quotations about books
Books ... were merely nodes in a near-infinite matrix of information that exists in four dimensions, evolving toward the idea of the concept of the approximation of the shadow of Truth vertically through time as well as longitudinally through knowledge.
DAN SIMMONS
Olympos
It is only a novel ... or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language.
JANE AUSTEN
Northanger Abbey
A library is like an island in the middle of a vast sea of ignorance, particularly if the library is very tall and the surrounding area has been flooded.
DANIEL HANDLER (as Lemony Snicket)
Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid
My main disappointment was always that a book had to end. And then what? But I don't think I was ever disappointed by the books. I must have been what any author would consider an ideal reader. I felt every pain and pleasure suffered or enjoyed by all the characters. Oh, but I identified!
EUDORA WELTY
Conversations with Eudora Welty
For books are more than books, they are the life
The very heart and core of ages past,
The reason why men lived and worked and died,
The essence and quintessence of their lives.
AMY LOWELL
"The Boston Athenæum", A Dome of Many-coloured Glass
Every novel is an ideal plane inserted into the realm of reality.
JORGE LUIS BORGES
"Partial Magic in the Quixote," Labyrinths
No two persons ever read the same book, or saw the same picture.
MADAME SWETCHINE
"Airelles,", The Writings of Madame Swetchine
Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered.
W. H. AUDEN
"Reading", The Dyer's Hand and Other Essays
Why can't people just sit and read books and be nice to each other?
DAVID BALDACCI
The Camel Club
There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts.
CHARLES DICKENS
Oliver Twist
Many books require no thought from those who read them, and for a very simple reason--they made no such demand upon those who wrote them.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
Books were the sustenance of God. And His munitions.
RéGIS DEBRAY
God: An Itinerary
Your borrowers of books--those mutilators of collections, spoilers of the symmetry of shelves, and creators of odd volumes.
CHARLES LAMB
"The Two Races of Men", Essays of Elia
When you read a great book, you don’t escape from life, you plunge deeper into it. There may be a superficial escape – into different countries, mores, speech patterns – but what you are essentially doing is furthering your understanding of life’s subtleties, paradoxes, joys, pains and truths. Reading and life are not separate but symbiotic.
JULIAN BARNES
A Life with Books
Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind, which are delivered down from generation to generation, as presents to the posterity of those who are yet unborn.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Spectator, Sep. 10, 1711
McDonald’s has announced that for the next month in the United Kingdom, Happy Meals will come with a book instead of a toy. And they will be renamed "Disappointment Meals."
JIMMY KIMMEL
Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Jan. 12, 2012
If a book come from the heart, it will contrive to reach other hearts.
THOMAS CARLYLE
Heroes and Hero Worship
For every good book is worth the reader's while when there is a real communion of the spirit, and this is possible only when he feels he is being taken into the author's confidence and the author is willing to reveal to him the innermost searchings of his heart and talk, as it were, in an unbuttoned mood, collar and tie loose, as by a friend's fireside.
LIN YUTANG
Between Tears and Laughter
So, please, oh please, we beg, we pray, go throw your TV set away, and in its place you can install, a lovely bookcase on the wall.
ROALD DAHL
The Telegraph, Sep. 13, 2011
What makes the success of many books consists in the affinity there is between the mediocrity of the author's ideas and those of the public.
CHAMFORT
The Cynic's Breviary