Quotes About Books

It's a symbiotic process, writing. What I am makes the books—not part of me, all of me—and then the books themselves inform the sense of what I am. So the more I can be, the better the books will be.

Ne sachant quoi lire ni dans quel ordre, j'ai suivi l'alphabet. Dieu merci, elle s'appelait Austen...

It was like living in a library, and that was where I had always been happiest.

At my most precarious, I balanced on a book, and the books rafted me over the tides of feelings that left me soaked and shattered.

Books, for me, are a home. Books don't make a home - they are one, in the sense that just as you do with a door, you open a book, and you go inside. Inside there is a different kind of time and a different kind of space. There is warmth there too - a hearth. I sit down with a book and I am warm.

Creo en la ficción y en el poder de las historias porque así hablamos a través de lenguas que no son nuestras. No se nos silencia. Todos nosotros, cuando sufrimos un gran trauma, dudamos, tartamudeamos; hay grandes pausas en nuestro discurso. La cosa se atasca. Recuperamos el lenguaje a través del lenguaje de otros. Podemos recurrir al poema. Podemos abrir el libro. Alguien ha estado allí por nosotros y buceó en las palabras.

He loves books,' said Perdita. 'Yeah. He does. When you've finished a book you can put it away and it doesn't ask to see you again.

For some, perhaps for many, books are spare time. For me, the rest of life is spare time: I wake and sleep language. It has always been so.

Annem elimin kitaba deÄŸmesini istemiyordu.Kitaplar?n içine bal?klama dalaca??m akl?na bile gelmedi-saklanmak için kendimi onlara hapsedeceÄŸim de.

The more I read the more I fought against the assumption that literature is for the minority - of a particular education or class. Books were my birthright too.

Le chiesi perchè non voleva libri in casa e lei rispose: Il guaio di un libro è che scopri cosa contiene solo quando è troppo tardi. Io pensai: Troppo tardi per cosa? Cominciai a leggere di nascosto [...] ogni volta che aprivo le pagine di un libro mi chiedevo se questa volta sarebbe stato troppo tardi: avrei dovuto un sorso fatale che mi avrebbe trasformato per sempre.

Mia madre non voleva che i libri cadessero nelle mie mani. Non aveva previsto che io potessi cadere nei libri, che mi infilassi dentro di loro per stare al sicuro.

Yet as we travel deeper into the strange world of the story, the feeling we get is of being understood - which is odd when you think about it, because at school learning is based on whether or not we understand what we are reading. In fact it is the story (or the poem) that is understanding us. Books read us back to ourselves.

Boeken zijn werelden. Iemand die leest, heeft geen enkele moeite meerdere universums te accepteren.

I libri per me sono una casa. I libri non fanno una casa, sono una casa, nel senso che, così come pari una porta, apri un libro e ci entri. Dentro trovi un'altra dimensione temporale, e un'altra dimensione spaziale. Trovi un calore, un focolare. Mi siedo a leggere un libro e avverto una sensazione di tepore. Come mi succedeva in quelle fredde notti passate sui gradini d'ingresso.

La errónea idea que tenía de las cosas me inducía a creer que, para leer un libro con provecho, era necesario poseer todos los conocimientos que el mismo suponía, bien lejos de sospechar que con frecuencia carecía de ellos el mismo autor, quien iba a buscarlos en otros libros a medida que los necesitaba.

Among the notable books of later times-we may say, without exaggeration, of all time—must be reckoned The Confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau.

Since everything that comes into the human mind enters through the gates of sense, man's first reason is a reason of sense-experience. It is this that serves as a foundation for the reason of the intelligence; our first teachers in natural philosophy are our feet, hands, and eyes. To substitute books for them does not teach us to reason, it teaches us to use the reason of others rather than our own; it teaches us to believe much and know little.

She also lent me her books, saying reading was a way of traveling the world, getting to know people you'll never meet, also traveling through time, getting to know people who lived long ago.

She also lent me her books, saying reading was a way of traveling the world, getting to know people you'll never meet, also traveling through time, getting to know people who lived long ago.

J'ai commencé ma vie comme je la finirai sans doute : au milieu des livres.

There's the story of a person who does this, does that, but it isn't I, I have nothing in common with him. He travels through countries I know no more about than if I had never been there. Sometimes, in my story, it happens that I pronounce these fine names you read in atlases, Aranjuez or Canterbury. New images are born in me, images such as people create from books who have never travelled. My words are dreams, that is all.

Je n'ai jamais gratté la terre ni quêté des nids, je n'ai pas herborisé ni lancé des pierres aux oiseaux. Mais les livres ont été mes oiseaux et mes nids, mes bêtes domestiques, mon étable et ma campagne.

Aku suka menyadari betapa kerasnya buku bertahan, tidak pernah mau takluk begitu saja padaku; aku jadi terpedaya, capai, tetapi aku amat menikmati ambiguitas posisiku: mengerti tetapi tidak mengerti.