"The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid."
— Jane Austen (Northanger Abbey)

"The best moments in reading are when you come across something - a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things - which you had thought special and particular to you. And now, here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out, and taken yours"
— Alan Bennett (The History Boys: The Film)

"If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all."
— Oscar Wilde

"A room without books is like a body without a soul."
— Marcus Tullius Cicero

"There is no friend as loyal as a book."
— Ernest Hemingway

"There is no mistaking a real book when one meets it. It is like falling in love."
— Christopher Morley

"Books may well be the only true magic."
— Alice Hoffman

"People disappear when they die. Their voice, their laughter, the warmth of their breath. Their flesh. Eventually their bones. All living memory of them ceases. This is both dreadful and natural. Yet for some there is an exception to this annihilation. For in the books they write they continue to exist. We can rediscover them. Their humor, their tone of voice, their moods. Through the written word they can anger you or make you happy. They can comfort you. They can perplex you. They can alter you. All this, even though they are dead. Like flies in amber, like corpses frozen in the ice, that which according to the laws of nature should pass away is, by the miracle of ink on paper, preserved. It is a kind of magic. --Margaret Lea"
— Diane Setterfield (The Thirteenth Tale)

"Isn't it odd how much fatter a book gets when you've read it several times?" Mo had said..."As if something were left between the pages every time you read it. Feelings, thoughts, sounds, smells...and then, when you look at the book again many years later, you find yourself there, too, a slightly younger self, slightly different, as if the book had preserved you like a pressed flower...both strange and familiar."
— Cornelia Funke (Inkspell)

"Governments and fashions come and go but Jane Eyre is for all time."
— Jasper Fforde (The Eyre Affair)

"A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say."
— Italo Calvino

"This book taught me, once and for all, how easily you can escape this world with the help of words! You can find friends between the pages of a book, wonderful friends."
— Cornelia Funke (Inkspell)

"When you reread a classic you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in you than there was before."
— Clifton Fadiman

"Give a man a fire and he's warm for the day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life."
— Terry Pratchett (Jingo)

"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife."
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

"Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying 'End-of-the-World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH', the paint wouldn't even have time to dry."
— Terry Pratchett (Thief of Time)

"I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve."
— J.R.R. Tolkien (The Fellowship of the Ring)

"And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don't believe in magic will never find it."
— Roald Dahl

"Inconceivable!"
"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
— William Goldman (The Princess Bride)

"There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well. The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of merit or sense."
— Jane Austen

"Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy."
— Anne Frank

"The more I know of the world, the more I am convinced that I shall never see a man whom I can really love. I require so much!"
— Jane Austen (Sense and Sensibility)

"There is more treasure in books than in all the pirates' loot on Treasure Island and best of all, you can enjoy these riches every day of your life."
— Walt Disney Company

"I'll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there's evidence of any thinking going on inside it."
— Terry Pratchett

"If cats looked like frogs we'd realize what nasty, cruel little bastards they are. Style. That's what people remember."
— Terry Pratchett (Lords and Ladies)

"The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it."
— Terry Pratchett (Diggers)

"It's not worth doing something unless someone, somewhere, would much rather you weren't doing it."
— Terry Pratchett

"'It would seem that you have no useful skill or talent whatsoever,' he said. 'Have you thought of going into teaching?'"
— Terry Pratchett (Mort)

"Always be wary of any helpful item that weighs less than its operating manual."
— Terry Pratchett (Jingo)

"Nanny Ogg looked under her bed in case there was a man there. Well, you never knew your luck."
— Terry Pratchett (Lords and Ladies)

""Blessings be on this house," Granny said, perfunctorily. It was always a good opening remark for a witch. It concentrated people's minds on what other things might be on this house."
— Terry Pratchett (Witches Abroad)

"If complete and utter chaos was lightning, then he'd be the sort to stand on a hilltop in a thunderstorm wearing wet copper armour and shouting 'All gods are bastards!'"
— Terry Pratchett (The Color of Magic)

"No matter what she did with her hair it took about three minutes for it to tangle itself up again, like a garden hosepipe in a shed [Which, no matter how carefully coiled, will always uncoil overnight and tie the lawnmower to the bicycles]."
— Terry Pratchett (Lords and Ladies)

"'Bursar?'
'Yes, Archchancellor?'
'You ain't a member of some secret society or somethin', are you?'
'Me? No, Archchancellor.'
'Then it'd be a damn good idea to take your underpants off your head.'"
— Terry Pratchett (Lords and Ladies)

"Of course, it is very important to be sober when you take an exam. Many worthwhile careers in the street-cleansing, fruit-picking and subway-guitar-playing industries have been founded on a lack of understanding of this simple fact."
— Terry Pratchett (Moving Pictures)

"The landscape was snow and green ice on broken mountains. These weren't old mountains, worn down by time and weather and full of gentle ski slopes, but young, sulky, adolescent mountains. They held secret ravines and merciless crevices. One yodel out of place would attract, not the jolly echo of a lonely goatherd, but fifty tons of express-delivery snow."
— Terry Pratchett (Reaper Man)

"Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months."
— Oscar Wilde

"I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal."
— Jane Austen

"It is only a novel... or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language"
— Jane Austen (Northanger Abbey)

"'It is not everyone,' said Elinor, 'who has your passion for dead leaves.'"
— Jane Austen (Sense and Sensibility)

"I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. You alone have brought me to Bath. For you alone, I think and plan. Have you not seen this? Can you fail to have understood my wishes? I had not waited even these ten days, could I have read your feelings, as I think you must have penetrated mine. I can hardly write. I am every instant hearing something which overpowers me. You sink your voice, but I can distinguish the tones of that voice when they would be lost on others. Too good, too excellent creature! You do us justice, indeed. You do believe that there is true attachment and constancy among men. Believe it to be most fervent, most undeviating, in F. W.

I must go, uncertain of my fate; but I shall return hither, or follow your party, as soon as possible. A word, a look, will be enough to decide whether I enter your father's house this evening or never.

Captain Wentworth to Anne Elliot"
— Jane Austen (Persuasion)

"A woman, especially if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can."
— Jane Austen

"Run mad as often as you choose, but do not faint!"
— Jane Austen (Mansfield Park)

"You must know... surely, you must know it was all for you. You are too generous to trifle with me. I believe you spoke with my aunt last night, and it has taught me to hope as I'd scarcely allowed myself before. If your feelings are still what they were last April, tell me so at once. My affections and wishes have not changed, but one word from you will silence me forever. If, however, your feelings have changed, I will have to tell you: you have bewitched me, body and soul, and I love, I love, I love you. I never wish to be parted from you from this day on."
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

"One cannot be always laughing at a man without now and then stumbling on something witty."
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

""you take delight in vexing me. Have you no compassion on my poor nerves?"
Mrs Bennett"
— Jane Austen

"From all that I can collect by your manner of talking, you must be two of the silliest girls in the country. I have suspected it some time, but I am now convinced."
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

"...the Musgroves had had the ill fortune of a very troublesome, hopeless son, and the good fortune to lose him before he reached his twentieth year."
— Jane Austen

"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much."
— Oscar Wilde

"I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying."
— Oscar Wilde