Quotes About Books

Be subtle, various, ornamental, clever, And do not listen to those critics ever Whose crude provincial gullets crave in books Plain cooking made still plainer by plain cooks.

The porter spends his days in the Library keeping strict vigil over this catacomb of books, passing along between the shelves and yet never paying heed to the almost audible susurrus of desire- the desire every book has to be taken down and read, to live, to come into being in somebody's mind. He even hands the volumes over the counter, seeks them out in their proper places or returns them there without once realising that a Book is a Person and not a Thing.

Don't give me books for Christmas; I already have a book.

I have a sort of Christmas-morning sense of the library as a big box full of beautiful books.

It has historically been a comfort for the bourgeois and that you can read the most extreme books and not change. You can read A Christmas Carol and not change in any way.

Books woke me up. Books are my favorite man-made objects. I fetishize their design, smell, feel. And that they can contain such burning, complex communications is a miracle to me.

My workspace is defined by books, ephemera, quiet and light. I don't have a computer, telephone or a fax machine there.

It's very difficult to read a book on your computer.

Here's my library, where I don't do a lot of reading but mostly play Angry Birds on the computer.

The computer is the way I'm making books, but I still think about the physical properties. I visualize the length of a book, the proportions of a book, in material terms.

A computer does not smell ... if a book is new, it smells great. If a book is old, it smells even better… And it stays with you forever. But the computer doesn't do that for you. I'm sorry.

I think one thing I've learned, as dorky and obvious as this sounds: People who like cool books are usually really cool people.

Those who want to burn books are either afraid of the ideas contained within the covers or they haven't the courage to stand up for the views which they themselves profess to hold.

I loved Gore Vidal's Burr. That book gave me courage.

I read a lot of research notes about the countries I visit, and my mum and dad bought me a Kindle, but I'm still getting to grips with it. I prefer paper books.

Both my parents were big readers. My dad liked more macho adventure books like Shogun or spy novels. My mother reads murder mysteries. In fact, so does her mother, my grandma.

We never stop reading, although every book comes to an end, just as we never stop living, although death is certain.

Every book for me is a chapter in the long book which will finally be closed on the day of my death.

Could he continue to maintain his sanity that long? He didn't know. That's why he was devouring two or three books a day - to remove himself every minute that he possibly could from the madness of this life.

Because all books are forbidden when a country turns to terror. The scaffolds on the corners, the list of things you may not read. These things always go together.

To stop us reading forbidden books they will have to burn every manuscript. But to stop us thinking forbidden thoughts they will have to cut off our heads.

Why are you storing forbidden books?' I cried out in frustrated anger. 'Why store John Dee's books for him?' His face was gentle. 'Because all books are forbidden when a country turns to terror.

There's a hunger for stories in all of us, adults too. We need stories so much that we're even willing to read bad books to get them, if the good books won't supply them.

plus a porch that runs along three sides of the house. I told Ma once the Howards had a room just for company, a room just for books, and a room just for plants, and she said that was three rooms too many. First time I ever saw any envy in my ma. David