quotations about books
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 are embalmed minds. They make the great of other days our present teachers.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
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 majority of the books of our time give one the impression of having been manufactured in a day out of books read the day before.
CHAMFORT
The Cynic's Breviary
A book is a Fantastic Book, though time and space be commonplace enough, though the time be today and the place Camberwell, if only the mind perpetually travels, seeing one after another unexpected things in the consequences of human action or in the juxtaposition of emotions.
HILAIRE BELLOC
On Everything
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
One reads books in order to gain the privilege of living more than one life. People who don't read are trapped in a mine shaft, even if they think the sun is shining.
GARRISON KEILLOR
"The More Noble Prize,", Salon, Nov. 30, 2005
Books are my friends, my companions. They make me laugh and cry and find meaning in life.
CHRISTOPHER PAOLINI
Eragon
Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry.
UMBERTO ECO
The Name of the Rose
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
Book publishing would be so much easier without the authors.
DAN BROWN
The Lost Symbol
The greatest book is not the one whose message engraves itself on the brain, as a telegraphic message engraves itself on the ticker-tape, but the one whose vital impact opens up other viewpoints, and from writer to reader spreads the fire that is fed by the various essences, until it becomes a vast conflagration leaping from forest to forest.
ROMAIN ROLLAND
Journey Within
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
Savages and primitives believed in books that could suck your soul out through your eyes as you read them, books that could wrap their pages around your head and swallow you, words that crawled into your brain like tapeworms.
K. J. PARKER
The Escapement
No man living in a world as interesting as this ever writes a book if he can help it.
GERALD STANLEY LEE
Crowds
It's tricky turning a book into a movie. Sometimes people love the book so much that no adaptation lives up to what they imagined. You can avoid that disappointment by never, ever reading books.
CRAIG FERGUSON
The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, Mar. 21, 2012
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
Only in today's sick society can a man be persecuted for reading too many books.
MARKUS ZUSAK
The Book Thief
A good book changes for you every few years because you are in a different place in your own life. That's a sign of a good novel. Not only will two different readers get something different but so will a single reader at different points in his life.
ALAN LIGHTMAN
interview, Identity Theory, November 16, 2000
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"