The Astral Library Quotes

“Can a bookworm ever really call herself alone when she’s surrounded by books?”
― Kate Quinn, The Astral Library

“People who die with too many books on their To Be Read stack sometimes end up here. The ones who don’t feel they can pass over until they catch up on their reading.”
― Kate Quinn, The Astral Library

“I give you slavery, Japanese internment, colonization, and chemical castration. All, at some point, legal and accepted—and how? Because a lot of men claimed the right to sit around a table and bring exceptionally evil things into practice, while pretending to be polite, civilized, and moral human beings.”
― Kate Quinn, The Astral Library

“I never look down my nose at anyone for what they read. As long as they're reading, at least they aren't watching reality television.”
― Kate Quinn, The Astral Library

“Libraries are sanctuaries for everyone, no matter how different.”
― Kate Quinn, The Astral Library

“Art doesn’t exist to make you feel good,” the Gallerist said as though reading my mind. “Art exists to make you”
― Kate Quinn, The Astral Library

“The smell of woodsmoke because you were reading in front of a cozily crackling fire; the smell of lavender laundry soap from the lambswool blanket tucked around your knees; the smell of a cat because in a perfect library you’d have a cat purring at your feet as you read the best book in the world in front of a crackling fire with tea and chocolate chip cookies on the arm of your perfect reading chair.”
― Kate Quinn, The Astral Library

“A smithy where the muses who inspired poets and novelist actually beat metallic blocks of words out into sentences on anvils with hammers. 'I work for Kate Quinn', one haggard-looking muse said, dripping sweat onto her blacksmithing apron, 'and that bitch runs a sweatshop.”
― Kate Quinn, The Astral Library

“Maybe you’ve never done poverty math. If so, lucky you. It’s the Olympic sport of the working poor, the mental gymnastics performed by a woman with $36.82 in her checking account and an empty fridge at home, desperately trying to calculate just what shopping-basket Jenga will stave off both bankruptcy and malnutrition in the ten days to go before payday.”
― Kate Quinn, The Astral Library

“I work for Kate Quinn”
― Kate Quinn, The Astral Library

“What a miraculous thing a book was”
― Kate Quinn, The Astral Library

“If your life is Cinderella pre-ball, it's nice to think your engraved invitation and your monogrammed pumpkin are out there somewhere.”
― Kate Quinn, The Astral Library

“Survivors don’t tend to be nice people; niceness gets crushed out of them like juice out of a grape.”
― Kate Quinn, The Astral Library

“What makes you think anyone can control stories? They take on a life of their own, once the author sets down the pen. Stories are not obedient. Even old well-loved favorites sometimes grow teeth.”
― Kate Quinn, The Astral Library

“What a miraculous thing a book was, when you stopped to think about it: whole worlds springing to life from nothing more than squiggles on a page.”
― Kate Quinn, The Astral Library

“oh, wonderful arbitrarily, change the password on me, very mature.

It arbitrarily changes the password on you?

Have you ever met an electronic device that didn’t?”
― Kate Quinn, The Astral Library

“...…what are those? It was the fourth time I passed a book floating open in midair all by itself next to the shelves, a page periodically turning...Those are the ghosts,...People who die with too many books on their To Be Read stack sometimes end up here. The ones who don’t feel they can pass until they catch up on their reading....”
― Kate Quinn, The Astral Library

“The smell of woodsmoke because you were reading in front of a cozily crackling fire; the smell of lavender laundry soap from the lambswool blanket tucked around your knees; the smell of a cat because in a perfect library you’d have a cat purring at your feet as you read the best book in the world in front of a crackling fire with tea and chocolate chip cookies on the arm of your perfect reading chair. One delirious inhaled breath of that smell—the smell that somehow eased the perennial ache in my jaw and the faint throb in my temples, the smell that calmed my pulse, which had been anxiously humming all day”
― Kate Quinn, The Astral Library

“It is not only for collectors, snobs, experts, college graduates, or the well-informed. If you can see it, touch it, or in any way appreciate it, it is for you. Do not ever let anyone make you feel out of place for looking at a work of art. Canapé?”
― Kate Quinn, The Astral Library

“No fanatical gleam in her eye; no grand ideology propelling her down this lunatic path. Just a rule enforcer with a clipboard. Well”
― Kate Quinn, The Astral Library

“How can you fight something when you don’t know what it is?”
― Kate Quinn, The Astral Library

“Libraries are full of idea - perhaps the most dangerous and powerful of all weapons.”
― Kate Quinn, The Astral Library

“I’d wanted an adventure”
― Kate Quinn, The Astral Library

“I smiled and asked”
― Kate Quinn, The Astral Library

“For anything. For everything. Love”
― Kate Quinn, The Astral Library

“simulacra”
― Kate Quinn, The Astral Library

“You kiss like a dying flounder.”

“I did not see my size 22 fitting into that whale bone corset.”

“If you would not mind to control alt delete yourself.”
― Kate Quinn, The Astral Library

“I think it scares people like that”
― Kate Quinn, The Astral Library

“Because every tyrant of the world”
― Kate Quinn, The Astral Library

“I have a complete list of titles I would like to cross-check immediately with the Astral Library’s catalog,” a sheep-faced woman volunteered at once”
― Kate Quinn, The Astral Library