Quotes About Books

That's what books are for, after all, to tell your stories, to hold them and keep them safe between our covers for as long as we're able. We do our best to bring you pleasure and sustain your belief in the gravity of being human. We care about your feelings and believe in you completely.

It's probably the oldest question in the book, but that doesn't mean it's not special to you. Every person is trapped in their own particular bubble of delusion, and it's every person's task in life to break free. Books can help. We can make the past into the present, take you back in time and help you remember. We can show you things, shift your realities and widen your world, but the work of waking up is up to you.

Pro captu lectoris) habent sua fata libelli. (According to the capabilities of the reader) books have their own destinies. —Walter Benjamin, "Unpacking My Library

story is more than just a discarded by-product of your bare experience. Story is its own bare experience. Fish swim in water, unaware that it is water. Birds fly in air, unaware that it is air. Story is the air that you people breathe, the ocean you swim in, and we books are the rocks along the shoreline that channel your currents and contain your tides.

You are our collaborators, our conspirators, breathing new life into us. And because every reader is unique, each of you makes each of us mean differently, regardless of what's written on our pages. Thus, one book, when read by different readers, becomes different books, becomes an ever-changing array of books that flows through human consciousness like a wave. Pro captu lectoris habent sua fata libelli. According to the capabilities of the reader, books have their own destinies.

books are patient. We know how urgent and compelling your lives are, and so we bide our time.

But what a sweet story it is! And in the end, to us, that's what really matters. That's what books are for, after all, to tell your stories, to hold them and keep them safe between our covers for as long as we're able. We do our best to bring you pleasure and sustain your belief in the gravity of being human. We care about your feelings and believe in you completely.

But artists and writers and musicians like your dad are helpless to resist the dark side's pull. This is territory that books know well, and it's our job not to turn away from it, whether we like it or not.

According to the capabilities of the reader, books have their own destinies.

It would be a while before Annabelle got back to reading Tidy Magic, but books are patient. We know how urgent and compelling your lives are, and so we bide our time.

As slaves to your obsessions, we know what it feels like to be impressed and bound. But at the same time we understand that thoughts like these are just idle tropes, fantasies we spin to while away the hours. Fantasies, being something that we books excel at. The real stories—the ones that happen—belong to you.

borrow them with no intention of returning them. But, Benjamin says, "Of all the ways of acquiring books, writing them oneself is regarded as the most praiseworthy method.

Human language is a clumsy tool. People have such a hard time understanding each other, so how can you even begin to imagine the subjectivities of animals and insects and plants, never mind pebbles and sand? Bound as you are by your senses -- so blunt and yet so beautiful -- it's impossible for you to imagine that the myriad beings you dismiss as insentient might have inner lives, too. Books are in an odd position, caught halfway in between. We are sensible, if not sentient. We are semi-living.

Yes, it's good to remember. A lot of people have asked your question, Benny. It's probably the oldest question in the book, but that doesn't mean it's not special to you. Every person is trapped in their own particular bubble of delusion, and it's every person's task in life to break free. Books can help. We can make the past into the present, take you back in time and help you remember. We can show you things

Oh, but wait. It just occurred to me, maybe you don't actually know their secrets? I kind of assumed that books know everything, but maybe you're a stupid book, or a lazy book, the kind that starts in the middle because you don't know how a story begins and can't be bothered to figure it out.

Waited for the Library to settle into the deep, dark silence of slumbering books, and words tucked in between their covers for the night.

Every person is trapped in their own particular bubble of delusion, and it's every person's task in life to break free. Books can help. We can make the past into the present, take you back in time and help you remember. We can show you things, shift your realities and widen your world, but the work of waking up is up to you.

The Public Library is a shrine of dreams, and people fall in love here all the time. Maybe you don't believe this, but it's true. Books are works of love after all.

That's what I like so much about old libraries - they smell the way we'd like to imagine the past.

Cleaning bored her. She was happiest when sitting about and reading. She had read thousands of books, seeing no point in doing anything else unless you had to.

A moment later, Schrift reappeared in a striking pair of undershorts, with vertical stripes like French wallpaper. "Now, for openers," he began, extracting the trees from a pair of suède chukker boots, "did you read this new best seller Valuta, by Waldemar Knobnose!" "Only the first eighteen pages," I admitted. "The woman whose copy it was got off the bus at Altman's.

It just took so much effort to get anything done without machinery, particularly since nobody really knew how to do a lot of the necessary things by hand. There were descriptions in books, but they always turned out to be maddeningly incomplete and/or no substitute for the knowledge experience built into your muscles and nerves.

I love you, Minerva. I love that you believe in me no matter what. I love how you take whatever you see and distill it into your books. I love your clever mind and your generous heart and every inch of your beautiful body. I love you even when you give me heart failure, by risking your life before my very eyes. He smiled tenderly. I only hope in time I can prove worthy of your love.

But always when I was without a book, my soul at once became disturbed, and my thoughts wandered.