Books
Quotes - A book is a fragile creature, it suffers the wear of time, it fears
rodents, the elements and clumsy hands
“She
read books as one would breathe air, to fill up and live. She read books as one
would breathe ether, to sink in and die.”
―
Annie Dillard, The Living
“Stranger,
pause and look;
From
the dust of ages
Lift
this little book,
Turn
the tattered pages,
Read
me, do not let me die!
Search
the fading letters finding
Steadfast
in the broken binding
All
that once was I!”
―
Edna St. Vincent Millay, Collected Poems
“To
prohibit the reading of certain books is to declare the inhabitants to be either
fools or slaves.”
―
Claude Adrien Helvetius
“A
book is a fragile creature, it suffers the wear of time, it fears rodents, the
elements and clumsy hands. so the librarian protects the books not only against
mankind but also against nature and devotes his life to this war with the
forces of oblivion.”
―
Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose
“What
amazes me is that most days feel useless. I don't seem to accomplish
anything-just a few pages, most of which don't seem very good. Yet, when I put
all those wasted days together, I somehow end up with a book of which I'm very
proud.”
―
Louis Sachar
“Imagination
is a gift given to us from God and each one of us use it differently.”
―
Brian Jacques
“Will
I have to use a dictionary to read your book?" asked Mrs. Dodypol.
"It depends," says I, "how much you used the dictionary before
you read it.”
―
Alexander Theroux, Darconville's Cat
“The
library was a little old shabby place. Francie thought it was beautiful. The
feeling she had about it was as good as the feeling she had about church. She
pushed open the door and went in. She liked the combined smell of worn leather
bindings, library past and freshly inked stamping pads better than she liked
the smell of burning incense at high mass.”
―
Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
“A
breeze, a forgotten summer, a smile, all can fit into a storefront window.”
―
Dejan Stojanovic, The Sun Watches the Sun
“I
didn't go to bookshops to buy. That's a little bourgeois. I went because they
were civilized places. It made me happy there were people who sat down and
wrote and wrote and wrote and there were other people who devoted their lives
to making those words into books. It was lovely. Like standing in the middle of
civilization.”
―
Jerry Pinto, Em and The Big Hoom
“That's
what I do. Watch movies and read. Sometimes I even pretend to write, but I'm
not fooling anyone. Oh, and I go to the mailbox.”
―
Nicole Krauss, The History of Love
“I
am the girl who spends hours huddled in a corner of a library, trying to find
what you love the most about Marlowe, just so I can write you a poem worthy of
Shakespeare. I've made books my lovers, hours my enemies and you the only
story.”
―
Nikita Gill, Your Body is an Ocean: Love and Other Experiments
“What
I will be remembered for are the Foundation Trilogy and the Three Laws of
Robotics. What I want to be remembered for is no one book, or no dozen books.
Any single thing I have written can be paralleled or even surpassed by
something someone else has done. However, my total corpus for quantity, quality
and variety can be duplicated by no one else. That is what I want to be
remembered for.”
―
Isaac Asimov
“A
book series is never truly over. The story lives on, even when the final page
has been turned.”
―
Richard Denney
“Your
goodness must have some edge to it -- else it is none.”
―
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Culture, Behavior, Beauty, Books, Art, Eloquence, Power,
Wealth, Illusions
“Now,
75 years [after To Kill a Mockingbird], in an abundant society where people
have laptops, cell phones, iPods, and minds like empty rooms, I still plod
along with books.
[Open
Letter, O Magazine, July 2006]”
―
Harper Lee
“We
are so overwhelmed with quantities of books, that we hardly realize any more
that a book can be valuable, valuable like a jewel, or a lovely picture, into
which you can look deeper and deeper and get a more profound experience very
time. It is far, far better to read one book six times, at intervals, than to
read six several books.”
―
D.H. Lawrence, Apocalypse
“To
own a certain book - and to choose it without help - is to define yourself.”
―
Julian Barnes, A Life with Books
“I
see all of us reading ourselves away from ourselves,
straining
in circles of light to find more light
until
the line of words becomes a trail of crumbs
that
we follow across a page of fresh snow”
―
Billy Collins, Sailing Alone Around the Room: New and Selected Poems
“Still.
Four words.
And
I didn’t realize it until a couple of days ago, when someone wrote in to my
blog:
Dear
Neil,
If
you could choose a quote - either by you or another author - to be inscribed on
the wall of a public library children’s area, what would it be?
Thanks!
Lynn
I
pondered a bit. I’d said a lot about books and kids’ reading over the years,
and other people had said things pithier and wiser than I ever could. And then
it hit me, and this is what I wrote:
I’m
not sure I’d put a quote up, if it was me, and I had a library wall to deface.
I think I’d just remind people of the power of stories, and why they exist in
the first place. I’d put up the four words that anyone telling a story wants to
hear. The ones that show that it’s working, and that pages will be turned:
“…
and then w”
―
Neil Gaiman, Stories: All-New Tales
“When
you read to a child, when you put a book in a child's hands, you are bringing
that child news of the infinitely varied nature of life. You are an awakener.”
―
Paula Fox
