Quotes About Books

Marshall McLuhan predicted books would become art objects at some point. He was right.

Leggo per legittima difesa.

Books, like people, can't be reduced to the cost of the materials with which they were made. Books, like people, become unique and precious once you get to know them.

Books lined the shelves of bookstores like kids standing in a row to play baseball or soccer, and mine was the gangly, unathletic kid that no one wanted on their team.

A good day is one where I can not just read a book, but write a review of it. Maybe today I'll be able to do that. I get for some reason somewhat stronger when the sun starts to go down. Dusk is a good time for me. I'm crepuscular.

And when I was young, my family was perfectly nice. I write a lot about it, as you noticed. But it was rather limited. I think, I don't think anyone in my family would really feel I'd done them an injustice by saying that. We didn't see many people. There were many books. It was as if I wanted to get away from home.

What irritates me is the bland way people go around saying, 'Oh, our attitude has changed. We don't dislike these people any more.' But by the strangest coincidence, they haven't taken away the injustice the laws are still on the books.

I am Envy...I cannot read and therefore wish all books burned.

Between ourselves, there is no such thing, abstractly, as a 'good' book. A book is 'good' only when it meets some human hunger or refutes some human error. A book that is good for me would very likely be punk for you.

I wish there could be an international peace conference of booksellers, for (you will smile at this) my own conviction is that the future happiness of the world depends in no small measure on them and on the librarians.

Books are the immortality of the race, the father and mother of most that is worth while cherishing in our hearts. To spread good books about, to sow them on fertile minds, to propagate understanding and a carefulness of life and beauty, isn't that high enough mission for a man?

Do you know why people are reading more books now than ever before? Because the terrific catastrophe of the war has made them realize that their minds are ill. The world was suffering from all sorts of mental fevers and aches and disorders, and never knew it. Now our mental pangs are only too manifest. We are all reading, hungrily, hastily, trying to find out—after the trouble is over—what was the matter with our minds.

There is no one so grateful as the man to whom you have given just the book his soul needed and he never knew it.

Malnutrition of the reading faculty is a serious thing.   Let us prescribe for you.

I have always suffered from the feeling that it's better to read a good book than to write a poor one; and I've done so much mixed reading in my time that my mind is full of echoes and voices of better men. But this book I'm worrying about now really deserves to be written, I think, for it has a message of its own.

You sell a man a book, you don't sell him just 12 ounces of paper and ink and glue - you sell him a whole new life.

Il mondo ha stampato libri per 450 anni, eppure la polvere da sparo ha tuttora una più larga diffusione. Non importa! L'inchiostro da stampa è il più grande esplosivo: vincerà.

There is no one so grateful as the man to whom you have given just the book his soul needed and he never knew it. - Roger Mifflin

Sa lei perché la gente ora legge più libri di quanto non abbia mai fatto prima? Perché la terrificante catastrofe della guerra le ha fatto comprendere di aver la mente ammalata. Il mondo soffriva di ogni sorta di febbri celebrali, e dolori, e disordini, e non lo sapeva. Ora le nostre angosce mentali sono anche troppo manifeste. Leggiamo tutti avidamente, in fretta, cercando di scoprire, passato il disturbo, che cosa c'era che non andava nella nostra mente.

Sa lei perché la gente ora legge più libri di quanto non abbia mai fatto? Perché la terrificante catastrofe della guerra le ha fatto comprendere di aver la mente ammalata. Il mondo soffriva di ogni sorta di febbri celebrali, e dolori, e disordini, e non lo sapeva. Ora le nostre angosce mentali sono anche troppo manifeste. Leggiamo tutti avidamente, in fretta, cercando di scoprire, passato il disturbo, che cosa c'era che non andava nella nostra mente.

That's why I call this place the Haunted Bookshop. Haunted by the ghosts of the books I haven't read.

Vivere in una libreria è come vivere in un deposito di esplosivi. Su quegli scaffali sono allineati i più tremendi combustibili del mondo: i cervelli degli uomini.

The people in books become more real to you than any one in actual life.

Der Hunger nach guten Büchern ist weiter verbreitet und hartnäckiger, als Sie glauben, aber in gewisser Weise trotzdem vielfach unbewusst. Die Menschen brauchen Bücher, wissen es aber nicht. Meistens wissen sie gar nicht, dass es die Bücher, die sie brauchen, überhaupt gibt.