quotations about books
You know, not every good book needs to be a movie, or a television series, or a video game. There's great work in those mediums, of course, but sometimes a book should remain a book. I still believe nothing tells a story with the richness and complexity of a good novel. When people say they think a book would make a good movie, they say this sometimes because, if it worked, they already saw all the images in the movie theatre that is in their brains. And sometimes that is the way it should stay.
CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON
"Carlos Ruiz Zafon's love letter to literature", New Zealand Listener, Mar. 14, 2013
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
No two persons ever read the same book, or saw the same picture.
MADAME SWETCHINE
"Airelles,", The Writings of Madame Swetchine
Books are all right, but dead men's brains are no good unless you mix a live one's with them.
GEORGE HORACE LORIMER
Old Gorgon Graham
Book burning is a charming old custom, hallowed by antiquity. It has been practiced for centuries by fascists, communists, atheists, school children, rival authors, and tired librarians. Like everything of importance since the invention of the cloak and the shroud, its origins are cloaked in mystery and shrouded in secrecy. Some scholars believe that the first instance of book burning occurred in the Middle Ages, when a monk was trying to illuminate a manuscript. All agree that book burning was almost non-existent during the period when books were made of stone.
RICHARD ARMOUR
"How to Burn a Book," , A Safari into Satire
An unliterary man may be defined as one who reads books once only.
C. S. LEWIS
"On Stories", Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories
There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts.
CHARLES DICKENS
Oliver Twist
The covers of this book are too far apart.
AMBROSE BIERCE
The Devil's Dictionary
The best books are those which lift us to a higher plane where we breathe a purer atmosphere.
ORISON SWETT MARDEN
Architects of Fate
Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered.
W. H. AUDEN
"Reading", The Dyer's Hand and Other Essays
I want to do something splendid ... something heroic or wonderful that won't be forgotten after I'm dead ... I think I shall write books.
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT
Little Women
Books are not seldom talismans and spells.
WILLIAM COWPER
The Task
Books are but pictures--the world is their original; to know the former well, we must necessarily have much acquaintance with the colors and shades of the latter.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections
All books are either dreams or swords,
You can cut, or you can drug, with words.
AMY LOWELL
Sword Blades and Poppy Seeds
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
There is more treasure in books than in all the pirates' loot on Treasure Island and at the bottom of the Spanish Main ... and best of all, you can enjoy these riches every day of your life.
WALT DISNEY
attributed, Peter's Quotations: Ideas for Our Time
One's life is more formed, I sometimes think, by books than by human beings: it is out of books one learns about love and pain at second hand. Even if we have the happy chance to fall in love, it is because we have been conditioned by what we have read, and if I had never known love at all, perhaps it was because my father's library had not contained the right books.
GRAHAM GREENE
Travels with My Aunt
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
The prosperity of a book lies in the minds of readers. Public knowledge and public taste fluctuate; and there come times when works which were once capable of instructing and delighting thousands lose their power, and works, before neglected, emerge into renown.
GEORGE HENRY LEWES
The Principles of Success in Literature
I was raised among books, making invisible friends in pages that seemed cast from dust and whose smell I carry on my hands to this day.
CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON
The Shadow of the Wind