BOOK QUOTES III

quotations about books

Book quote

Books are embalmed minds. They make the great of other days our present teachers.

CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE

Intuitions and Summaries of Thought


Books are the mirrors of the soul.

VIRGINIA WOOLF

Between the Acts


I should have written books instead of reading them.

ALAN LIGHTMAN

Reunion


It is so very easy and so very pleasant, too, to read only books which lead to nothing, light and interesting books, and the more the better, that it is almost as difficult to wean ourselves from it as from the habit of chewing tobacco to excess, or of smoking the whole time, or of depending for stimulus upon tea or coffee or spirits.

CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS

American Library Journal, 1876


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.

ANTONIN ARTAUD

Selected Writings


To say that the publishing world is not interested in literature is to overstate it. They are extremely interested in it, they just don’t want to publish it, you see. Publishers are brave, as brave as the famous diving horses of Atlantic City, but they’re increasingly owned by conglomerates, businesses which have nothing to do with publishing, and these companies demand a certain profit out of their publishing divisions. They take very few risks and they publish an enormous number of things which look like books, sort of feel like books, but in reality are buckets of peanut butter with a layer of whipped cream on top.

DONALD BARTHELME

"A Symposium on Fiction"


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 come 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.

EUDORA WELTY

One Writer's Beginnings


A book ... should resemble a tranquil lake, in whose glassy surface the varied wonders of the earth and sky are faithfully imaged.

CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE

Intuitions and Summaries of Thought


When I was very little, say five or six, I became aware of the fact that people wrote books. Before that, I thought that God wrote books. I thought a book was a manifestation of nature, like a tree. When my mother explained it, I kept after her: What are you saying? What do you mean? I couldn't believe it. It was astonishing. It was like--here's the man who makes all the trees. Then I wanted to be a writer, because, I suppose, it seemed the closest thing to being God.

FRAN LEBOWITZ

interview, The Paris Review, summer 1993


Book publishing would be so much easier without the authors.

DAN BROWN

The Lost Symbol


A good book, in the language of the booksellers, is a saleable one; in the language of the curious, a scarce one; in that of men of sense, a useful and instructful one.

ELIZA COOK

Diamond Dust


The popular books are the novels, dealing with life under all possible conditions, and they are widely read not only because they are entertaining, but also because they in a measure satisfy an unformulated belief that to see farther, to know all sorts of men, in an indefinite way, is a preparation for better social adjustment--for the remedying of social ills.

JANE ADDAMS

Democracy and Social Ethics


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.

CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON

The Shadow of the Wind


Of books in our time the variety is so voluminous, and they follow so fast from the press, that one must be a swift reader to acquaint himself even with their titles, and wise to discern what are worth reading.

AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT

Table Talk


In some respects the better a book is, the less it demands from binding.

CHARLES LAMB

"On Books and Reading", The Last Essays of Elia


Why can't people just sit and read books and be nice to each other?

DAVID BALDACCI

The Camel Club


How many good books suffer neglect through the inefficiency of their beginnings!

EDGAR ALLAN POE

"Marginalia"


I would like to save all books, those that are banned, those that are burned, or forgotten with contempt by the mandarins who want to tell us what is good and what is bad. Every book has a soul ... and I believe every book is worth saving from either bigotry or oblivion.

CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON

"An interview with Carlos Ruiz Zafon", Book Browse


One only makes books in order to keep in touch with one's fellows after one has ceased to breathe, and thus to defend oneself against the inexorable fate of all that lives--transitoriness and oblivion.

STEFAN ZWEIG

Selected Stories


Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry.

UMBERTO ECO

The Name of the Rose