reading

“When someone is mean to me, I just make them a victim in my next book.”

Mary Higgins Clark (1927–2020) Novelist, writer

“I believe in the value of the book, which keeps something irreplaceable, and in the necessity of fighting to secure its respect.”

Jacques Derrida (1930–2004) French philosopher (1930-2004)

Source: Paper Machine

Fight

“I'm wondering what to read next." Matilda said. "I've finished all the children's books.”

Roald Dahl book Matilda

Source: Matilda

Children, Reading

“Books can ignite fires in your mind, because they carry ideas for kindling, and art for matches.”

Gary D. Schmidt (1957) American writer

Source: Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy

Art, Idea

“That's the magic of books. They're never quite the same for any two people. When you read one, you automatically make it your own.”

Janette Rallison (1966) American writer

Source: My Unfair Godmother

People, Reading

“You know how teachers are. If they get you to take out a book they love too, they're yours for life.”

Gary D. Schmidt book Orbiting Jupiter

Source: Orbiting Jupiter

Love, Life, Teachers

“People talk of situations, read books, repeat quotations.”

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

People, Reading

“Clearly, I see it.
I was just about to leave when I found her kneeling there.
A mountain range of rubble was written, designed, erected around her. She was clucthing at a book.”

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

Source: The Book Thief

Mountain

“Every book is a quotation; and every house is a quotation out of all forests and mines and stone-quarries; and every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

1870s, Society and Solitude (1870), Quotation and Originality
Source: Prose and Poetry

Housing

“If I finish a book a week, I will read only a few thousand books in my lifetime, about a tenth of a percent of the contents of the greatest libraries of our time. The trick is to know which books to read.”

Carl Sagan book Cosmos

Source: Cosmos

Time, Reading

“The truth is that I hate to think about other people reading my books," Miranda said. "It's like watching someone go through the box of private stuff that I keep under my bed.”

Madeleine L'Engle book A Wrinkle in Time

Source: A Wrinkle in Time

Hate, People, Truth, Thinking

“Your whole life you are really writing one book, which is an attempt to grasp the consciousness of your time and place– a single book written from different stages of your ability.”

Nadine Gordimer (1923–2014) South african Nobel-winning writer

Life, Time

“I even love the smell of books.”

Adriana Trigiani (1970) American film director

Love

“And of course I'm in the press all the time. So many books have been written about me; Into thin air, up in the air, Gone with the wind”

Rick Riordan book The Lost Hero

Source: The Lost Hero

Time

“It is from books that wise people derive consolation in the troubles of life.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

Life, People

“Just handle the books gently and you’ll get along fine.”

Patrick Rothfuss (1973) American fantasy writer

“Nico was wrong. The Book of Fate isn't already written. It's written every day.

Some scars never heal.
Then again, some do.”

Brad Meltzer (1970) writer

Fate

“Old books that we have known but not possessed cross our path and invite themselves over. New books try to seduce us daily with tempting titles and tantalizing covers.”

Alberto Manguel (1948) writer

Source: The Library at Night

“There'll be times when the only refuge is books. Then you'll read as if you meant it, as if your life depended on it.”

Ken Bruen (1951) Irish writer

Source: The Killing Of The Tinkers

Life, Time, Reading, Dependency

“I look at life like a big book and sometimes you get half way through it and go 'Even though I've been enjoying it, I've had enough. Give us another book”

Karl Pilkington (1972) English television personality, social commentator, actor, author and former radio producer

Podcast Series 2 Episode 2
On Life

Life, Way

“Books--oh! no. I am sure we never read the same, or not with the same
feelings."

"I am sorry you think so; but if that be the case, there can at least be
no want of subject. We may compare our different opinions.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice

Feeling, Thinking, Reading

“What a blessing it is to love books.”

Elizabeth von Arnim (1866–1941) Australian writer

Source: The Solitary Summer

Love

“Argue not concerning God,…re-examine all that you have been told at church or school or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your soul…”

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

God, School, Soul

“Books. Cats. Life is good.”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

Life, Cats

“Authors write books for one, and only one, reason: because we like to torture people.”

Brandon Sanderson Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians

Source: Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians

People

“I have my books
And my poetry to protect me;
I am shielded in my armor,
Hiding in my room, safe within my womb.
I touch no one and no one touches me.
I am a rock,
I am an island.”

Paul Simon (1941) American musician, songwriter and producer

Source: Simon and Garfunkel's Greatest Hits

“I've read a lot of books, so I know bunches of stuff that sounds like it could be true.”

Brian Andreas (1956) American artist

Reading

“From your parents you learn love and laughter and how to put one foot before the other. But when books are opened you discover that you have wings.”

Helen Hayes (1900–1993) actress

Love, Parent, Laughter, Learning

“An author in his book must be like God in the universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere.”

Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880) French writer (1821–1880)

9 December 1852
Correspondence, Letters to Madame Louise Colet

God, Universe

“The two things I enjoy the most about writing are the first page of a book and the last. What's in between is very hard work.”

Rachel Gibson (1961) American writer

“A book should be an axe to chop open the frozen sea inside us.”

