quotations about books
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
Your borrowers of books--those mutilators of collections, spoilers of the symmetry of shelves, and creators of odd volumes.
CHARLES LAMB
"The Two Races of Men", Essays of Elia
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
Thank God for books as an alternative to conversation.
W. H. AUDEN
The Complete Works of W. H. Auden
The thing one reads and likes, and then forgets, is of no account. The thing that stays, and haunts one, and refuses to be forgotten, that is the sincere thing.
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
Ponkapog Papers
There is more treasure in books than in all the pirates' loot on Treasure Island and at the bottom of the Spanish Main ... and best of all, you can enjoy these riches every day of your life.
WALT DISNEY
attributed, Peter's Quotations: Ideas for Our Time
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
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
Books are not seldom talismans and spells.
WILLIAM COWPER
The Task
Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered.
W. H. AUDEN
"Reading", The Dyer's Hand and Other Essays
There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts.
CHARLES DICKENS
Oliver Twist
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
He who possesses good books without gaining any profit from them, is like an ass that carries a rich burden and feeds upon thistles.
JOHN THORNTON
Maxims and Directions for Youth
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
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
McDonald’s has announced that for the next month in the United Kingdom, Happy Meals will come with a book instead of a toy. And they will be renamed "Disappointment Meals."
JIMMY KIMMEL
Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Jan. 12, 2012
Books admitted me to their world open-handedly, as people for their most part, did not. The life I lived in books was one of ease and freedom, worldly wisdom, glitter, dash and style.
JONATHAN RABAN
For Love and Money
One's life is more formed, I sometimes think, by books than by human beings: it is out of books one learns about love and pain at second hand. Even if we have the happy chance to fall in love, it is because we have been conditioned by what we have read, and if I had never known love at all, perhaps it was because my father's library had not contained the right books.
GRAHAM GREENE
Travels with My Aunt
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