Found in a Bookshop Quotes

“In short: you, dear reader, are correct. You are always correct. Not only in what you imagine, but in what you feel. You are allowed to not-love the novel the rest of the world is raving about; you are allowed to cordially loathe your sister’s favourite author. Reading is not a test. Whether or not you love a book is not a matter for debate; and not something you can be persuaded into. Books are the magical everyday that is all your own. Read on, and enjoy.”
― Stephanie Butland, Found in a Bookshop

“Reading should be a pleasure and a joy, an education and a promise, a release and an escape. The books you choose for yourself should never, ever feel like a punishment or a chore.”
― Stephanie Butland, Found in a Bookshop

“This is how books work. They take what’s in them, and add what’s in you, and the interface, more often than not, leads to picking up that book every chance you get. Sometimes the power is so great that you’re up all night; sometimes you have to (and yes, I do mean have to) cancel a coffee date so you can get to the end.”
― Stephanie Butland, Found in a Bookshop

“You know that books are safety and escape and wisdom and peace and the things that get you through.”
― Stephanie Butland, Found in a Bookshop

“She might be nearly forty but right now she misses her mother as though the missing is a toothache. She can imagine the smell of her parents’ house, lavender and bread and coffee; the kitchen, dark with a small window, a set of shelves with jars and jars and jars of this and that, all in rows. Her father in the doorway: ‘I am HOME!’ and her mother squealing as though this is the best and most surprising thing that has ever happened to her.”
― Stephanie Butland, Found in a Bookshop

“There is a book in your hand. Behind it – maybe centuries behind it – stands an author. When you read their first sentence, you are completing their work.”
― Stephanie Butland, Found in a Bookshop

“Least said, soonest mended.”
― Stephanie Butland, Found in a Bookshop

“If you had read a book about a reading garden. What would it be like?’ ‘Warm. Comfortable. Good smells. No one knows you’re there.”
― Stephanie Butland, Found in a Bookshop

“I was going to do about fifty pages to get the gist and leave it. But I’ve never read anything quite like it. It’s”
― Stephanie Butland, Found in a Bookshop

“Words plus spaces on paper, plus light bouncing on to eyes, plus brain, equal a place that can feel more real than the real world.”
― Stephanie Butland, Found in a Bookshop

“And Loveday has one of those rare moments, where she knows exactly what to say, with her own words, not someone else’s, from a book. ‘She was what she was because you are what you are,’ Loveday says. And George looks at her and says, ‘Yes.”
― Stephanie Butland, Found in a Bookshop

“Here is what I know. Sometimes, a book will sing to you. Sing to your soul, your pain, your being. Sometimes a book will know you, inside out, and it’s as though the pages have some sort of magical quality and the words are appearing on them just a little bit quicker than you are reading, because they are so very connected to your own heart and your own story that that’s the most logical explanation for what’s happening. Sometimes a book that you once gave up on takes on a new quality when you re-read it; when you get past the part you were stuck on, when you have the brain space or heart room to experience the words for what they can be. All of these books can be your favourites.”
― Stephanie Butland, Found in a Bookshop

“Whenever I read a book with Black people in it, the point of them always seems to be Black, or it’s a novel about slavery or oppression, and that’s important, it really is, but I would like to see myself represented in the pages of a book and for there to be joy, rather than ISSUES. Or I would like to read books that feel true and real but are not about Black people suffering. I want to be offered books the way you would offer a white woman books, assuming you don’t feel the need to reflect them.”
― Stephanie Butland, Found in a Bookshop

“Not only in what you imagine, but in what you feel. You are allowed to not-love the novel the rest of the world is raving about; you are allowed to cordially loathe your sister’s favourite author. Reading is not a test. Whether or not you love a book is not a matter for debate; and not something you can be persuaded into.”
― Stephanie Butland, Found in a Bookshop

“I would say, imagine the reader, but you don’t need to imagine yourself; you know how this works, this astonishing-ordinary transaction. Words plus spaces on paper, plus light bouncing on to eyes, plus brain, equal a place that can feel more real than the real world.”
― Stephanie Butland, Found in a Bookshop

