Quotes About Books

Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.

I've developed a great reputation for wisdom by ordering more books than I ever had time to read, and reading more books, by far, than I learned anything useful from, except, of course, that some very tedious gentlemen have written books.

Biblioteca Ce bine c? toate aceste c?r?i Au fost scrise! Nu trebuie s? le mai scriu eu S-o iau de la cap?t, S?-mi fr?mânt mintea. M? uit la fiecare titlu – Vârându-mi nasul ?i, silabisind, ?i, cu fiecare tom, Parc? mi se ia o piatr? de pe inim?.

for the first time I start to actually imagine me sitting on concrete steps like this, or in a class reading lots of fat books and saying what I think.

There are books so alive that you're always afraid that while you weren't reading, the book has gone and changed, has shifted like a river; while you went on living, it went on living too, and like a river moved on and moved away. No one has stepped twice into the same river. But did anyone ever step twice into the same book?

When I was young, I did actually model and was much photographed by famous photographers. But I was always a bookworm.

I logged on to an antiquarian booksellers Web site, The Sagging Bookshelf, and requested a first-edition copy of the 1940s classic Dental Care and Sexual Hygiene for Post-Adolescent Women.

All the information you could want is constantly streaming at you like a runaway truck - books, newspaper stories, Web sites, apps, how-to videos, this article you're reading, even entire magazines devoted to single subjects like charcuterie or wedding cakes or pickles.

History is written by the winners. The books say the Indians were bad guys and the whites just needed a little land. It's like, Excuse me, let me take your car. I'm discovering it. I'm putting my flag on your windshield.

Almost seventy years later I remember clearly how the magic of translating the words in books into images enriched my life, breaking the barriers of time and space...

The Antioch Beach library was like something out of a good dream, if you're the kind of person who dreams about libraries, which I am ...

Chicken Soup for the Soul". You've heard of these books, am I right? We've all heard of them. But I wonder if you're aware of just how many "Chicken Soup" books exist on the planet. No offense, but I doubt it. I doubt it because in the time it would take you to come up with a number, the number would have become obsolete. Even as you read this, in some quiet, fecund place, another "Chicken Soup" book is being born.

As for the shop there is a breed of Homo sapiens that will walk inside, take a deep breath, and say, 'Mmm, I just love the smell of old books.' They are to be got rid of as quickly as possible, with whatever violence it takes. I have heard the line a thousand times and never, never have I sold a book to any one of those people.

I realized then that I didn't understand anything. I read all the books I could.

I entered the City of Books, dark jewels hoarded in temples and cathedrals. In this city I found buried candelabra and stories waiting to be read during nights of sea and moon. I loved the City of Books where lost gazelles wandered in search of signs.

Some of the books that provided the richest fare were hidden under unrevealing names, like a rare soul behind a drab face

We always hit the bookstores & libraries in every city and small town, and I learned to tell a lot about a place by the kinds of books that were carried, or the attention given a library. The best I had ever seen was in NYC. The worst in Paoli, Indiana.

Symbols are the things we look at because they can be a doorway into another world. We very much go by sense, feeling the way as we go, but my maxim on that occasion was: if in doubt, throw it out. Some of the books mentioned ley lines. There was another called Satanic Rites of the High Priests. These doorways had to be closed off.

Books are where the ideas come from, though the ideas need to be simplified, reduced, submitted to ideological purification." ("Notes on the Mono-Culture").

Writing for children is bloody difficult books for children are as complex as their adult counterparts, and they should therefore be accorded the same respect.

The shelf was filled with books that were hard to read, that could devastate and remake one's soul, and that, when they were finished, had a kick like a mule.

I know exactly what I would do with immortality: I would read every book in the library.

Not having the company of books made me feel even more isolated.

In these times of rampantly increasing inequality, I would love to see a truly great social novel … books that really try to tell us how we're living now ... holding a mirror up to our society ... we can't think about trying to change our society before we understand it.