Quotes About Books

There were books everywhere: on the floors, on the stairs, on furniture both built for that purpose and constructed for other ends entirely. There were bookshelves in the main hallway, in the downstairs rooms, and in the upstairs rooms. There were even bookshelves in the bathroom and the kitchen.

It's a natural consequence of the capacity of a bookstore or library to contain entire worlds, whole universes, and all contained between the covers of books. In that sense, every library or bookstore is practically infinite. This library takes that to its logical conclusion.

We all know that books burn—yet we have the greater knowledge that books cannot be killed by fire. People die, but books never die. . . . In this war, we know, books are weapons. —Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945)

The stories in books hate the stories contained in newspapers.

he would talk to them of stories and books, and explain to them how stories wanted to be told and books wanted to be read, and how everything that they ever needed to know about life and the land of which he wrote, or about any land or realm that they could imagine, was contained in books.

These stories were very old, as old as people, and they had survived because they were very powerful indeed. These were the tales that echoed in the head long after the books that contained them were cast aside. They were both an escape from reality and an alternative reality themselves.

We all know that books burn – yet we have the greater knowledge that books cannot be killed by fire. People die, but books never die. … In this war, we know, books are weapons. Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945)

He would talk to them of stories and books, and explain to them how stories wanted to be told and books wanted to be read, and how everything that they ever needed to know about life and the land of which he wrote, or about any land or realm that they could imagine, was contained in books. And some of the children understood, and some did not.

Without a human voice to read them aloud, or a pair of wide eyes following them by flashlight beneath a blanket, books had no real existence in our world. Like seeds in the beak of a bird waiting to fall to earth, or the notes of a song laid out on a sheet, yearning for an instrument to bring their music into being. they lie dormant hoping for the chance to emerge.They want us to give them life.

Life is short and the number of books is appalling.

This was what he had once upon a time expected and hoped of all books that he opened, that each be the one book he required, his own book. For

If you know how to read, the World of Books is open to you, after all; and if you like to read, you'll read. If you don't, you'll forget whatever anybody makes you read, anyway.

Learning to decipher words had only added to the pleasures of holding spines and turning pages, measuring the journey to the end with a thumb-riffle, poring over frontispieces. Books! Opening with a crackle of old glue, releasing perfume; closing with a solid thump. He liked them big; he liked them old; he liked them best in many volumes

I heard his library burned down and both books were destroyed -- and one of them hadn't even been colored in yet.

Books should to one of these fours ends conduce, for wisdom, piety, delight, or use.

Life is too short to read inferior books.

Reading. Reading was the stable backdrop against which my life was played.

It is a blessing to get old. It is a blessing to find the time to do the things, to read the books, to listen to the music. I have nothing now but praise for my life.

Life, as the signs in the liquor stores say, is too short to drink bad wine. And summer is too short to read bad books.

Books, I don't know what you see in them. I can understand a person reading them, but I can't for the life of me see why people have to write them.

You take the books, you lie there in the pools of light and you drink life. That is how intensely I have loved libraries.

The average trade book has a shelf life of between milk and yogurt, except for books by any member of the Irving Wallace family - they have preservatives.

Books are becoming everything to me. If I had at this moment any choice in life, I would bury myself in one of those immense libraries...and never pass a waking hour without a book before me.

I wanted a bookstore because the book business is the business of life.