Quotes About Books

I was well on the way to tacking together a sort of nature religion to make up fro Grandpa's defection, an apotheosis of the back of beyond, in which I was just another thinking thing, neuter, drab, camouflaged. There'd be sermons in stones, and books to read in the haybarn, for ever and ever. Amen.

With a book, she could at least visit with people, even if it was vicariously, even if they didn't exist beyond someone's imagination.

The books. So many books. She adored reading. It introduced her to characters, took her to places where she was never lonely.

The library, I presume," he said quietly. "I've a fondness for libraries.

I had never feared insomnia before--like prison, wouldn't it just give you more time to read?

It is like having a book out from the library. It is like constantly having a book out from the library.

I have read my books by many lights, hoarding their beauty, their wit or wisdom against the dark days when I would have no book, nor a place to read. I have known hunger of the belly kind many times over, but I have known a worse hunger: the need to know and to learn.

Reading without thinking is nothing, for a book is less important for what it says than for what it makes you think.

Or because they hope these walls of books will deaden the drumming of the demon in their ears

Rows of books around me stand, Fence me in on either hand; Through that forest of dead words I would hunt the living birds -- So I write these lines for you Who have felt the death-wish too, All the wires are cut, my friends Live beyond the severed ends.

Their ghosts are gagged, their books are library flotsam, Some of their names - not all - we learnt in school But, life being short, we rarely read their poems, Mere source-books now to point or except a rule, While those opinions which rank them high are based On a wish to be different or on lack of taste.

The best morals kids get from any book is just the capacity to empathize with other people, to care about the characters and their feelings. So you don't have to write a preachy book to do that. You just have to make it a fun book with characters they care about, and they will become better people as a result.

He understood my passion for books, which has made me perhaps the best-read idiot in the world.

Well, I keep my book Heart Thoughts with me because it's easy to read a few short passages in one sitting. I also have Alan Cohen's A Deep Breath of Life nearby. And right now I'm rereading Florence Scovel Shinn's The Game of Life and How to Play It.

Myrna could spend happy hours browsing bookcases. She felt if she could just get a good look at a person's bookcase and their grocery cart, she'd pretty much know who they were.

Few things are better in the world than a room full of librarians. I consider them literary heroes. The keepers and defenders of the written word.

The women in the room chatted about love, about childhood, about losing parents, about Mr. Spock, about good books they'd read. They mothered each other.

People wandered in for books and conversation. They brought their stories to her, some bound, and some known by heart. She recognized some of the stories as real, and some as fiction. But she honored them all, though she didn't buy every one.

Books were everywhere in their large apartment. Histories, biographies, novels, studies on Quebec antiques, poetry. Placed in orderly bookcases. Just about every table had at least one book on it, and oftern several magazines. And the weekend newspapers were scattered on the coffee table in the living room, in front of the fireplace. If a visitor was the observant type, and made it further into the apartment to Gamache's study, he might see the story the books in there told.

Where once his grandparents put up crucifixes and images of the benediction on their walls, he and Reine-Marie put up books on theirs. History books. Reference books. Biographies. Fiction, nonfiction. Stories lined the walls and both insulated them from the outside world and connected them to it.

Before laptops and BlackBerries and all the other tools that mistook information for knowledge. It was an old library, filled with old books and dusty old thoughts.

He was like an addict before a fix. Book freaks are like that, and not just old guys. Look at kids lining up for the latest installment of their favorite books. Stories, they're addictive." Gamache

You gave him The Gashlycrumb Tinies?" asked Stephen. "By Edward Gorey? Oh, I think I really do love you," he said to Ruth.

Photos sat on the piano and shelves bulged with books, testament to a life well lived.