Quotes About Books

When I'm arguing with St. Peter at the Pearly Gates, I'm going to tell him to ignore the Books Read column, and focus on the Books Bought instead. This is *really* who I am, I'll tell him.

I'm equally sure, however, that I won't walk into a lamp-post while reading {literature}, like I did with {a legal thriller} all those years ago; you don't walk into lamp-posts when you're reading literary novels, do you?

Vorweg ein paar grundsätzliche Regeln: 1) Ich möchte keine Klagen hören, ich würde zu viel Geld für Bücher ausgeben, die ich dann doch nicht lese. Das weiß ich selbst. Ich habe stets die Absicht, sie mehr oder weniger alle zu lesen. Meine Absichten sind gut. Und schließlich ist es ja mein Geld. Ich wette, bei Ihnen ist es ähnlich.

Jen leggeva. Amava i libri... io, no: a me facevano paura. Mi facevan paura quando c'era lei, e me ne fanno di più adesso. Che cosa avevano dentro? Che cosa le hanno detto quando era infelice e ascoltava solo loro, e nessun altro - né le sue amiche né sua sorella, nessuno?

OK, you don't know me, so you'll have to take my word for it that I'm not stupid. I read the fuck out of every book I can get my hands on. I like Faulkner and Dickens and Vonnegut and Brendan Behan and Dylan Thomas.

All the books we own, both read and unread, are the fullest expression of self we have at our disposal. But with each passing year, and with each whimsical purchase, our libraries become more and more able to articulate who we are, whether we read the books or not.

1) Fate a meno di scrivermi che spendo troppi soldi per libri che in gran parte non leggerò mai. Questo lo so già. Perché comunque ho intenzione di leggerli…più o meno. Le mie intenzioni sono buone. In ogni caso, i soldi sono miei. E poi scommetto che fate anche voi come me.

Non ci dimentichiamo mai che alcuni libri sono scritti male; però dovremmo ricordarci che a volte sono anche letti male.

Ma mentre trovavo loro una casa nella sezione "saggistica d'arte e letteratura" (personalmente trovo che agli scopi domestici il sistema di archiviazione Trivial Pursuit funzioni meglio del Dewey), d'un tratto ho avuto una piccola epifania: tutti i libri che possediamo, letti e no, sono l'espressione più piena che abbiamo a disposizione della nostra personalità.

I libri, ammettiamolo, sono meglio di qualunque altra cosa. Se organizzassimo un campionato di fantaboxe culturale, schierando sul ring i libri contro il meglio che qualunque altra forma d'arte abbia da offrire, sulla distanza di quindici riprese…be', i libri vincerebbero praticamente sempre.

I feel like I'm just passing through life. But then there's this voice in my head telling me to do something, to create something, to make something, and I want to listen to it, but I don't know how. I want to be able to say something, but I have nothing to say. I want something extraordinary, but I'm ordinary in every way—I just read books about other people and browse the lives of my Facebook friends all day.

When at last I came upon the right book, the feeling was violent: it blew open a hole in me that made life more dangerous because I couldn't control what came through it.

At times I believed that the last page of my book and the last page of my life were one and the same, that when my book ended I'd end, a great wind would sweep through my rooms carrying the pages away, and when the air cleared of all those fluttering white sheets the room would be silent, the chair where I sat empty.

I read differently now, more painstakingly, knowing I am probably revisiting the books I love for the last time. (245)

There were books everywhere. There were pens, and a blue glass vase, an ash tray from the Dolder Grand in Zürich, the rusted arrow of a weather vane, a little brass hourglass, sand dollars on the windowsill, a pair of binoculars, and empty wine bottle that served as a candle holder, wax melted down the neck. I touch this thing and that. At the end, all that's left of you are your possessions.

No sé qué decir de él sino que me ha conmovido del modo en que uno desea que lo conmueva cada libro que empieza a leer. Quiero decir que, de algún modo que casi no sabría describir, me ha transformado.

Staring out the window, Litvinoff imagined the two thousand copies of The History of Love as a flock of two thousand homing pigeons that could flap their wings and return to him to report on how many tears shed, how many laughs, ho many passages read aloud, how many cruel closings of the cover after reading barely a page, how many never opened at all.

Of the two thousand original copies printed of The History of Love, some were bought and read, many were bought and not read, some were given as gifts, some sat fading in bookstore windows serving as landing docks for flies, some were marked up with pencil, and a good many were shredded to pulp along with other unread or unwanted books, their sentences parsed and minced in the machine's spinning blades.

I don't know what to say about it, except that it moved me in a way one hopes to be moved each time he begins a book.

It is called education because it is learned. You do not have to have had an experience in order to sympathize or empathize with the subject. That is why books are written: so that we do not have to do the same things. We learn from experience, true; but we also learn from empathy." A Theory of Patience

I'm told by my young friends that experience is much more important than books. Of course Ben Franklin had something to say about experience and fools, but even Franklin thought that a fool would learn by his experience. That has proven false in the modern world. Some people are simply unwilling to learn under any circumstances, which maybe, even then, wouldn't be so bad if they weren't so damned proud of it.

How could I, who loved life so intensely, have let myself be entangled for so long in that balderdash of books and paper blackened with ink!

Zorba sighed. He lit a cigarette, took one or two puffs and then threw it away. My country, you say?… You believe all the rubbish your books tell you…? Well, I'm the one you should believe. So long as there are countries, man will stay like an animal, a ferocious animal… But I am delivered from all that, God be praised! It's finished for me! What about you?

When you read a book as a child, it becomes a part of your identity in a way that no other reading in your whole life does.