BOOK QUOTES III

quotations about books

Book quote

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


What I say is, a town isn't a town without a bookstore. It may call itself a town, but unless it's got a bookstore, it knows it's not fooling a soul.

NEIL GAIMAN

American Gods


Good books are to the young mind what the warming sun and the refreshing rain of spring are to the seeds which have lain dormant in the frosts of winter. They are more, for they may save from that which is worse than death, as well as bless with that which is better than life.

HORACE MANN

Thoughts


What I look for most in the books I read is a sense of consciousness. It's so I know that I've lived. At the end, I can say, "Yes, I have been here--I was here, and I was paying attention."

LILI TAYLOR

O Magazine, Aug. 2006


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


To buy books as some do who make no use of them, only because they were published by an eminent printer, is much as if a man should buy clothes that did not fit him, only because they were made by some famous tailor.

ALEXANDER POPE

"Thoughts on Various Subjects"


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"


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


I should have written books instead of reading them.

ALAN LIGHTMAN

Reunion


Men sit in front of the writers of Fantastic Books fair and squarely with their hands on their knees, their eyes set, their mouths glum, their souls determined, and say: "Come now, Fantastic Book, are you serious or are you not serious?" And when the Fantastic Book answers "I am both." Then the man gets up with a sigh and concludes that it is neither. Yet the Fantastic Book was right, and if people were only wise they would salt all their libraries with Fantastic Books.

HILAIRE BELLOC

On Everything


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


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


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


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


If you would understand your own age, read the works of fiction produced in it. People in disguise speak freely.

ARTHUR HELPS

Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd


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


The book which bores you when you are twenty or thirty will open doors for you when you are forty or fifty -- and vice versa.

DORIS LESSING

introduction, The Golden Notebook


I think a book that is over 400 pages should be split in two. I don't know that there's anything that interesting that can go on for 700 pages. I think that is a little bit indulgent.

CHRIS ABANI

The Boston Globe, Mar. 22, 2014


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