Books Quotes

“That's what I love about reading: one tiny thing will interest you in a book, and that tiny thing will lead you to another book, and another bit there will lead you onto a third book. It's geometrically progressive - all with no end in sight, and for no other reason than sheer enjoyment.”
― Mary Ann Shaffer, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

“I am simply a 'book drunkard.' Books have the same irresistible temptation for me that liquor has for its devotee. I cannot withstand them.”
― L.M. Montgomery

“The covers of this book are too far apart.”
― Ambrose Bierce

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

“Books don't offer real escape, but they can stop a mind scratching itself raw.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“From that time on, the world was hers for the reading. She would never be lonely again, never miss the lack of intimate friends. Books became her friends and there was one for every mood. There was poetry for quiet companionship. There was adventure when she tired of quiet hours. There would be love stories when she came into adolescence and when she wanted to feel a closeness to someone she could read a biography. On that day when she first knew she could read, she made a vow to read one book a day as long as she lived.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“Honesty is the first chapter of the book wisdom.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them.”
― John Milton, Areopagitica

“A book is a dream that you hold in your hands."

(As quoted on BookRiot, June 18, 2013)”
― Neil Gaiman

“Books make great gifts because they have whole worlds inside of them. And it's much cheaper to buy somebody a book than it is to buy them the whole world!”
― Neil Gaiman

“So Matilda’s strong young mind continued to grow, nurtured by the voices of all those authors who had sent their books out into the world like ships on the sea. These books gave Matilda a hopeful and comforting message: You are not alone.”
― Roald Dahl, Matilda

“He liked the mere act of reading, the magic of turning scratches on a page into words inside his head.”
― John Green, An Abundance of Katherines

“I have a passion for teaching kids to become readers, to become comfortable with a book, not daunted. Books shouldn't be daunting, they should be funny, exciting and wonderful; and learning to be a reader gives a terrific advantage.”
― Roald Dahl

“Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one's hand.”
― Ezra Pound

“We live and breathe words.”
― Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Prince

“So many people enter and leave your life! Hundreds of thousands of people! You have to keep the door open so they can come in! But it also means you have to let them go!”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“We have come from God, and inevitably the myths woven by us, though they contain error, will also reflect a splintered fragment of the true light, the eternal truth that is with God. Indeed only by myth-making, only by becoming 'sub-creator' and inventing stories, can Man aspire to the state of perfection that he knew before the Fall. Our myths may be misguided, but they steer however shakily towards the true harbour, while materialistic 'progress' leads only to a yawning abyss and the Iron Crown of the power of evil.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien

“Elend: I kind of lost track of time…
Breeze: For two hours?
Elend: There were books involved.”
― Brandon Sanderson, The Well of Ascension

“Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.”
― Jessamyn West

“I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves.”
― Anna Quindlen

“Give me books, French wine, fruit, fine weather and a little music played out of doors by somebody I do not know.”
― John Keats

“Stories are important, the monster said. They can be more important than anything. If they carry the truth.”
― Patrick Ness, A Monster Calls

“I went to a bookstore and asked the saleswoman, 'Where's the self-help section?' She said if she told me, it would defeat the purpose.”
― George Carlin

“Second hand books are wild books, homeless books; they have come together in vast flocks of variegated feather, and have a charm which the domesticated volumes of the library lack.”
― Virginia Woolf

“Fiction is art and art is the triumph over chaos… to celebrate a world that lies spread out around us like a bewildering and stupendous dream.”
― John Cheever

“Books are always obviously having conversations with other books, and some times they're amiable and sometimes not.”
― China Miéville, The City & the City

“I know every book of mine by its smell, and I have but to put my nose between the pages to be reminded of all sorts of things.”
― George Gissing

“The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“Only bad books have good endings.
If a book is any good, it's ending is always bad - because you don't want the book to end.”
― Pseudonymous Bosch, The Name of This Book Is Secret