Quotes about books

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“In my schoolboy reveries, we were always two fugitives riding on the spine of a book, eager to escape into worlds of fiction and secondhand dreams.”

“Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs his eyes down its pages, its spirit grows and strengthens.”

“I do note with interest that old women in my books become young women on the covers… this is discrimination against the chronologically gifted.”

“You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”

“Books are truer than movies.”

“Books are the air I breathe, so I don't notice the seasons.”

“Any book which inspires us to lead a better life is a good book.”

“Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart and his friends can only read the title.”

“That's the thing about books. They let you travel without moving your feet.”

“Banning books gives us silence when we need speech. It closes our ears when we need to listen. It makes us blind when we need sight.”

“In the shop we buy and sell them, but in truth books have no owner. Every book you see here has been somebody’s best friend.”

“The product of paper and printed ink, that we commonly call the book, is one of the great visible mediators between spirit and time, and, reflecting zeitgeist, lasts as long as ore and stone.”

“Books, which we mistake for consolation, only add depth to our sorrow.”

“I conceive a knowledge of books is the basis upon which other knowledge is to be built.”

“Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.”

“Books hold no passports. There's only one true literary tradition: the human.”

“If books could have more, give more, be more, show more, they would still need readers who bring to them sound and smell and light and all the rest that can’t be in books.
The book needs you.”

“I am too fond of reading books to care to write them.”

“There are no faster or firmer friendships than those formed between people who love the same books.”

“When you are old and grey and full of sleep
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep”

“Which is why I am writing this book. To think. To understand. It just happens to be the way I'm made. I have to write things down to feel I fully comprehend them.”

“Have you any notion how many books are written about women in the course of one year? Have you any notion how many are written by men? Are you aware that you are, perhaps, the most discussed animal in the universe?”

“You be sure to throw the book at him, you hear me? I feel violated, Detective. Violated."
"I'll throw this table at you if you don't give us the names we're looking for.”

“A book has but one voice, but it does not instruct everyone alike.”

“My books are water; those of the great geniuses is wine. Everybody drinks water.”

“From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down I was convulsed with laughter. Someday I intend on reading it.”

“There are noble books but one wants the breath of life sometimes.”

“Few things leave a deeper mark on a reader than the first book that finds its way into his heart. Those first images, the echo of words we think we have left behind, accompany us throughout our lives and sculpt a palace in our memory to which, sooner or later--no matter how many books we read, how many worlds we discover or how much we learn or forget--we will return.”

“There is no scent so pleasant to my nostrils as that faint, subtle reek which comes from an ancient book.”

“I never read a book I must review; it prejudices you so.”

“We shouldn't teach great books; we should teach a love of reading.”

“A book is a mirror that offers us only what we already carry inside us.”

“Events in life mean nothing if you do not reflect on them in a deep way, and ideas from books are pointless if they have no application to life as you live it.”

“You should read books like you take medicine, by advice, and not by advertisement.”

“In theory it was, around now, Literature. Susan hated Literature. She'd much prefer to read a good book.”

“But the purpose of the book is not the horror, it is horror's defeat.”

“Open a book this minute and start reading. Don’t move until you’ve reached page fifty. Until you’ve buried your thoughts in print. Cover yourself with words. Wash yourself away. Dissolve.”

“I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and feel absurd.”

“Go anywhere you wish, talk to everyone. Ask any questions; you will be given answers. When you want to learn, you will be taught. Use the library. Open any book.”

“You know, it's hard work to write a book. I can't tell you how many times I really get going on an idea, then my quill breaks. Or I spill ink all over my writing tunic.”

“Jesus tells us to keep our eyes open so we are not fooled by the signs indicating that the End Times are near. As we get closer to the End Times, many people are going to claim to be the Messiah and claim to have the answers for a troubled world. Additionally, the book of Revelation tells us to expect a period of ceaseless, unending, terrible war. It appears that we are already preparing for this time as fifty percent of all research scientists today are involved in arms development and there is at least one military weapon and four thousand pounds of explosives for every man, woman, and child on earth. Finally, there will be more and more disease and devastation. Today, as you read this, millions of people in the world are being afflicted by insufficient food, the spread of new diseases, and the devastating effects of natural disasters. As we get closer to the End Times, there will be more and more famine. There will also be an increase in earthquakes and natural disasters. Christ also spoke of pestilence: the spread of new diseases. Our world will experience a spate of tragic new diseases that we will be unable to control.”

“Some books you read. Some books you enjoy. But some books just swallow you up, heart and soul.”

“It looked like the sort of book described in library catalogues as 'slightly foxed', although it would be more honest to admit that it looked as though it had been badgered, wolved and possibly beared as well.”

“The only book that is worth writing is the one we don’t have the courage or strength to write. The book that hurts us (we who are writing), that makes us tremble, redden, bleed”

“Here you discover that so long as books are kept open, then minds can never be closed.”

“Take all that you can of this book upon reason, and the balance on faith, and you will live and die a happier man. (When a skeptic expressed surprise to see him reading a Bible)”

“HOLLY: Are you suggesting I occasionally stray from the rule book?
FOALY: No. I'm suggesting you do not own a copy of the rule book, and if you do, you have certainly never opened it.”

