Bookends Quotes

“Books, for me, are lifesaving. They have been my companions, my teachers, my entertainment, my emotional outlets, my escape. They’ve taught me how to cook, how to love, how to mourn, how to cope, and how to feel. They’ve allowed me to sort through my own feelings and escape into someone else’s.”
― Zibby Owens, Bookends: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Literature

“The cracking open of a book’s spine has always been an exercise in self-discovery, healing, and fortification. That subtle whoosh when words spill out makes me salivate. Then the feel of the coarse pages under my fingertips delights my consciousness, the sudden sprinkling of syllables, the black-and-white letters in various patterns, coalescing to find their way directly to my heart. It’s magic.”
― Zibby Owens, Bookends: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Literature

“Good enough would have to do. Not everything could be perfect. It was one of the most important lessons I learned”
― Zibby Owens, Bookends: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Literature

“staccato”
― Zibby Owens, Bookends: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Literature

“doesn’t work that way. It’s a heavy cloak that sits on your shoulders like the protective gear required for an X-ray machine. It doesn’t choose its victims based on logic. It’s an equal opportunity destroyer of souls. I”
― Zibby Owens, Bookends: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Literature

“Later she’d end up spending hours getting it professionally straightened, blow-drying it, tending to it as if it were a small pet.”
― Zibby Owens, Bookends: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Literature

“I devoured Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass,”
― Zibby Owens, Bookends: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Literature

“Chin up, Zib. Remember, nobody likes accounting!”
― Zibby Owens, Bookends: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Literature

“If only that janitor who left the library lights on at Oberlin for my grandfather knew how many more people he really helped.”
― Zibby Owens, Bookends: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Literature