Books Quotes

They're book addicts.

~ Lemony Snicket

Aziraphale collected books. If he were totally honest with himself he would have to have admitted that his bookshop was simply somewhere to store them. He was not unusual in this. In order to maintain his cover as a typical second-hand book seller, he used every means short of actual physical violence to prevent customers from making a purchase. Unpleasant damp smells, glowering looks, erratic opening hours - he was incredibly good at it.

~ Terry Pratchett

It's a reflex. Hear a bell, get food. See an undead, throw a knife. Same thing, really.

~ Ilona Andrews

A successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out of it.

~ Mark Twain

It was amazing how many books one could fit into a room, assuming one didn't want to move around very much.

~ Brandon Sanderson

You know how it is when you're reading a book and falling asleep, you're reading, reading... and all of a sudden you notice your eyes are closed? I'm like that all the time.

~ Steven Wright

A big leather-bound volume makes an ideal razorstrap. A thing book is useful to stick under a table with a broken caster to steady it. A large, flat atlas can be used to cover a window with a broken pane. And a thick, old-fashioned heavy book with a clasp is the finest thing in the world to throw at a noisy cat.

~ Mark Twain

I gave him my best cryptic smile. He did not fall down to his feet, kiss my shoes, and promise me the world. I must be getting rusty.

~ Ilona Andrews

I read the fuck out of every book I can get my hands on.

~ Nick Hornby

My bookcase is all yours.I walked to the door. I've just decided that those are my favorite five words in the world.

~ Kasie West

Professors of literature collect books the way a ship collects barnacles, without seeming effort.

~ Carolyn G. Heilbrun

I don't know where people got the idea that characters in books are supposed to be likable. Books are not in the business of creating merely likeable characters with whom you can have some simple identification with. Books are in the business of creating great stories that make you're brain go ahhbdgbdmerhbergurhbudgerbudbaaarr.

~ John Green

But there is in everything a reasonable division of labour. I have written the book, and nothing on earth would induce me to read it.

~ G.k. Chesterton

I'm not really sure what makes a book a 'classic' to begin with, but I think it has to be at least fifty years old and some person or animal has to die at the end.

~ Jeff Kinney

Some stories have to be written because no one would believe the absurdity of it all.

~ Shannon L. Alder

Literary detection and firearms don't really go hand in hand, pen mighter than the sword and so forth.

~ Jasper Fforde

Let children read whatever they want and then talk about it with them. If parents and kids can talk together, we won't have as much censorship because we won't have as much fear.

~ Judy Blume

It's not all bad. Heightened self-consciousness, apartness, an inability to join in, physical shame and self-loathing—they are not all bad. Those devils have been my angels. Without them I would never have disappeared into language, literature, the mind, laughter and all the mad intensities that made and unmade me.

~ Stephen Fry

We have come from God, and inevitably the myths woven by us, though they contain error, will also reflect a splintered fragment of the true light, the eternal truth that is with God. Indeed only by myth-making, only by becoming 'sub-creator' and inventing stories, can Man aspire to the state of perfection that he knew before the Fall. Our myths may be misguided, but they steer however shakily towards the true harbour, while materialistic 'progress' leads only to a yawning abyss and the Iron Crown of the power of evil.

~ J.r.r. Tolkien

Do you shovel to survive, or survive to shovel?

~ Kōbō Abe

For the survivor who chooses to testify, it is clear: his duty is to bear witness for the dead and for the living. He has no right to deprive future generations of a past that belongs to our collective memory. To forget would be not only dangerous but offensive; to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.

~ Elie Wiesel

Just as one spoils the stomach by overfeeding and thereby impairs the whole body, so can one overload and choke the mind by giving it too much nourishment. For the more one reads the fewer are the traces left of what one has read; the mind is like a tablet that has been written over and over. Hence it is impossible to reflect; and it is only by reflection that one can assimilate what one has read. If one reads straight ahead without pondering over it later, what has been read does not take root, but is for the most part lost.

~ Arthur Schopenhauer

Even if you are alone you wage war with yourself.

~ Dejan Stojanovic

You not only are hunted by others, you unknowingly hunt yourself.

~ Dejan Stojanovic

The brightest light casts the darkest shadow.

~ Jess C. Scott

From whichever side I start, I think I am in an old place where others have been before me.

~ Dejan Stojanovic

They grew, they did not talk about growing.

~ Dejan Stojanovic

A smiling lie is a whirlwind, easy to enter, but hard to escape.

~ Dejan Stojanovic

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

the Real-World was a sprawling mess of a book in need of a good editor.

~ Jasper Fforde

When the writing is good, a book becomes a mirror. The reader will see an uncanny familiarity and respond accordingly.

~ Jen Knox

It’s not easy to write a poem about a poem.

~ Dejan Stojanovic

For a game, you don’t need a teacher.

~ Dejan Stojanovic

Ability, experience and books have solution for all the problems.

~ Amit Kalantri

If one million of you give assent to the one thousand who participate in the murder of a child, then one million of you are a million times guilty.

~ Compton Gage

No crime is a means to an end. No crime can be rationalized.

~ Compton Gage

If one thousand of you participate in the murder of one child, then one thousand of you are a thousand times guilty.

~ Compton Gage

Books can be immensely powerful. The ideas in them can change the way people think. Yet it was the Nazis and Stalin's officers who committed terrible crimes, and not Mein Kampf or the Communist Manifesto - and of course, the Manifesto contained many key ideas that are still relevant and important today, long after Stalin has gone. There is a crucial distinction between the book and its effect - it's crucial because if you talk about a book being harmful rather than its effect you begin to legitimise censorship. Abhorrent ideas need to be challenged by better ones, not banned.

~ John Farndon

There is nothing more wonderful than a book. It may be a message to us from the dead, from human souls we never saw who lived perhaps thousands of miles away, and yet these little sheets of paper speak to us, arouse us, teach us, open our hearts and in turn open their hearts to us like brothers. Without books, God is silent, justice dormant, philosophy lame.

~ Charles Kingsley

If time is precious, no book that will not improve by repeated readings deserves to be read at all.

~ Thomas Carlyle