“You don't make a photograph just with a camera. You bring to the act of photography all the pictures you have seen, the books you have read, the music you have heard, the people you have loved.”

“The Bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma.”

“Get books, sit yourself down anywhere, and go to reading them yourself.”

“Cheap editions of great books may be delightful, but cheap editions of great men are absolutely detestable”

“A book is not completed till it's read.”

“I'm a slow reader, but I usually get through seventy or eighty books a year, most fiction. I don't read in order to study the craft; I read because I like to read”

“As for my next book, I won't write it till it has grown heavy in my mind like a ripe pear; pendant, gravid, asking to be cut or it will fall.”

“The lack of power to take joy in outdoor nature is as real a misfortune as the lack of power to take joy in books”

“…She was, obviously, one of those women whose polished words may reflect a book club or bridge club, or any other deadly conventionality, but never her soul.”

“Knowing I lov'd my books, he furnish'd me From mine own library with volumes that I prize above my dukedom.”

“What is my life for and what am I going to do with it? I don't know and I'm afraid. I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want.”

“Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book.”

“Books do not age as you and I do. They will speak still when you and I are gone, to generations we will never see. Yes, the books must survive.”

“When you were young, and your heart, was an open book. You used to say, live and let live.”

“There are many horrible sights in the multiverse. Somehow, though, to a soul attuned to the subtle rhythms of a library, there are few worse sights than a hole where a book ought to be.
Someone had stolen a book.”

“It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what everyone else says in a whole book — what everyone else does not say in a whole book.”

“Books are a uniquely portable magic.”

“I would like to write a Book which would drive men mad, which would be like an open door leading them where they would never have consented to go, in short, a door that opens onto reality.”

“One kind of good book should leave you asking: how did the author know that about me?”

“I think books are like people, in the sense that they'll turn up in your life when you most need them.”

“Wonder is the beginning of wisdom in learning from books as well as from nature.”

“When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain,
Before high piled books, in charact’ry,
Hold like rich garners the full-ripen’d grain;
When I behold, upon the night’s starr’d face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour!
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love!”

“It was a subtle refinement of God to learn Greek when he wished to write a book – and that he did not learn it better.”

“What amazes me is that most days feel useless. I don't seem to accomplish anything-just a few pages, most of which don't seem very good. Yet, when I put all those wasted days together, I somehow end up with a book of which I'm very proud.”

“In regard to this Great Book, I have but to say, it is the best gift God has given to man. All the good the Saviour gave to the world was communicated through this book.”

“A successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out of it.”

“Houses are like books: so many of them around you, yet you only look at a few and visit or reside in fewer still.”

“no more pencils, no more books, no more teachers' dirty looks, when the teacher rings the bell, drop your books and run like hell”

“In each of us there is another whom we do not know.
Carl Jung

found in David Eagleman's book: Incognito”

“How many cities have revealed themselves to me in the marches I undertook in the pursuit of books!”

“The studying, the books, exams, arguments, theories. The jokes and pints, laughter, kisses and songs. Life was like running, ninety percent sweat and toil, ten per cent joy.”

“I have unclasp'd to thee the book even of my secret soul.”

“I don't go to church on Sunday, don't get on my knees to pray, or memorize the books of the Bible, I got my own special way”

“she loved to walk down the street with a book under her arm. It had the same significance for her as an elegant cane for the dandy a century ago. It differentiated her from others.”

“Everybody does have a book in them, but in most cases that's where it should stay.”

“Being rich is not about how much money you have or how many homes you own; it's the freedom to buy any book you want without looking at the price and wondering if you can afford it.”

“That's what this country needs -- more books!”

“There’s nothing as cozy as a piece of candy and a book.”

“Nietzsche said without music, life would be a mistake. To me, without books, life would be a mistake.”

“Please, not again what you studied, how long you spent at it, how many books you wrote, what people thought of you - but: what did you learn?”

“… the Bible is probably the most genocidal book in the literary canon.”

“If books are not good company, where shall I find it?”

“Speaking personally, you can have my gun, but you'll take my book when you pry my cold, dead fingers off of the binding.”

“I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book! -- When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.”

“These weren't cheap modern books; these were books bound in leather, and not just leather, but leather from clever cows who had given their lives for literature after a happy existence in the very best pastures.”

“First draft: let it run. Turn all the knobs up to 11. Second draft: hell. Cut it down and cut it into shape. Third draft: comb its nose and blow its hair. I usually find that most of the book will have handed itself to me on that first draft.”

“My Best Friend is a person who will give me a book I have not read.”

“Experience is the child of Thought, and Thought is the child of Action. We can not learn men from books.”

“Life is a game with many rules but no referee. One learns how to play it more by watching it than by consulting any book, including the holy book. Small wonder, then, that so many play dirty, that so few win, that so many lose.”

“He made me think of all the books I hadn't read, and all the ones I'd read but hadn't fully understood.”

“Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind”

“Every book is the wreck of a perfect idea.”