“There was that special smell made up of paper, ink, and dust; the busy hush; the endless luxury of thousands of unread books. Best of all was the eager itch of anticipation as you went out the door with your arms loaded down with books.”

“You have ink in your blood, boy, and no help for it. Books will never be just a business to you.”

“She closed the book and put her cheek against it. There was still an odor of a library on it, of dust, leather, binding glue, and old paper, one book carrying the smell of hundreds.”

“It's important to read a book, but also to hold the book, to smell the book… it's perfume, it's incense, it's the dust of Egypt…”

“Books should go where they will be most appreciated, and not sit unread, gathering dust on a forgotten shelf, don't you agree?”

“A book is a loaded gun in the house next door.”

“When you sell a man a book you don't sell just twelve ounces of paper and ink and glue - you sell him a whole new life. Love and friendship and humour and ships at sea by night - there's all heaven and earth in a book, a real book.”

“The truly cultured are capable of owning thousands of unread books without losing their composure or their desire for more.”

“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. Yet regardless of where they came from, I cannot remember a time when I was not in love with them -- with the books themselves, cover and binding and the paper they were printed on, with their smell and their weight and with their possession in my arms, captured and carried off to myself.”

“i keep drinking the ink from my pen
and i'm balancing history books up on my head
but it all boils down to one quotable phrase
if you love something give it away”