Quotes About Books

So; in the beginning was the Word, but ten nanoseconds later there was a twelve-volume dictionary, and ten nanoseconds after that a Library of Congress, with 90 per cent of the books in foreign languages. It's probably not possible after such a lapse of time to find out what the original Word was. Given the consequences, however, it could well have been oops.

Books, the estate agent had told him, provide excellent insulation, and since the heating bills would be very considerable in any event, he might as well leave them there even if he had no intention of ever reading them.

found him stabbing his paperback edition with a steak knife, the tip of the blade penetrating the cover and sinking far enough down into the early chapters

Sometimes, though, I feel that pushing books is a whole lot like pushing medicine. Think of books as pills. I have pills that cure ignorance and pills that cure boredom. I have pills to elevate moods and pills to open people's eyes to the awful truth: uppers and downers as they were. I sell pills to help people find themselves and pills to help them lose themselves when they require escape from the pressures and anxieties of life in a complex society...

What are a friend's books for if not to be borrowed?

I'm going to be dead before I read the books I'm going to read.

Seduced her? Every time I turned round she was up a library ladder. In the end I gave in. That reminds me—I spotted something between her legs that made me think of you.

Somos, así, los libros que hemos leído. O somos, de lo contrario, el vacío que la ausencia de libros ha abierto a nuestras vidas.

Somos así, los libros que hemos leído. O somos, de lo contrario, el vacío que la ausencia de libros ha abierto en nuestras vidas.

The idea of a wanton woman is something I have inserted into almost all of my books. An outlaw figure who is disallowed in the community because of her imagination or activity or status — that kind of anarchic figure has always fascinated me.

Every dictator gets rid of the artist first... They burn the books and execute the artist first... Art might do something. It's dangerous.

Books are a form of political action. Books are knowledge. Books are reflection. Books change your mind.

My only real escape came from fantasy. I disappeared into a world of books, becoming obsessed with science fiction. I believed in other planets and races, searching the sky at night for stars, secretly hoping to be abducted and taken to a kinder planet. Maybe God had made a mistake sending me here, I thought. It was obvious I belonged somewhere else. Here I questioned everything and nothing ever made sense.

I was chopping vegetables in the kitchen when I heard voices outside our front door – a woman's, bright as polished brass, and a man's, low and dark like the wood of the table I was working on. They were the kind of voices we heard rarely in our house. I could hear rich carpets in their voices, books and pearls and fur.

Phryne opened her book and sipped her lemonade. Agatha Christie. What a plotter. Phryne wished briefly that the real world was so amenable to being solved. ***

Teagan: How long has it been since you read a book that didn't havevampires in it? Abby: They write books with no vampires? Wait...the penguins made us read that Shakesrear guy, right? Teagan: Shakespeare.

Zu Hause ist da, wo deine Bücher sind.

Home is where your books are.

I'm obsessed with zombies. I like watching zombie movies and I read zombie books.

I would like a dictionary though. A dictionary contains all the books ever written and all the books that will ever be written. That's something isn't it? The words aren't in the right order, of course, but it's still something.

Reading a book carves brand-new neural pathways into the ancient cortical bedrock of our brains. It transforms the way we see the world. Makes us, as Nicholas Carr puts it in his recent essay 'The Dreams of Readers', 'more alert to the inner lives of others'. We become vampires without being bitten. In other words, more empathic. Books make us see in a way that casual immersion in the Internet, and the quickfire virtual world it offers, doesn't.

Leer un libro va tallando senderos neuronales totalmente nuevos en el antiguo lecho de roca cortical de nuestro cerebro. Transforma la manera que tenemos de ver el mundo. Nos hace más alerta a la vida interior de los demás.

Books make us see in a way that casual immersion in the Internet, and the quicksilver virtual world it offers, doesn't.

Books were good at developing a contemplative mind. Screens encourage more utilitarian thinking. A