Quotes About Books

Don't let the covers fool you. Books, like lives, are wiggling, evolving, living things. They're not bound by pages or authors or schools of thought. They're not born when they're printed; in fact, they only start to live once they're read. So first of all, we thank you, reader. You dignify this work we do, and we're sincerely grateful for your time and attention.

Shouldn't schools be the place where students interact with interesting books? Shouldn't the faculty have an ongoing laser-like commitment to put good books in our students' hands? Shouldn't this be a front-burner issue at all times?

I can't blame books for the chaos of my life, but they've always been there on the journey.

Read. The book is still the greatest manmade machine of all—not the car, not the TV, not the smartphone.

Her only life ambition was to read every good book that had ever been published.

It takes me about a week and a half to read the typical book. I don't know how many ten-day spans I have left. Eventually the unread books on my shelves will have to be abandoned, or they will join me on the pyre. The book I'm about to purchase may be among them. We all buy books we won't live to read.

Kindle, ah,' said Baxter, 'takes me back.

He'd written some of the movement's earliest manifestos ( No More Earthquakes , The Earth is a Harsh Mistress ) and numerous pamphlets, articles and books documenting what he called the counterconspiracy theory of history, which maintained that many otherwise incomprehensible historical events could be explained by identifying the conspiracy theories held by the protagonists.

I've seen enough films. I don't want to see any more. I get far less out of seeing films than I do out of reading books. So I've got about a billion books to get through before I see another film.

The best thing about conceptual poetry is that it doesn't need to be read. You don't have to read it. As a matter of fact, you can write books, and you don't even have to read them. My books, for example, are unreadable. All you need to know is the concept behind them. Here's every word I spoke for a week. Here's a year's worth of weather reports... and without ever having to read these things, you understand them.

The text contains no literary criticism. I wanted to describe books, not to be clever at their expense.

I knew nothing of the matter, so said nothing. It made me feel rather downcast, all this knowledge locked away in books that I didn't know and likely never would. I loved books, but they were expensive and heavy and reading them took time I rarely had.

I've had it with these cheap sons of bitches who claim they love poetry but never buy a book.

Buy books, then, that you have read with profit and pleasure and hope to read and reread. Buy books that you may underscore passages and write upon the margins, thus assuring yourself that the book is your own. Keep the books that mean the most to you close at hand, one or two, if possible, on a table at your bedside. Do not hide away your favorite books or keep them locked in enclosed shelves. Do not keep them under glass.

Esse amor estático tão fortemente nos tomou que, alheando ao espírito outras preocupações mundanas, só nos comove a paixão de adquirir livros.

Literature is a toy for adults; my books are toys for adults who have read Lautréamont.

After thirty years working as a commercial fiction translator, I've reached to the conclussion that, on average, the more pages a book has, the less literature there is in it.

You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.

You can't get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.

Reading is another way we survive. It helps to know where we came from, how we got here. And most of all, for me, even though these low and empty islands are all I have ever known, when I open the front cover of a new book, it's like a door, and I can travel far away in place and time.

I realise how much time I used to spend with my head in a book, filling the emptiness of my world and letting the pages distract from the darkness in the shadows behind me.

Books turn out to be pretty durable if they're kept away from damp and rats. They can last hundreds of years, easy. Reading is another way we survive. It helps to know where we came from, how we got here. And most of all, for me, even thought these low and empty islands are all I have ever known, when I open the front cover of a new book, it's like a door, and I can travel far away in place and time.

La verdadera historia del espíritu no se conserva en los libros doctos, sino en el organismo vivo, anímico, de cada individuo.

Americans don't read very much.