Quotes About Books

Books and stories are lifelines, and libraries house those lifelines, making them available to all. They are important not just for the books, but for the space and freedom they provide, as well as the navigation and advice provided by librarians.

Books did not defer. All readers were equal and this took her back to the beginning of her life. As a girl, one of her greatest thrills had been on VE night when she and her sister had slipped out of the gates and mingled unrecognised with the crowds. There was something of that, she felt, to reading. It was anonymous; it was shared; it was common. And she who had led a life apart now found that she craved it. Here in these pages and between these covers she could go unrecognised.

On cherche dans un livre la confirmation de ses propres convictions.

L'attrattiva della letteratura, rifletté, consisteva nella sua indifferenza, nella sua totale mancanza di deferenza. I libri se ne infischiavano di chi li leggeva; se nessuno li apriva, loro stavano bene lo stesso. Un lettore valeva l'altro e lei non faceva eccezione.

Non si mette la vita nei libri. La si trova.

Passar o tempo? - disse a Rainha. - Os livros não são para passar o tempo. São sobre outras vidas. Outros mundos. Longe de querer que o tempo passe, sir Kevin, quem nos dera ter mais. Se quiséssemos passar o tempo, íamos à Nova Zelândia.

A book is a device to ignite the imagination

The appeal of reading, she thought, lay in its indifference: there was something lofty about literature. 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.

Good books shouldn't be hidden away. They should be read by as many people as many times as possible.

That's what libraries were for: to make sure that everybody had the same access to the same books everyone else did.

Mr. Pilkey smiled. "Well, I wish they were on the shelves, where everybody could read them," he said. "I think it's important that libraries be a place where you can find all kinds of books. Good ones, bad ones, funny ones, serious ones. Every person should be free to read whatever they want, whenever they want, and not have to explain to anyone else why we like it, or why we think it's valuable. I hope you all get a chance to read my books someday.

To read old books is to get an education in possibility for next to nothing.

But for people like Erasmus (with his "cry of thankful joy" on spying a fragment of print) or Lynne Sharon Schwartz ("Can I get back to my books now?"), books are the natural and inevitable and permanent means of being absorbed in something other than the self.

All books want our attention, but not all of them want the same kind of attention, and good readers know this and make the necessary adjustments.

I should have written books instead of reading them.

Please don't worry. It's a psychological complaint, common amongst ex-librarians. You see, she thinks she's a coffee table edition...

Books require titles; reading them doesn't

What kind of disturbed individual would read the same book twice, I ask you?

If you find a good book, read it

The mark of a good book is that you're happy to come home to it. The mark of a great book is that you occasionally schedule your life to stay home with it.

that the grace of fable stirs the mind"...and..."that the perusal of excellent books is, as it were, to interview with the noblest men of past ages

It is impossible for individuals to examine the huge number of new books that are being published every day

Your library is your paradise.

I consider as lovers of books not those who keep their books hidden in their store-chests and never handle them, but those who, by nightly as well as daily use thumb them, batter them, wear them out, who fill out all the margins with annotations of many kinds, and who prefer the marks of a fault they have erased to a neat copy full of faults.