“And grant that a man read all the books of music that ever were wrote, I shall not allow that music is or can be understood out of them, no more than the taste of meats out of cookish receipt books.”

“Flowers lead to books, which lead to thinking and not thinking and then more flowers and music, music. Then many more flowers and many more books.”

Maira Kalman (1949) Israeli American artist and creator of children's books

“To eliminate sex from a book is to eliminate the great creative force in the world. Out of the sexual instinct rises all the art, you know. … No eunuch ever wrote a book.”

Taylor Caldwell (1900–1985) Novelist

“From a Child I was fond of Reading, and all the little Money that came into my Hands was ever laid out in Books.”

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) American author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, …

“In a sense, one can never read the book that the author originally wrote, and one can never read the same book twice.”

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

“Take a book, the poorest one written, but read it with the passion that it is the only book you will read-ultimately you will read everything out of it, that is, as much as there was in yourself, and you could never get more out of reading, even if you read the best of books.”

Sören Kierkegaard book Stages on Life's Way

“Music is nothing separate from me. It is me. I can't retire from music any more than I can retire from my liver. You'd have to remove the music from me surgically — like you were taking out my appendix.”

Ray Charles (1930–2004) American musician

“Books, books, books. It was not that I read so much. I read and re-read the same ones. But all of them were necessary to me. Their presence, their smell, the letters of their titles, and the texture of their leather bindings.”

Colette (1873–1954) 1873-1954 French novelist: wrote Gigi

“I've developed a great reputation for wisdom by ordering more books than I ever had time to read, and reading more books, by far, than I learned anything useful from, except, of course, that some very tedious gentlemen have written books.”

Marilynne Robinson Gilead

“I could not be happy with a man whose taste did not in every point coincide with my own. He must enter in all my feelings; the same books, the same music must charm us both.”

Jane Austen book Sense and Sensibility