Laura > Laura's Quotes

“So many books, so little time.”
― Frank Zappa

“Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?”
― Henry Ward Beecherr

“If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.”
― Cicero

“My grandma always said that God made libraries so that people didn't have any excuse to be stupid.”
― Joan Bauer, Rules of the Road

“I am a product [...of] endless books. My father bought all the books he read and never got rid of any of them. There were books in the study, books in the drawing room, books in the cloakroom, books (two deep) in the great bookcase on the landing, books in a bedroom, books piled as high as my shoulder in the cistern attic, books of all kinds reflecting every transient stage of my parents' interest, books readable and unreadable, books suitable for a child and books most emphatically not. Nothing was forbidden me. In the seemingly endless rainy afternoons I took volume after volume from the shelves. I had always the same certainty of finding a book that was new to me as a man who walks into a field has of finding a new blade of grass.”
― C.S. Lewis

“The library is inhabited by spirits that come out of the pages at night.”
― Isabel Allende

“How can you tell? That I like books, I mean.

The look on your face when you walked in, somehow I doubted you were that impressed by me.”
― Cassandra Clare, City of Bones

“No furniture is so charming as books.”
― Sydney Smith , A Memoir of the Rev. Sydney Smith; 2 volume set

“The odd thing about people who had many books was how they always wanted more.”
― Patricia A. McKillip, The Bell at Sealey Head

“A truly great book should be read in youth, again in maturity and once more in old age, as a fine building should be seen by morning light, at noon and by moonlight.”
― Robertson Davies

“I cannot sleep unless I am surrounded by books.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“I believe in the magic of books. I believe that during certain periods in our lives we are drawn to particular books--whether it's strolling down the aisles of a bookshop with no idea whatsoever of what it is that we want to read and suddenly finding the most perfect, most wonderfully suitable book staring us right in the face. Unblinking. Or a chance meeting with a stranger or friend who recommends a book we would never ordinarily reach for. Books have the ability to find their own way into our lives.”
― Cecelia Ahern

“I love books, by the way, way more than movies. Movies tell you what to think. A good book lets you choose a few thoughts for yourself.”
― Karen Marie Moning, Darkfever

“Books are a narcotic.”
― Franz Kafka

“When asked, "How do you write?" I invariably answer, "One word at a time," and the answer is invariably dismissed. But that is all it is. It sounds too simple to be true, but consider the Great Wall of China, if you will: one stone at a time, man. That's all. One stone at a time. But I've read you can see that motherfucker from space without a telescope.”
― Stephen King

“If you cannot read all your books...fondle them---peer into them, let them fall open where they will, read from the first sentence that arrests the eye, set them back on the shelves with your own hands, arrange them on your own plan so that you at least know where they are. Let them be your friends; let them, at any rate, be your acquaintances.”
― Winston S. Churchill

“I have always been a reader; I have read at every stage of my life, and there has never been a time when reading was not my greatest joy. And yet I cannot pretend that the reading I have done in my adult years matches in its impact on my soul the reading I did as a child. I still believe in stories. I still forget myself when I am in the middle of a good book. Yet it is not the same. Books are, for me, it must be said, the most important thing; what I cannot forget is that there was a time when they were at once more banal and more essential than that. When I was a child, books were everything. And so there is in me, always, a nostalgic yearning for the lost pleasure of books. It is not a yearning that one ever expects to be fulfilled.”
― Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale

“When you handle books all day long, every new one is a friend and a temptation.”
― Elizabeth Kostovia, The Historian

“I even love the smell of books.”
― Adriana Trigiani

“I couldn't live a week without a private library - indeed, I'd part with all my furniture and squat and sleep on the floor before I'd let go of the 1500 or so books I possess.”
― H. P. Lovecraft

“There are few sights sadder than a ruined book.”
― Lemony Snicket, The Wide Window

“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

“Luckily, I always travel with a book, just in case I have to wait on line for Santa, or some such inconvenience.”
― David Levithan, Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

“Never did she find anything so difficult as to keep herself from losing her temper when she was suddenly disturbed while absorbed in a book. People who are fond of books know the feeling of irritation which sweeps over them at such a moment. The temptation to be unreasonable and snappish is one not easy to manage.

"It makes me feel as if something had hit me," Sara had told Ermengarde once in confidence. "And as if I want to hit back. I have to remember things quickly to keep from saying something ill-tempered.”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, A Little Princess

“Never lend books, for no one ever returns them; the only books I have in my library are books that other folks have lent me.”
― Anatole France

“Wear the old coat and buy the new book.”
― Austin Phelps

“There is something wonderful about a book. We can pick it up. We can heft it. We can read it. We can set it down. We can think of what we have read. It does something for us. We can share great minds, great actions, and great undertakings in the pages of a book.”
― Gordon B. Hinckley, Standing for Something: Ten Neglected Virtues That Will Heal Our Hearts and Homes

“It's not that I don't like people. It's just that when I'm in the company of others - even my nearest and dearest - there always comes a moment when I'd rather be reading a book.”
― Maureen Corrigan, Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading: Finding and Losing Myself in Books