Quotes About Books

In reading, friendship is suddenly brought back to its original purity. There is no false amiability with books. If we spend the evening with these friends, it is because we genuinely want to.

To make [reading] into a discipline is to give too large a role to what is only an incitement. Reading is on the threshold of the spiritual life; it can introduce us to it: it does not constitute it. Even the finest books deserve to be thrown aside.

Un paradox al c?rÈ›ilor scrise de alÈ›i oameni este c? ele ne spun adesea mai multe despre propria noastr? via?? decât am fost în stare s? înÈ›elegem singuri.

a book provides for a distillation of our sporadic mind, a record of its most vital manifestations, a concentration of inspired moments that might originally have arisen across a multitude of years and been separated by extended stretches of bovine gazing. To meet an author whose books one has enjoyed must, in this view, necessarily be a disappointment... because such a meeting can only reveal a person as he exists within, and finds himself subject to, the limitations of time.

Reading is on the threshold of the spiritual life; it can introduce us to it: it does not constitute it.

She retreats to a sad but oddly comforting and familiar place inside her head where she hides when others let her down (as they tend to do) and takes comfort in books and music. She is an expert in self-protection and defence; she has been in training for much of her life.

The important books should be those that leave us wondering, with relief and gratitude, how the author could possibly have known so much about our lives.

The core – and perhaps unexpected – thing that books do for us is simplify. It sounds odd, because we think of literature as sophisticated. But there are powerful ways in which books organise, and clarify our concerns – and in this sense simplify.

Of course, there would be few great human achievements if we accepted all frustrations. The motor of our ingenuity is the question 'Does it have to be like this?', from which arise political reforms, scientific developments, improved relationships, better books.

It is common to assume that we are dealing with a highly intelligent book when we cease to understand it.

But then books, as I'm sure you know, seldom prompt a course of actions. Books generally just confirm you in what you have, perhaps unwittingly, decided to do already. You go to a book to have your convictions corroborated. A book, as it were, closes the book.

Books did not care who was reading them or whether one read them or not. All readers were equal, herself included. Literature, she thought, is a commonwealth; letters a republic.

I libri non sono un passatempo. Parlano di altre vite. Di altri mondi. Altro che far passare il tempo, Sir Kevin; non so cosa darei per averne di più.

to her all books were the same and, as with her subjects, she felt a duty to approach them without prejudice...Lauren Bacall, Winifred Holtby, Sylvia Plath - who were they? Only be reading could she find out.

She'd never taken much interest in reading. She read, of course, as one did, but liking books was something she left to other people.

What she was finding also was how one book led to another, doors kept opening wherever she turned and the days weren't long enough for the reading she wanted to do.

Stava scoprendo che un libro tira l'altro; ovunque si voltava si aprivano nuove porte e le giornate erano sempre troppo corte per leggere quanto avrebbe voluto.

Silläkin riskillä että kuulostan paistilta, kuningatar sanoi, kirjat tekevät ihmisestä kypsemmän.

Books are wonderful, aren't they?' she said to the vice-chancellor who concurred. 'At the risk of sounding like a piece of steak,' she said, 'they tenderise one.

Stava anche scoprendo che un libro tira l'altro; ovunque si voltava si aprivano nuove porte e le giornate erano troppo corte per leggere quanto avrebbe voluto. Ma era dispiaciuta, e anche mortificata, al pensiero di tutte le occasioni che si era lasciata sfuggire.

She had always been good at duty until she started reading.

Pass the time?' said the Queen. 'Books are not about passing the time. They're about other lives. Other worlds. Far from wanting time to pass, Sir Kevin, one just wishes one had more of it. If one wanted to pass the time one could go to New Zealand.

Libraries have to be local, they have to be handy. They shouldn't need an expedition. But that early period in a child's reading life is vital. Interfere with that, hinder a child's access to books in whatever form and you damage that child probably for life. I have said it many times already but it's worth saying again: closing libraries is child abuse. Enough ranting.

Del resto i libri, come certo saprà, è raro che inducano ad agire. In genere confermano solo quello che, magari inconsapevolmente, si è già deciso di fare. Si ricorre ad un libro per avere conferma delle proprie convinzioni. In altri termini per chiudere un capitolo.