Books
Quotes - I enjoy books as misers enjoy treasures, because I know I can enjoy
them whenever I please
“Mother
used to say escape is never further than the nearest book.”
―
David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas
“..reading
a book doesn’t mean just turning the pages. It means thinking about it,
identifying parts that you want to go back to, asking how to place it in a
broader context, pursuing the ideas. There’s no point in reading a book if you
let it pass before your eyes and then forget about it ten minutes later.
Reading a book is an intellectual exercise, which stimulates thought,
questions, imagination.”
―
Noam Chomsky, Occupy
“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
“One
of the poets, whose name I cannot recall, has a passage, which I am unable at
the moment to remember, in one of his works, which for the time being has
slipped my mind, which hits off admirably this age-old situation.”
―
PG Wodehouse
“Stories
were immutable. And what was a library but a house full of stories?”
―
Leigh Bardugo, Hell Bent
“In
a few minutes I heard the books' voices: a low, steady, unsupressible hum. I'd
heard it many times before. I've always had a finely tuned ear for a library's
accumulations of echo and desire. Libraries are anything but hushed.”
―
Martha Cooley, The Archivist
“The
only friends I have are the dead who have bequeathed their writings to me--I
have no others.”
―
Thomas Bernhard, Concrete
“I
am Envy...I cannot read and therefore wish all books burned.”
―
Christopher Marlowe
“Life
happened because I turned the pages.”
―
Alberto Manguel, A History of Reading
“In
fiction, I searched for my favorite authors, women I have trusted to reassure
me than not all teenage guys are total ditwads, that the archetype of the noble
cute hero who devotes himself to the girl he loves has not gone the way of the
rotary phone. That all I had to do was be myself (smart, hardworking, funny)
and be patient and kind and he and I would find each other.
As
Bea would say, this why they call it fiction.”
―
Sarah Strohmeyer, Smart Girls Get What They Want
“The
truly cultured are capable of owning thousands of unread books without losing
their composure or their desire for more.”
―
Gabriel Zaid, So Many Books: Reading and Publishing in an Age of Abundance
“Do
you know the feeling when you start reading a new book before the membrane of
the last one has had time to close behind you? You leave the previous book with
ideas and themes–characters even–caught in the fibers of your clothes, and when
you open the new book, they are still with you”
―
Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale
“I
enjoy books as misers enjoy treasures, because I know I can enjoy them whenever
I please.”
―
Michel de Montaigne
“Did
we come all the way here for a book, Baba?”
“Just
one, my child. Just one.”
“It
must be a special book.”
“All
books are special, dear.”
―
Renee Ahdieh, The Wrath and the Dawn
“My
fingers positively itched to drift at length along their spines, to arrive at
one whose lure I could not pass, to pluck it down, to inch it open, then to
close my eyes and inhale the soul-sparking scent of old and literate dust.”
―
Kate Morton, The Distant Hours
“The
world is dark, and light is precious.
Come
closer, dear reader.
You
must trust me.
I
am telling you a story.”
―
Kate DiCamillo, The Tale of Despereaux
“When
we read, we decide when, where, how long, and about what. One of the few places
on earth that it is still possible to experience an instant sense of freedom
and privacy is anywhere you open up a good book and begin to read. When we read
silently, we are alone with our own thoughts and one other voice. We can take
our time, consider, evaluate, and digest what we read—with no commercial
interruptions, no emotional music or special effects manipulation. And in spite
of the advances in electronic information exchange, the book is still the most
important medium for presenting ideas of substance and value, still the only
real home of literature.”
―
Andrew Clements
“You
can never, never have too many books”
―
Drew Barrymore
“Second-hand
books are wild books, homeless books; they have come together in vast flocks of
variegated feather, and have a charm which the domesticated volumes of the
library lack. Besides, in this random miscellaneous company we may rub against
some complete stranger who will, with luck, turn into the best friend we have
in the world.”
―
Virginia Woolf, Street Haunting
“Yet
if women are so flighty, fickle, changeable, susceptible, and inconstant (as
some clerks would have us believe), why is it that their suitors have to resort
to such trickery to have their way with them? And why don't women quickly
succumb to them, without the need for all this skill and ingenuity in
conquering them? For there is no need to go to war for a castle that is already
captured. (...)
Therefore,
since it is necessary to call on such skill, ingenuity, and effort in order to
seduce a woman, whether of high or humble birth, the logical conclusion to draw
is that women are by no means as fickle as some men claim, or as easily
influenced in their behaviour. And if anyone tells me that books are full of
women like these, it is this very reply, frequently given, which causes me to
complain. My response is that women did not write these books nor include the
material which attacks them and their morals. Those who plead their cause in
the absence of an opponent can invent to their heart's content, can pontificate
without taking into account the opposite point of view and keep the best
arguments for themselves, for aggressors are always quick to attack those who
have no means of defence. But if women had written these books, I know full
well the subject would have been handled differently. They know that they stand
wrongfully accused, and that the cake has not been divided up equally, for the strongest
take the lion's share, and the one who does the sharing out keeps the biggest
portion for himself.”
―
Christine de Pizan, Der Sendbrief vom Liebesgott / The Letter of the God of
Love
