Books
Quotes - What is a book? Is it the binding, the ink, the pages, or the sum of
the words contained?
“All
of us can think of a book... that we hope none of our children or any other
children have taken off the shelf. But if I have the right to remove that book
from the shelf - that work I abhor - then you also have exactly the same right
and so does everyone else. And then we have no books left on the shelf for any
of us.”
―
Katherine Paterson
“I
wanted a library like this...[] A cave of words that I'd made myself.”
―
Maggie Stiefvater, Forever
“The
flesh is sad, alas, and I have read all the books.”
―
Stéphane Mallarme
“I
think of my pile of old paperbacks, their pages gone wobbly, like they'd once
belonged to the sea.”
―
Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go
“I
remember the hours I had spent in Father's library, drugging myself with books
so I could forget my doom for an hour..”
―
Rosamund Hodge, Cruel Beauty
“What
is a book? Is it the binding, the ink, the pages, or the sum of the words
contained?”
―
Cassandra Clare, Queen of Air and Darkness
“There
is only one genre in fiction, the genre is called book.”
―
Matt Haig, The Humans
“It's
much more entertaining to live books than to write them.”
―
Jean Webster, Daddy-Long-Legs
“I
like to imagine that, on the day after my last, my library and I will crumble
together, so that even when I am no more I'll still be with my books.”
―
Alberto Manguel, The Library at Night
“You
become a house where the wind blows straight through, because no one bothers
the crack in the window or lock on the door, and you’re the house where people
come and go as they please, because you’re simply too unimpressed to care. You
let people in who you really shouldn’t let in, and you let them walk around for
a while, use your bed and use your books, and await the day when they simply
get bored and leave. You’re still not bothered, though you knew they shouldn’t
have been let in in the first place, but still you just sit there, apathetic
like a beggar in the desert.”
―
Charlotte Eriksson, You're Doing Just Fine
“The
shame that tormented me was all the more corrosive for having no very clear
origin: I didn't know why I felt so tainted, and worthless, and wrong-only that
I did, and whenever I looked up from my books I was swamped by slimy waters
rushing in from all sides.”
―
Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch
“Briefing
is not reading. In fact it is the antithesis of reading. Briefing is terse,
factual and to the point. Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually
inviting. Briefing closes down a subject, reading opens it up.”
―
Alan Bennett, The Uncommon Reader
“Men,
I thought, were more trouble than they were worth. Really, one should stick to
books where one sees the hero coming a mile off.”
―
Eva Rice, The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets
“Books
are the flung-open windows to a parallel universe.”
―
Kevin Ansbro
“The
complexities of adult life get in the way of the truth. The great philosophers
have always been able to clear away the complexities and see simple
distinctions - simple once they are stated, vastly difficult before. If we are
to follow them we too must be childishly simple in our questions - and maturely
wise in our replies..”
―
Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading
“Tell
me I didn't imagine it, Leo. Tell me that even though our bodies were in
seperate states, our star selves shared an enchanted place. Tell me that right
around noon today (eastern time) you had the strangest sensation: a tiny chill
on your shoulder...a flutter in the heart...a shadow of strawberry-banana
crossing your tongue...tell me you whispered my name.”
―
Jerry Spinelli
“Book!
You lie there; the fact is, you books must know your places. You'll do to give
us the bare words and facts, but we come in to supply the thoughts.”
―
Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale
“As
I walked in the dark through the tunnels and tunnels of books, I could not help
being overcome by a sense of sadness. I couldn't help thinking that if I, by
pure chance, had found a whole universe in a single unknown book, buried in
that endless necropolis, tens of thousands more would remain unexplored,
forgotten forever. I felt myself surrounded by millions of abandoned pages, by
worlds and souls without an owner sinking in an ocean of darkness, while the
world that throbbed outside the library seemed to be losing its memory, day
after day, unknowingly, feeling all the wiser the more it forgot.”
―
Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind
“The
first sentence of every novel should be: Trust me, this will take time but
there is order here, very faint, very human.”
―
Michael Ondaatje, In the Skin of a Lion
“I
love that books allow us to experience other lives without us ever having to
change where we live or who we are.”
―
Cat Winters, The Cure for Dreaming
“And
when the firemen turned off the hose and were standing in the wet, smoky room,
Jim's Aunt, Miss Prothero, came downstairs and peered in at them. Jim and I
waited, very quietly, to hear what she would say to them. She said the right
thing, always. She looked at the three tall firemen in their shining helmets,
standing among the smoke and cinders and dissolving snowballs, and she said,
"Would you like anything to read?”
―
Dylan Thomas, A Child's Christmas in Wales
“What
is literature but the expression of moods by the vehicle of symbol and
incident? And are there not moods which need heaven, hell, purgatory, and
faeryland for their expression, no less than this dilapidated earth? Nay, are
there not moods which shall find no expression unless there be men who dare to
mix heaven, hell, purgatory, and faeryland together, or even to set the heads
of beasts to the bodies of men, or to thrust the souls of men into the heart of
rocks? Let us go forth, the tellers of tales, and seize whatever prey the heart
long for, and have no fear. Everything exists, everything is true, and the
earth is only a little dust under our feet."
(A
Teller of Tales)”
―
W.B. Yeats, The Celtic Twilight: Faerie and Folklore
“The
deeper thought is, the taller it becomes.”
―
Dejan Stojanovic, The Sun Watches the Sun
