Quotes about booking
page 17

William F. Buckley Jr. photo
Markus Zusak photo

“You can't eat books, sweetheart.”

Source: The Book Thief

Zora Neale Hurston photo
William Hazlitt photo

“Books let us into their souls and lay open to us the secrets of our own.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

"The Sick Chamber," The New Monthly Magazine (August 1830), reprinted in Essays of William Hazlitt, selected and edited by Frank Carr (London, 1889)
Source: Essays of William Hazlitt: Selected and Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by Frank Carr

Jodi Picoult photo
Alberto Manguel photo
Alberto Manguel photo
Desmond Tutu photo
Clive Barker photo

“Every body is a book of blood;
Wherever we're opened, we're red.”

Clive Barker (1952) author, film director and visual artist

Clive Barker's Books of Blood
Source: Books of Blood: Volumes One to Three

Mindy Kaling photo
Edith Wharton photo
Mohsin Hamid photo
Judy Blume photo

“It's not just the books under fire now that worry me. It is the books that will never be written.”

Judy Blume (1938) American children's writer

As quoted in Literature for Today's Young Adults (1997) by Kenneth L. Donelson and Alleen Pace Nilsen, p. 392
Context: It's not just the books under fire now that worry me. It is the books that will never be written. The books that will never be read. And all due to the fear of censorship. As always, young readers will be the real losers.

David Levithan photo

“They defy gravity, as good books should.”

Source: Boy Meets Boy

Wallace Stevens photo

“The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The reader became the book; and summer night
Was like the conscious being of the book.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

"The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm"
Transport to Summer (1947)
Context: The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The reader became the book; and summer night
Was like the conscious being of the book.
The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The words were spoken as if there was no book,
Except that the reader leaned above the page,
Wanted to lean, wanted much most to be
The scholar to whom the book is true, to whom
The summer night is like a perfection of thought.
The house was quiet because it had to be.
The quiet was part of the meaning, part of the mind:
The access of perfection to the page.
And the world was calm. The truth in a calm world,
In which there is no other meaning, itself
Is calm, itself is summer and night, itself
Is the reader leaning late and reading there.

Brandon Sanderson photo

“Books have great value, actions have greater value.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: The Well of Ascension

Richard Bach photo
Wisława Szymborska photo
China Miéville photo
James Rollins photo
Jo Walton photo
Cassandra Clare photo
Alberto Manguel photo
Marguerite Yourcenar photo
George Herbert photo

“[ Woe be to him that reads but one book. ]”

George Herbert (1593–1633) Welsh-born English poet, orator and Anglican priest

Jacula Prudentum (1651)

Ken Follett photo
John Berger photo
Henry Miller photo
Edna St. Vincent Millay photo
Jessica Mitford photo
David Levithan photo

“Luckily, I always travel with a book, just in case I have to wait on line for Santa, or some such inconvenience.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

Elizabeth Kostova photo
Julian Barnes photo

“To own a certain book - and to choose it without help - is to define yourself.”

Julian Barnes (1946) English writer

Source: A Life with Books

Alberto Manguel photo

“I wanted to live among books.”

Alberto Manguel (1948) writer

Source: A History of Reading

John Burroughs photo

“As a child, my number one best friend was the librarian in my grade school. I actually believed all those books belonged to her.”

Erma Bombeck (1927–1996) When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent le…
Donna Tartt photo
Anne Rice photo

“And books, they offer one hope -- that a whole universe might open up from between the covers, and falling into that universe, one is saved.”

Source: Blackwood Farm (2002)
Context: "No, but one can feel desperate at any age, don't you think? The young are eternally desperate," he said frankly. "And books, they offer one hope – that a whole universe might open up from between the covers, and falling into that universe, one is saved.

Nick Hornby photo
Jasper Fforde photo
Philip K. Dick photo
Richelle Mead photo
Ray Bradbury photo
William Goldman photo
Haruki Murakami photo
Orson Welles photo

“If you want a happy ending, it just depends on where you close the book!”

Orson Welles (1915–1985) American actor, director, writer and producer

From the published screenplay for "The Big Brass Ring" (Santa Barbara, Calif.: Santa Teresa Press, 1987)
Variant: If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story.

Annie Dillard photo
Bob Dylan photo
Sherman Alexie photo
John Cage photo

“College: two hundred people reading the same book. An obvious mistake. Two hundred people can read two hundred books.”

John Cage (1912–1992) American avant-garde composer

Source: M: Writings '67-'72

Charles Bukowski photo

“I learn more from books than from people”

William Sleator (1945–2011) Young adult science fiction novelist

Source: The Beasties

Jasper Fforde photo
Heinrich Heine photo
Pearl S.  Buck photo
Jeanette Winterson photo
Ray Bradbury photo

“A book is a loaded gun.”

Part 1
Variant: A book is a loaded gun in the house next door.
Source: Fahrenheit 451 (1953)

Carson McCullers photo
Bill Cosby photo
Laurie Halse Anderson photo
Karen Marie Moning photo
Gerald Durrell photo
Mortimer J. Adler photo

“The great authors were great readers, and one way to understand them is to read the books they read.”

Mortimer J. Adler (1902–2001) American philosopher and educator

Source: How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading

Anne Fadiman photo

“In my view, nineteen pounds of old books are at least nineteen times as delicious as one pound of fresh caviar.”

Anne Fadiman (1953) American essayist, journalist and magazine editor

Source: Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader

Jennifer Donnelly photo
Robin S. Sharma photo

“It's not what you will get out of the books that is so enriching - it is what the books will get out of you that will ultimately change your life”

Robin S. Sharma (1965) Canadian self help writer

Source: The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari: A Fable About Fulfilling Your Dreams Reaching Your Destiny

Jeffrey R. Holland photo
Haruki Murakami photo
Helen Keller photo
William Faulkner photo

“If I'd learnt one thing from travelling, it was that the way to get things done was to go ahead and do them. Don't talk about going to Borneo. Book a ticket, get a visa, pack a bag, and it just happens.”

Variant: If I'd learnt one thing from travelling, it was that the way to get things done was to go ahead and do them. DOn't talk about going to Borneo. Book a ticket, get a vida, pack a bag, and it just happens.
Source: The Beach

Herman Melville photo

“To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be who have tried it.”

Herman Melville (1818–1891) American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet

Source: Moby-Dick or, The Whale

Sam Harris photo
Michel De Montaigne photo
Alain de Botton photo
Cassandra Clare photo
Salman Rushdie photo
Mark Z. Danielewski photo
Franz Kafka photo
Stephen Chbosky photo