BOOK QUOTES VII

quotations about books

I'm much more willing to buy a novel electronically by someone I don't know. Because if halfway through I think, I don't really like this, I can just stop. I can't throw books out, even if I think they're crummy. I feel like I've got to give it to the library. I've got to loan it to somebody, or I keep it on my shelf. It's like a plant.

SUSAN ORLEAN

Newsweek, Jul. 13, 2009


Many books require no thought from those who read them, and for a very simple reason--they made no such demand upon those who wrote them.

CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Lacon


You know, not every good book needs to be a movie, or a television series, or a video game. There's great work in those mediums, of course, but sometimes a book should remain a book. I still believe nothing tells a story with the richness and complexity of a good novel. When people say they think a book would make a good movie, they say this sometimes because, if it worked, they already saw all the images in the movie theatre that is in their brains. And sometimes that is the way it should stay.

CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON

"Carlos Ruiz Zafon's love letter to literature", New Zealand Listener, Mar. 14, 2013


I was raised among books, making invisible friends in pages that seemed cast from dust and whose smell I carry on my hands to this day.

CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON

The Shadow of the Wind


I am sure everyone has had the experience of reading a book and finding it vibrating with aliveness, with colour and immediacy. And then, perhaps some weeks later, reading it again and finding it flat and empty. Well, the book hasn't changed: you have.

DORIS LESSING

Time Bites


I want to do something splendid ... something heroic or wonderful that won't be forgotten after I'm dead ... I think I shall write books.

LOUISA MAY ALCOTT

Little Women


The covers of this book are too far apart.

AMBROSE BIERCE

The Devil's Dictionary


The best books are those which lift us to a higher plane where we breathe a purer atmosphere.

ORISON SWETT MARDEN

Architects of Fate


There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts.

CHARLES DICKENS

Oliver Twist


Books are not seldom talismans and spells.

WILLIAM COWPER

The Task


Don't judge a book by its cover.

ENGLISH PROVERB


Books: a beautifully browsable invention that needs no electricity and exists in a readable form no matter what happens.

NICHOLSON BAKER

attributed, New York Times Book Review, 1994


For books are more than books, they are the life
The very heart and core of ages past,
The reason why men lived and worked and died,
The essence and quintessence of their lives.

AMY LOWELL

"The Boston Athenæum", A Dome of Many-coloured Glass


It is only a novel ... or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language.

JANE AUSTEN

Northanger Abbey


No two persons ever read the same book, or saw the same picture.

MADAME SWETCHINE

"Airelles,", The Writings of Madame Swetchine


So, please, oh please, we beg, we pray, go throw your TV set away, and in its place you can install, a lovely bookcase on the wall.

ROALD DAHL

The Telegraph, Sep. 13, 2011


A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading it.

WILLIAM STYRON

attributed, Writers at Work


All books are either dreams or swords,
You can cut, or you can drug, with words.

AMY LOWELL

Sword Blades and Poppy Seeds


Books are but pictures--the world is their original; to know the former well, we must necessarily have much acquaintance with the colors and shades of the latter.

NORMAN MACDONALD

Maxims and Moral Reflections


An unliterary man may be defined as one who reads books once only.

C. S. LEWIS

"On Stories", Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories