The Echo of Old Books

by Barbara Davis

“Books are feelings,” he replied simply. “They exist to make us feel. To connect us to what’s inside, sometimes to things we don’t even know are there. It only makes sense that some of what we feel when we’re reading would . . . rub off.”

Where is human nature so weak as in a bookstore?

The number of lives we are capable of living is limited only by the number of books we choose to read.

Reading brings us unknown friends. —Honoré de Balzac

Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers. —Charles W. Eliot

I have always imagined that closing a book is like pausing a film midframe, the characters frozen in their halted worlds, breath held, waiting for the reader to return and bring it all back to life—like a prince’s kiss in a fairy tale.

a reminder that the echoes a person leaves behind are the by-products of the choices she makes—and perhaps, more critically, that changing those echoes is always possible.