J.M. Coetzee book Summertime

Source: Summertime

Sea

“If you truly love film, I think the healthiest thing to do is not read books on the subject. I prefer the glossy film magazines with their big colour photos and gossip columns, or the National Enquirer.”

Werner Herzog (1942) German film director, producer, screenwriter, actor and opera director

Such vulgarity is healthy and safe.
Herzog on Herzog (2002)

Love, Photo, Thinking, Reading

“Take no heed of her…. She reads a lot of books.”

Jasper Fforde book The Eyre Affair

Source: The Eyre Affair

Reading

“Go, my book, and help destroy the world as it is.”

Russell Banks book Continental Drift

Source: Continental Drift

World, Help

“Christian, n.: one who believes that the New Testament is a divinely inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor.”

Ambrose Bierce book The Devil's Dictionary

Source: The Devil's Dictionary (1911)
Context: Christian, n. One who believes that the New Testament is a divinely inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor. One who follows the teachings of Christ so long as they are not inconsistent with a life of sin.

“Sometimes it's a good thing we don't remember things half as well as books do.”

Cornelia Funke Inkheart trilogy

Source: Inkheart

“If I have not read a book before, it is, to all intents and purposes, new to me, whether it was printed yesterday or three hundred years ago.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

"On Reading New Books" (1825)
Men and Manners: Sketches and Essays (1852)

Reading

“Leaving behind books is even more beautiful — there are far too many children.”

Marguerite Yourcenar (1903–1987) French writer

Children, Beauty

“Only in today's sick society can a man be persecuted for reading too many books.”

Markus Zusak (1975) Australian author

Source: I Am the Messenger

Reading

“Writing poetry and reading books causes brain damage.”

Pat Conroy book The Prince of Tides

Source: The Prince of Tides, character Henry Wingo, chapter 2, page 53 (e-book edition)

Reading

“But what happens when her beauty is torn from her like a cover from a book? Will he care to read her then, although her pages speak of nothing but love for him?”

Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American writer

Love, Beauty, Reading

“The women one meets - what are they but books one has already read? You're a library of the unknown, the uncut. Upon my word I've a subscription.”

Henry James book The Wings of the Dove

Source: The Wings of the Dove

Women, Reading

“Finally, thank you very much to Jeaniene Frost and Jill Myles. This book does have sex in it. Please don't hit me anymore."

~Ilona Andrews in the Acknowledgements section of Magic Bleeds”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Sex

“Beware you be not swallowed up in books! An ounce of love is worth a pound of knowledge.”

John Wesley (1703–1791) Christian theologian

General sources
Source: Letter to Joseph Benson (7 November 1768); published in The Letters of John Wesley (1915) edited by George Eayrs

Love, Knowledge

“He started to look at me in a manner I recognized: it was the way I looked at a new book, one I had never read before, one that surprised me with all it had to say.”

Alice Hoffman book Blackbird House

Source: Blackbird House

Way, Reading

“They had only ever discussed books but what, in this life, is more personal than books?”

Gabrielle Zevin (1977) American writer

Source: The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

Life, Personality

“It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations. Bartlett's Familiar Quotations is an admirable work, and I studied it intently. The quotations when engraved upon the memory give you good thoughts. They also make you anxious to read the authors and look for more.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Source: My Early Life: A Roving Commission (1930), Chapter 9 (Education At Bangalore).

Study, Memory, Reading

“Many people will find this book disrespectful. There is nothing amusing about being dead, they will say. Ah, but there is.”

Mary Roach book Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

Source: Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

People, Dead

“Anyone who thinks one book has all the answers hasn't read enough books.”

Brian K. Vaughan (1976) American screenwriter, comic book creator

Variant: ... anyone who thinks one book has all the answers hasn't read enough books.
Source: Saga, Vol. 6

Thinking, Reading

“This is no book. Whoever touches this touches a man.”

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

“No two persons ever read the same book.”

Edmund Wilson (1895–1972) American writer, literary and social critic, and noted man of letters

Reading, Personality

“Nice tights," I snorted. Or I tried to snort, anyway. I'm not exactly sure how, though people in books are always doing it.”

Rebecca Stead book When You Reach Me

Source: When You Reach Me

People

“I love books, by the way, way more than movies. Movies tell you what to think. A good book lets you choose a few thoughts for yourself.”

Karen Marie Moning book Darkfever

Source: Darkfever

Love, Way, Thinking

“To see the Summer Sky
Is Poetry, though never in a Book it lie—
True Poems flee”

Emily Dickinson book The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

Source: The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

Lie, Summer

“A book has got smell. A new book smells great. An old book smells even better. An old book smells like ancient Egypt.”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

“Books are not lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on shelves!”

Gilbert Highet (1906–1978) British academic

The Immortal Profession: The Joys of Teaching and Learning (1976)
Context: These are not books, lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on the shelves. From each of them goes out its own voice, as inaudible as the streams of sound conveyed by electric waves beyond the range of our hearing; and just as the touch of button on our stereo will fill the room with music, so by opening one of these volumes, one can call into range a voice far distant in time and space, and hear it speaking, mind to mind, heart to heart.