“So here is a contradiction for you: you can love books, and you can also decide not to finish a book. Yes you can. Books don’t judge you.”
― Stephanie Butland, Found in a Bookshop

“Readers can hold complex thoughts, contradictions and moral oppositions in their minds, quite comfortably. It’s one of the skills that we learn from words on a page.”
― Stephanie Butland, Found in a Bookshop

“Readers give books to other readers, telling them, this will make you laugh, or, read this, please, so we can talk about it. Here you are, readers say, I don’t know why but this made me think of you.”
― Stephanie Butland, Found in a Bookshop

“But when your brain gets old you make mistakes. And bits of your body start to ache and go wrong and it’s hard not to feel that you’re not what you were.”
― Stephanie Butland, Found in a Bookshop

“Living through capital-H history can, it seems, be deeply uninteresting.”
― Stephanie Butland, Found in a Bookshop

“Although he has much to be grateful for with his family and his work, the foundations of his life intact, the realisation comes to him, standing in the kitchen, that it is the small things that are missing. Without them, nothing is wrong. But everything is . . . flat. Without texture. A little bleaker than it should be.”
― Stephanie Butland, Found in a Bookshop

“she’s”
― Stephanie Butland, Found in a Bookshop

“We know the power of a book. Let’s not forget the power of a letter. It’s doing the same thing as our beloved books, only in a more specific way.”
― Stephanie Butland, Found in a Bookshop

“Don’t get soft now. You’ve no need to feel sorry for yourself. You’ve already had more than some people will ever get.”
― Stephanie Butland, Found in a Bookshop

“Here is a question that no one should ask: What’s your favourite book? And, if you are ever asked it, you are 100 percent within your rights to refuse to answer. Reasonable questions about books are: What’s your favourite book to read when you are sad? What’s your favourite book for comfort? What’s the book that’s guaranteed to make you laugh? Which book has stayed with you the longest? Which book kept you awake at night? Which book do you wish more people knew about? Which book changed the way you think about the world? You could choose to answer one of those instead.”
― Stephanie Butland, Found in a Bookshop

“No wonder people who love books also love letters.”
― Stephanie Butland, Found in a Bookshop

“Rosemary cannot manage non-fiction before sleep, so she’s on an Agatha Christie.”
― Stephanie Butland, Found in a Bookshop

“I can’t sleep. So I read. Where are the books that will make me feel surrounded, befriended, rather than as though I am the only person awake in the whole dark world?”
― Stephanie Butland, Found in a Bookshop

“Consider the author. Living or dead, they have all done the same thing: laid down word after word, making a story. They have many ways of doing it. Some create a story as though they are knitting a scarf. One stitch is made from the last. Quietly, slowly, through work and patience, a book – a scarf – grows. Some authors create their stories in a frenzy of activity, short and sharp and frantic, as though they and their idea are lovers reunited. Some treat their work with caution, and do not so much write as listen, sometimes for years, for whispers and words to set down. Some authors begin with a blueprint they have laboured over; others are chasing a thought or a feeling down on to the page; others yet write while hoping to excise the thing that squats in their belly and makes them separate to everyone else, however hard they try to fit in. There are authors who write for a ravenous, waiting public, and authors who put down word after word with no expectation that their work will ever be seen by someone else. The result is the same. There is a book in your hand. Behind it – maybe centuries behind it – stands an author. When you read their first sentence, you are completing their work. Not all authors care about readers. Some of them write for the good of their own souls, and some of them, for all of their vivid imaginings, could never see their work being published. But for others, many others, your gaze on the page of words they have written is the manifestation of a dream. Thank you.”
― Stephanie Butland, Found in a Bookshop

“Sometimes a book will know you, inside out, and it’s as though the pages have some sort of magical quality and the words are appearing on them just a little bit quicker than you are reading, because they are so very connected to your own heart and your own story that that’s the most logical explanation for what’s happening.”
― Stephanie Butland, Found in a Bookshop