“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.”

“How much sooner one tires of anything than of a book!”

“I do not like books. I believe I have the smallest library of any literary man in London, and I have no wish to increase it. I keep my books at the British Museum and at Mudie's, and it makes me very angry if anyone gives me one for my private library.”

“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.”

“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.”

“How far I have succeeded in my endeavours, I submit to your Excellency's better judgment. I hope I shall never be more fond of promotion than studious to merit it. Modesty will ever forbid me to apply to that House for any favors. I consider myself immediately under your Excellency's protection, and look up to you for justice.”

“I like to imagine that, on the day after my last, my library and I will crumble together, so that even when I am no more I'll still be with my books.”

“And after reading Thoreau I felt how much I have lost by leaving nature out of my life.”

“There are books that I own that somehow even without reading them they mean something to me. So I think people have a relationship with books in a library whether you’ve come specifically to read them or not.”

“I read Wuthering Heights when I was seven. I stole a copy from the library. We weren’t allowed books in the house because they’re ‘dirty and dusty’. My mum had a shelf of fake leather books which my dad used to hide whisky behind. I used to die of embarrassment every time a visitor tried to pick up a book and realized it was fake.
The library was forbidden so it became exotic and sexy in my imagination. I was dying to get in there and read a book!”