Quotes About Books

It's stressful to be a parent. It's stressful to be a person. But I've found that even in the most difficult moments, on the most challenging days, I can usually reach for a book and feel lifted up, returned to myself. On days when I've felt as though I have nothing left to give to my kids, I've been able to sit next to them and open a book. We start reading, and the world looks different.

Books are a pleasure and they anchor your greater values.

Books are how cautious kids get to experience a kind of secondhand rebellion, a safe way to go off the rails.

According to studies that measure the likelihood of a child growing up to be a reader, the most important factor is not how well reading was taught in the child's school, nor the number of hours spent reading aloud to the child. Regardless of the parents' income level or education, the statistic most highly correlated to literacy is the number of books present in the home.

There is something fascinatingly awkward about an author photo. I'm drawn to those glossy shots in the back of books, mostly because the subjects never look happy to be there.

Le livre est un morceau de silence dans les mains du lecteur. Celui qui écrit se tait. Celui qui lit ne rompt pas le silence.

Os homens desesperados vivem em cantos. Todos os homens que amam vivem em cantos. Todos os leitores de livros vivem em cantos.

Books are living things and their task lies in their vows of silence. You touch them as they quiver with a divine pleasure. You read them and they fall asleep to happy dreams for the next 10 years. If you do them the favor of understanding them, of taking in their portions of grief and wisdom, then they settle down in contented residence in your heart.

It was a surprise, and a delight, to see children devour books. Without ever knowing it, they were receiving an education.

I read books when I was a kid, lots of books. Books always seemed like magic to me. They took you to the most amazing places. When I got older, I realized I couldn't find books that took me to all the places I wanted to go. To go to those places, I had to write some books myself.

I read as if time were running out, because technically it is. As I grow older I find I'm increasingly impatient with mediocre entertainments; I want books that will take my breath away and realign my vision - Barbara Kingsolver

Books are health food for your brain and dessert for your soul. Books are one of the few proven sources of mental exercise known to man. Reading is a workout for your mind. If your body needs thirty minutes of exercise a day, so does your thinker.

The odd thing about people who had many books was how they always wanted more.

Rennie didn't quite dare to answer back, but she looked a whole book and a couple of extra chapters.

Seriously, if you really, truly don't understand basic terminology (which was at least half my problem with the adult-level "beginner" books), the children's section is the place to go.

If nobody talks about books, if they are not discussed or somehow contended with, literature ceases to be a conversation, ceases to be dynamic. Most of all, it ceases to be intimate. It degenerates into a monologue or a mutter. An unreviewed book is a struck bell that gives no resonance. Without reviews, literature would be oddly mute in spite of all those words on all those pages of all those books. Reviewing makes of reading a participant sport, not a spectator sport.

Before we had the kids, my husband and I were traveling a lot and working and really enjoying our lives and each other. We both love the theater and books and travel and so we were really having a lot of fun.

The conflict each day is whether to immerse in books or writing. I can't do one without the other, but I can't do both at the same time. It is the writer's paradox.

My greatest fear is being somewhere without a book.

I want to see children curled up with books, finding an awareness of themselves as they discover other people's thoughts.

Any adult with an ID can get a free "reader identification" and use the library.

I really hope that all librarians aren't like Gladys Morgan. Because I'd really like , at some point, to walk into a library and not be afraid for my life.

He was not a scholar – his brain seemed too sluggish or too dreamy to grasp the things demanded of it – but he was never happier than when left alone among books, and would spend hours turning the pages of atlases, novels or tales from history, alive to the alternative versions of himself they seemed to proffer.

Librarians are tour-guides for all of knowledge.