The Little Village of Book Lovers Quotes

“Books turn people into time travelers, shape shifters, body switchers, mind readers, and immortals, and therefore books are the last great alchemy of our age.”
― Nina George, The Little Village of Book Lovers

“Readers explored someone else’s mind, dreamed someone else’s dreams, walked in a different body, felt what strangers felt in their misery and desperation and passion, traveled through different lands and parallel universes without moving. They suddenly became old or young again and slipped into a different gender or a different-colored skin.”
― Nina George, The Little French Village of Book Lovers

“An open bakery in the morning is one of hope’s most beautiful guises.”
― Nina George, The Little Village of Book Lovers

“That’s how to read—like a butterfly. It flutters around aimlessly until suddenly it stumbles upon an uncharted paradise. Don’t listen to your teacher about what you should and shouldn’t have read. Never be arrogant about certain types of books. Be a butterfly!”
― Nina George, The Little Village of Book Lovers

“My dear Francis, books are not for cowards.”
― Nina George, The Little Village of Book Lovers

“Oh, some people do decorate their lives with books to impress other fools. To misinterpret them as a badge of superiority is an insult to books. Books are nothing to feel smug about. They're constantly reining in our arrogance.”
― Nina George, The Little Village of Book Lovers

“…for why else would we gather together in this book if we hadn’t already decided that books are precisely where magic, the great wide world, miracles, and good explanations may all converge? Are books not the last remaining place for otherwise inconceivable encounters between different people, different periods, different landscapes, and different emotions? If Love is the poetry of the senses, books are the poetry of the impossible.”
― Nina George, The Little Village of Book Lovers

“Hearts, you see, are like beautiful, perfectly glazed earthenware cups at first, but over the years they get cracked and nicked. Hearts break once, twice, repeatedly, and each time you do your best to put them back together again, trying to live with the wounds, patching them up with hope and tears.”
― Nina George, The Little Village of Book Lovers

“Okay, give it to me then, but if it contains any smut, I swear I’ll shoot you.”
― Nina George, The Little Village of Book Lovers

“According to Persian legend, someone who writes their name on a piece of paper and presents it to another person has given away the most important thread of their soul. The leash consisting of ink, devotion, and humility can be used to call them and lead them around until the owner of the written name returns the piece of paper, destroys it, or removes it from their home. It used to be said that you should never sign your full name at the end of a handwritten letter if you aren't completely sure you are willing to belong to the recipient. That's especially true of love letters.”
― Nina George, The Little Village of Book Lovers

“She loved him as she could, not as he might want. And if you could come to terms with the idea that you’d never be loved the way you wanted and only the way the other person was capable of loving you right then, you could rest easy.”
― Nina George, The Little Village of Book Lovers

“books were the last of the old magic. They made silent facts visible. They transformed their readers, metamorphosed them, opened doors into other people’s heads and the bodies of strangers, even when they’d been dead for hundreds of years.”
― Nina George, The Little French Village of Book Lovers

“Life was created because someone described it. Love was born when someone sang it into life. Humankind arose because someone put pen to paper and wrote: ‘Once upon a time there was a man”
― Nina George, The Little French Village of Book Lovers

“even better. What was it Jean Finkielkraut, Petitpa’s new pal, had said? “That’s how to read—like a butterfly. It flutters around aimlessly until suddenly it stumbles upon an uncharted paradise. Don’t listen to your teacher about what you should and shouldn’t have read. Never be arrogant about certain types of books. Be a butterfly!”
― Nina George, The Little Village of Book Lovers

“You are a secret revolutionary, mon cher Meurienne,” the Parisian professor said. “You’re too kind, monsieur.” “Kind? Not at all—it’s merely the truth. Your concept of the common good, combined with an individualism that looks beyond its own boundaries, which will in turn change the community—that is modern revolution. Without bloodshed and yet with total determination.”
― Nina George, The Little Village of Book Lovers

“themselves. Cautiously, these mothers and daughters, aunts and grandmothers, tried on this new opportunity for size. They’d never realized how well it would suit them and how much good it would do them to have time to themselves. Hitherto they had spent every waking hour making themselves useful. But no one had really paid much attention to this because it consisted of tidying up, mending clothes, cooking, washing, and keeping quiet. All the things the world thought a good person—and especially a good woman—ought to do. Suddenly they could recognize themselves in a book.”
― Nina George, The Little Village of Book Lovers

“oversoul”
― Nina George, The Little Village of Book Lovers

“Every lane in Nyons was crooked and slanting. “Perfect preparation for life,” Elsa had told Marie-Jeanne. “If you only ever walk along level paths, you’ll lose your balance when life gives you a shove—and I promise it will.”
― Nina George, The Little Village of Book Lovers

“Perfect preparation for life,” Elsa had told Marie-Jeanne. “If you only ever walk along level paths, you’ll lose your balance when life gives you a shove—and I promise it will.”
― Nina George, The Little Village of Book Lovers

“Literature is not a cakewalk. We all need a good shake of scouring powder on our souls from time to time.”
― Nina George, The Little Village of Book Lovers