BOOK QUOTES IV

quotations about books

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

UMBERTO ECO

The Name of the Rose


There are men that will make you books, and turn them loose into the world, with as much dispatch as they would do a dish of fritters.

MIGUEL DE CERVANTES

Don Quixote


It is quite too common a practice, both in readers and the more superficial class of critics, to judge a book by what it is not, a matter much easier to determine than what it is.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

The Round Table


Books are nothing but repositories for those lies the author wants his reader to believe.

GLEN COOK

Water Sleeps


There's nothing wrong with reading a book you love over and over. When you do, the words get inside you, become a part of you, in a way that words in a book you've read only once can't.

GAIL CARSON LEVINE

Writing Magic


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


The reading of a fine book is an uninterrupted dialogue in which the book speaks and our soul replies.

ANDRÉ MAUROIS

An Art of Living


Only in today's sick society can a man be persecuted for reading too many books.

MARKUS ZUSAK

The Book Thief


A book is a suicide postponed.

EMIL CIORAN

The Trouble with Being Born


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


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


For some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die.

ANNE LAMOTT

Bird by Bird


A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading it.

WILLIAM STYRON

attributed, Writers at Work


In books we never find anything but ourselves. Strangely enough, that always gives us great pleasure, and we say the author is a genius.

THOMAS MANN

letter


Books that have become classics -- books that have had their day and now get more praise than perusal -- always remind me of retired colonels and majors and captains who, having reached the age limit, find themselves retired on half pay.

THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH

Ponkapog Papers


Books were the sustenance of God. And His munitions.

RéGIS DEBRAY

God: An Itinerary


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


A book is a Fantastic Book, though time and space be commonplace enough, though the time be today and the place Camberwell, if only the mind perpetually travels, seeing one after another unexpected things in the consequences of human action or in the juxtaposition of emotions.

HILAIRE BELLOC

On Everything


There is no frigate like a book
To take us lands away,
Nor any coursers like a page
Of prancing poetry.
This traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of toll;
How frugal is the chariot
That bears a human soul!

EMILY DICKINSON

"There is no frigate like a book"