BOOK QUOTES III

quotations about books

Book quote

I should have written books instead of reading them.

ALAN LIGHTMAN

Reunion


Books are embalmed minds. They make the great of other days our present teachers.

CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE

Intuitions and Summaries of Thought


Books say: She did this because. Life says: She did this. Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren't. I'm not surprised some people prefer books.

JULIAN BARNES

Flaubert's Parrot


Why can't people just sit and read books and be nice to each other?

DAVID BALDACCI

The Camel Club


It had been startling and disappointing to me to find out that story books had been written by people, that books were not natural wonders, coming up of themselves like grass. Yet regardless of where they come from, I cannot remember a time when I was not in love with them -- with the books themselves, cover and binding and the paper they were printed on, with their smell and their weight and with their possession in my arms, captured and carried off to myself.

EUDORA WELTY

One Writer's Beginnings


Man, that’s the only kind of book I like – one that’s so real you want to find out everything there is to know about the person who wrote it, like how tall he is and what kind of music he likes and whether or not he really went through all the stuff he was writing about.

ADAM RAPP

Under the Wolf


What I look for most in the books I read is a sense of consciousness. It's so I know that I've lived. At the end, I can say, "Yes, I have been here--I was here, and I was paying attention."

LILI TAYLOR

O Magazine, Aug. 2006


When I was very little, say five or six, I became aware of the fact that people wrote books. Before that, I thought that God wrote books. I thought a book was a manifestation of nature, like a tree. When my mother explained it, I kept after her: What are you saying? What do you mean? I couldn't believe it. It was astonishing. It was like--here's the man who makes all the trees. Then I wanted to be a writer, because, I suppose, it seemed the closest thing to being God.

FRAN LEBOWITZ

interview, The Paris Review, summer 1993


I would like to save all books, those that are banned, those that are burned, or forgotten with contempt by the mandarins who want to tell us what is good and what is bad. Every book has a soul ... and I believe every book is worth saving from either bigotry or oblivion.

CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON

"An interview with Carlos Ruiz Zafon", Book Browse


How many good books suffer neglect through the inefficiency of their beginnings!

EDGAR ALLAN POE

"Marginalia"


A book ... should resemble a tranquil lake, in whose glassy surface the varied wonders of the earth and sky are faithfully imaged.

CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE

Intuitions and Summaries of Thought


A good book, in the language of the booksellers, is a saleable one; in the language of the curious, a scarce one; in that of men of sense, a useful and instructful one.

ELIZA COOK

Diamond Dust


Who collects them or preserves them--the Fantastic Books? No one, I think. They are not catalogued under a separate Heading. They puzzle the writers of Indices; they bewilder Librarians. They must be grouted out of the mass of rubbish as Pigs in the Perigord grout out truffles. There is no other way.

HILAIRE BELLOC

On Everything


My last refuge, my books: simple pleasures, like finding wild onions by the side of the road, or requited love.

TRACY LETTS

August: Osage Country


In some respects the better a book is, the less it demands from binding.

CHARLES LAMB

"On Books and Reading", The Last Essays of Elia


To say that the publishing world is not interested in literature is to overstate it. They are extremely interested in it, they just don’t want to publish it, you see. Publishers are brave, as brave as the famous diving horses of Atlantic City, but they’re increasingly owned by conglomerates, businesses which have nothing to do with publishing, and these companies demand a certain profit out of their publishing divisions. They take very few risks and they publish an enormous number of things which look like books, sort of feel like books, but in reality are buckets of peanut butter with a layer of whipped cream on top.

DONALD BARTHELME

"A Symposium on Fiction"


Book publishing would be so much easier without the authors.

DAN BROWN

The Lost Symbol


One cannot celebrate books sufficiently. After saying his best, still something better remains to be spoken in their praise. As with friends, one finds new beauties at every interview, and would stay long in the presence of those choice companions. As with friends, he may dispense with a wide acquaintance. Few and choice. The richest minds need not large libraries.

AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT

Table Talk


Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry.

UMBERTO ECO

The Name of the Rose


The popular books are the novels, dealing with life under all possible conditions, and they are widely read not only because they are entertaining, but also because they in a measure satisfy an unformulated belief that to see farther, to know all sorts of men, in an indefinite way, is a preparation for better social adjustment--for the remedying of social ills.

JANE ADDAMS

Democracy and Social Ethics