Jillian > Jillian's Quotes

“We read to know we're not alone.”
― William Nicholson, Shadowlands: A Play

“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go.”
― Dr. Seuss, I Can Read with My Eyes Shut!

“I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book! -- When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“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

“You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”
― Ray Bradbury

“You get a little moody sometimes but I think that's because you like to read. People that like to read are always a little fucked up.”
― Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides

“Books are the ultimate Dumpees: put them down and they’ll wait for you forever; pay attention to them and they always love you back.”
― John Green, An Abundance of Katherines

“If you go home with somebody, and they don't have books, don't fuck 'em!”
― John Waters

“Books are a uniquely portable magic.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“A short story is a different thing altogether – a short story is like a quick kiss in the dark from a stranger.”
― Stephen King, Skeleton Crew

“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons

“There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.”
― Joseph Brodsky

“Reading one book is like eating one potato chip.”
― Diane Duane, So You Want to Be a Wizard

“Sleep is good, he said, and books are better.”
― George R. R. Martin

“Books are no more threatened by Kindle than stairs by elevators.”
― Stephen Fry

“A library is a place where you can lose your innocence without losing your virginity.”
― Germaine Greer

“Reading... a vacation for the mind....”
― Dave Barry

“Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind.”
― James Russell Lowell

“Books are finite, sexual encounters are finite, but the desire to read and to fuck is infinite; it surpasses our own deaths, our fears, our hopes for peace.”
― Roberto Bolano

“Ahhh. Bed, book, kitten, sandwich. All one needed in life, really.”
― Jacqueline Kelly, The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate

“Why can't people just sit and read books and be nice to each other?”
― David Baldacci, The Camel Club

“Sections in the bookstore

- Books You Haven't Read
- Books You Needn't Read
- Books Made for Purposes Other Than Reading
- Books Read Even Before You Open Them Since They Belong to the Category of Books Read Before Being Written
- Books That If You Had More Than One Life You Would Certainly Also Read But Unfortunately Your Days Are Numbered
- Books You Mean to Read But There Are Others You Must Read First
- Books Too Expensive Now and You'll Wait 'Til They're Remaindered
- Books ditto When They Come Out in Paperback
- Books You Can Borrow from Somebody
- Books That Everybody's Read So It's As If You Had Read Them, Too
- Books You've Been Planning to Read for Ages
- Books You've Been Hunting for Years Without Success
- Books Dealing with Something You're Working on at the Moment
- Books You Want to Own So They'll Be Handy Just in Case
- Books You Could Put Aside Maybe to Read This Summer
- Books You Need to Go with Other Books on Your Shelves
- Books That Fill You with Sudden, Inexplicable Curiosity, Not Easily Justified
- Books Read Long Ago Which It's Now Time to Re-read
- Books You've Always Pretended to Have Read and Now It's Time to Sit Down and Really Read Them”
― Italo Calvino, If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler

“Generally speaking, books don't cause much harm. Except when you read them, that is. Then they cause all kinds of problems.”
― Pseudonymous Bosch, The Name of This Book Is Secret

“One day I would have all the books in the world, shelves and shelves of them. I would live my life in a tower of books. I would read all day long and eat peaches. And if any young knights in armor dared to come calling on their white chargers and plead with me to let down my hair, I would pelt them with peach pits until they went home.”
― Jacqueline Kelly, The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate

“The trick is to teach yourself to read in small sips as well as long swallows.”
― Stephen King

“A good book is an event in my life.”
― Stendhal, The Red and the Black

“This is the most important thing about me--I'm a card-carrying reader. All I really want to do is sit and read or lie down and read or eat and read or shit and read. I'm a trained reader. I want a job where I get paid for reading books. And I don't have to make reports on what I read or to apply what I read.”
― Maxine Hong Kingston, Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book

“Books may not change our suffering, books may not protect us from evil, books may not tell us what is good or what is beautiful, and they will certainly not shield us from the common fate of the grave. But books grant us myriad possibilities: the possibility of change, the possibility of illumination.”
― Alberto Manguel

“Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there.

It doesn't matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“Damn you, spoilt creature; I shan’t make you love me any the more by giving myself away like this.”
― Vita Sackville-West, The Letters of Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf