"There is no sense in loving someone you can never wake up to except by chance."
— Jeanette Winterson (The Passion)

"I say I'm in love with her. What does that mean?

It means I review my future and my past in the light of this feeling. It is as though I wrote in a foreign language that I am suddenly able to read. Wordlessly, she explains me to myself. LIke genius she is ignorant of what she does. "

"
— Jeanette Winterson (The Passion)

"Every book, every volume you see here, has a soul. The soul of the person who wrote it and of those who read it and lived and dreamed with it. Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs his eyes down its pages, its spirit grows and strengthens."
— Carlos Ruiz Zafón (The Shadow of the Wind)

"My daughter is seven, and some of the other second-grade parents complain that their children don't read for pleasure. When I visit their homes, the children's rooms are crammed with expensive books, but the parent's rooms are empty. Those children do not see their parents reading, as I did every day of my childhood. By contrast, when I walk into an apartment with books on the shelves, books on the bedside tables, books on the floor, and books on the toilet tank, then I know what I would see if I opened the door that says 'PRIVATE--GROWNUPS KEEP OUT': a child sprawled on the bed, reading."
— Anne Fadiman (Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader)

"In my view, nineteen pounds of old books are at least nineteen times as delicious as one pound of fresh caviar."
— Anne Fadiman (Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader)