BOOK QUOTES IV

quotations about books

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


The reading of a fine book is an uninterrupted dialogue in which the book speaks and our soul replies.

ANDRÉ MAUROIS

An Art of Living


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


In reading some books we occupy ourselves chiefly with the thoughts of the author; in perusing others, exclusively with our own.

EDGAR ALLAN POE

"Marginalia"


My last refuge, my books: simple pleasures, like finding wild onions by the side of the road, or requited love.

TRACY LETTS

August: Osage Country


There are many, many types of books in the world, which makes good sense, because there are many, many types of people, and everybody wants to read something different.

DANIEL HANDLER (as Lemony Snicket)

The Bad Beginning


One cannot celebrate books sufficiently. After saying his best, still something better remains to be spoken in their praise. As with friends, one finds new beauties at every interview, and would stay long in the presence of those choice companions. As with friends, he may dispense with a wide acquaintance. Few and choice. The richest minds need not large libraries.

AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT

Table Talk


What could be better, really, than to sit by the fire in the evening with a book, while the wind beats against the windowpanes, and the lamp burns?... You forget everything ... and hours go by. Without moving, you walk through lands you imagine you can see, and your thoughts, weaving in and out of the story, delight in the details or follow the outlines of the adventures. You merge with the character; you think you're the one whose heart is beating so hard within the clothes he's wearing.

GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

Madame Bovary


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.

ANNE RICE

Blackwood Farm


Books that have become classics -- books that have had their day and now get more praise than perusal -- always remind me of retired colonels and majors and captains who, having reached the age limit, find themselves retired on half pay.

THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH

Ponkapog Papers


In perusing the writings of sensible men, we have frequent opportunities of examining our own hearts, and by that means, of attaining a more certain knowledge of ourselves.

WELLINS CALCOTT

Thoughts Moral and Divine


Reading useless books is like sowing bad seed--your trouble does not reward you.

EDWARD COUNSEL

Maxims


There's nothing wrong with reading a book you love over and over. When you do, the words get inside you, become a part of you, in a way that words in a book you've read only once can't.

GAIL CARSON LEVINE

Writing Magic


It is quite too common a practice, both in readers and the more superficial class of critics, to judge a book by what it is not, a matter much easier to determine than what it is.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

The Round Table


Books are nothing but repositories for those lies the author wants his reader to believe.

GLEN COOK

Water Sleeps


It's up to the parents to not only allow but encourage reading fun books. People tend to push books that are good for you, like broccoli instead of ice cream. But if you let them read Spider-Man--I sure did--they are going to move on to Ray Bradbury and Stephen King.

NORA ROBERTS

Time Magazine, Nov. 29, 2007


I feel that books, just like people, have a destiny. Some invite sorrow, others joy, some both.

ELIE WIESEL

Night


In books we never find anything but ourselves. Strangely enough, that always gives us great pleasure, and we say the author is a genius.

THOMAS MANN

letter


I know of one semibarbarous zone whose librarians repudiate the "vain and superstitious habit" of trying to find sense in books, equating such a quest with attempting to find meaning in dreams or in the chaotic lines on the palms of one's hand.

JORGE LUIS BORGES

"The Library of Babel"


Bog-lights, vapours of mysticism, psychic overtones, soul orgies, wailings among the shadows, weird gnosticisms, veils and tissues of words, gibbering subjectivisms, gropings and maunderings, ontological fantasies, pan-psychic hallucinations--this is the stuff, the phantasms of hope, that fills your book shelves.

JACK LONDON

John Barleycorn