Quotes About Books

Generally speaking, books don't cause much harm. Except when you read them, that is. Then they cause all kinds of problems.

Reading is the least laborious of all the tasks that fall to the student's lot.

It is plagiarism when you take something out of a book and use it as your own. If you take it out of several books then it is research.

I can see myself sitting all day in my chair, immersed in lives, plots, and sentences, intoxicated by words and chimeras, paralyzed by satisfaction and contentment, reading until the deepening twilight, until I can no longer make out the words, until my mind begins to wander, until my aching muscles are no longer able to keep the book aloft. Joy is the anticipation of joy. Reading a fine book for the first time is as sumptuous as the first sip of orange juice that breaks the fast in Ramadan.

Of course, the pile grows and grows until I decide that I'm not going to buy a single book until I read my stack. Sometimes that works.

I am a reader. Yes, I am that, a reader with nagging back pain.

My library has two books," Fadia says, "and I have yet to finish coloring the second one." She brightens, and her laughter grows louder when she realizes I've cracked a smile. "Fadia can be funny sometimes.

I am still more or less sane because of my evening reading.

I imagine looking at the room through a stranger's eyes. Books everywhere, stacks and stacks, shelves and bookcases, stacks atop each shelf, I in the creaky chair that hasn't been reupholstered since I bought it in the early sixties. I have been its only occupant; years ago its foam molded into the shape of my posterior. The accompanying ottoman holds two stacks of books that haven't been disturbed in years, except for semiweekly dusting.

I was a voracious reader, but after Hannah's death I grew insatiable. Books became my milk and honey. I made myself feel better by reciting jejune statements like 'Books are the air I breathe,' or, worse, 'Life is meaningless without literature,' all in a weak attempt to avoid the fact that I found the world inexplicable and impenetrable. Compared to the complexity of understanding grief, reading Foucault or Blanchot is like perusing a children's picture book.

Choosing which book isn't difficult. The choice is typically the last one I brought home. I acquire books constantly and place them in the to-read pile. When I finish with whatever book I'm reading, I begin the last book I bought, the one that caught my attention last. Of course, the pile grows and grows until I decide taht I'm not going to buy a single book until I read my stack. Sometimes that works.

Los libros en sí mismos casi nunca son aburridos, excepto las memorias de los presidentes de Estados Unidos (no, no, Nixon); o mejor dicho, las memorias de los estadounidenses en general. Es el síndrome «Vivo en el país más rico del mundo, pero compadeceos de mí porque de joven tenía los pies planos y una vagina maloliente, pero al final he triunfado». ¡Puaj! Libros

The young student sits with his head bent over his books, and his mind straying in youth's dreamland; where prose is prowling on the desk and poetry hiding in the heart.

might even be their forgotten suffering at the hands of literary texts that had left behind this residue of respect for books; if, that is, psychoanalysts are to be believed when they say we are unconsciously drawn to the repetition of painful experiences.

She wondered whether the books she loved consoled her precisely because they were the manifestations of her own isolation.

A woman at one of mother's parties once said to me, "Do you like reading?" which smote us all to silence, for how could one tell her that books are like having a bath or sleeping, or eating bread - absolute necessities which one never thinks of in terms of appreciation. And we all sat waiting for her to say that she had so little time for reading, before ruling her right out for ever and ever.

A woman at one of mother's parties once said to me, "Do you like reading?" which smote us all to silence, for how could one tell her that books are like having a bath or sleeping, or eating bread - absolute necessities which one never things of in terms of appreciation. And we all sat waiting for her to say that she had so little time for reading, before ruling her right out for ever and ever.

Reading to our children and our grandchildren is something we can all try to do every day of the year. Not only does it give us pleasure but it leads them on a voyage of discovery and enrichment that only books can bring.

You could say, in a vulgar Freudian way, that I am the unhappy child who escapes into books. Even as a child, I was most happy being alone. This has not changed.

The first interviews I gave were entirely unpleasant. You have people trying to trip you up with impolite questions that have nothing to do with the books. It's simply vulgar curiosity, and I won't have it.

I'd read a lot of books where the girls are in awe of the supernatural male, so I thought it was time to write about an awesome and super-powerful female who is also quite vulnerable and naive about life on earth.

We are still vulnerable to gender-targeted marketing no matter how carefully we edit our children's bookshelves.

I just love doing radio. I've learned to be more vulnerable through radio than even I've been through books and writing lyrics. It's a different type of experience where, if I'm writing a lyric, I can sort of hide behind it a little bit.

Decent wages keep people out of homeless shelters. Decent wages allow families to afford books and, I don't know, school fees and things like that.