Books Quotes

There is more than one way not to read, the most radical of which is not to open a book at all. For any given reader, however dedicated he might be, such total abstention necessarily holds true for virtually everything that has been published, and thus in fact this constitutes our primary way of relating to books. We must not forget that even a prodigious reader never has access to more than an infinitesimal fraction of the books that exist.

~ Pierre Bayard

Whatever it is that you're feeling, whatever it is you have a question about, whatever it is that you long to know, there is some book, somewhere, with the key. You just have to search for it.

~ Adriana Trigiani

School children, who have enjoyed reading a romance or a detective thriller or a novel about terror and conquest, make the invariable mistake of studying literature in the college. They make the mistake of learning theory in place of art; they acquire impediments in their own enjoyment of the books by allowing a set of theories to govern their own reading.

~ Anuradha Bhattacharyya

The counsellor who never reads a novel or never opens a book of poetry is neglecting an important resource for empathic development.

~ Dave Mearns

Good fiction often gives us characters in extremity, which ironically gives us a clearer mirror in which to see ourselves.

~ Sarah Van Arsdale

In great thick dusty books he readAnd hardly ever went to bedBefore it was e

~ Mervyn Peake

Books should be cherished, like children, books are for the next generation, like children, like history.

~ Edna Ferber

But I can now understand why people read, why they like to get lost in somebody else's life. Sometimes I'll read a sentence and it will make me sit up, jolt me, because it is something that I have recently felt but never said out loud. I want to reach into the page and tell the characters that I understand them, that they're not alone, that I'm not alone, that it's ok to feel like this. And then the lunch bell rings, the book closes, and I'm plunged back into reality.

~ Cecelia Ahern

But I hope I will never have a life that is not surrounded by books, by books that are bound in paper and cloth and glue, such perishable things for ideas that have lasted thousands of years, or just since the most recent Harry Potter. I hope I am always walled in by the very weight and breadth and clumsy, inefficient, antiquated bulk of them, hope I spend my last days on this Earth arranging and rearranging them on thrones of good, honest pine, oak, and mahogany, because they just feel good in my hands, because I just like to look at their covers, and dream of the promise of the great stories inside.

~ Rick Bragg

I utilise all my spare moments. I've read twenty-seven of the Hundred Best Books. I collect ferns.

~ Max Beerbohm

The reading of great books has been a life-altering activity to me and, for better or worse, brought me singing and language-obsessed to that country where I make my living. Except for teaching, I’ve had no other ambition in life than to write books that mattered.

~ Pat Conroy

I don’t know when reading books became the most essential thing about me, but it happened over the years and I found myself the most willing servant of what I considered a rich habit.

~ Pat Conroy

I couldn’t comprehend why she still hadn’t stopped him because it’s clearly every mother’s responsibility to protect her children. After all, that’s the trust that bonds a mother and her child together, forever

~ Veronika Gasparyan

He truly was a man of faith. He believed in his friends, in the truth of things and in something to which he didn’t dare put a name or a face because he said as priests that was our job. Senor Sempere believed we are all a part of something, and that when we leave this world our memories and our desires are not lost, but go on to become the memories and desires of those who take our place. He didn’t know whether we created God in our own image or whether God created us without knowing what he was doing. He believed that God, or whatever brought us here, lives in each of our deeds, in each of our words, and manifests himself in all those things that show us to be more than mere figures of clay. Senor Sempere believed that God lives, to a smaller or greater extent, in books, and that is why he devoted his life to sharing them, to protecting them and to making sure their pages, like our memories and our desires, are never lost. He believed, and he made me believe it too, that as long as there is one person left in the world who is capable of reading them and experiencing them, a small piece of God, or of life, will remain” (p. 348).

~ Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Books can kill you, while you are reading.

~ Deyth Banger

...his favorite books, those he'd read over and over so he knew just the lurch his heart would make when he turned the page and encountered the illustration of the despondent dragon under a half-moon or the fervor with which he flipped the final pages of another, the story so vivid he felt his relationship with that book was less an act of reading than a visit, a place he went to.

~ Keith Miller

The shelves were supposed to be loaded with books—but they were, of course, really doors: each book-lid opened as exciting as Alice putting her gold key in the lock. I spent days running in and out of other worlds like a time bandit, or a spy. I was as excited as I’ve ever been in my life, in that library: scoring new books the minute they came in; ordering books I’d heard of—then waiting, fevered, for them to arrive, like they were the word Christmas.

~ Caitlin Moran

When you read a book, and who you are when you read it, makes it matter or not.

~ Ann Hood

If I say I don't want to read the book, I don't want to read the book.

~ Gillian Flynn

The crime of book purging is that it involves a rejection of the word. For the word is never absolute truth, but only man’s frail and human effort to approach the truth. To reject the word is to reject the human search.

~ Max Lerner

Reading & Thinking Breeds limitless progress.

~ Auliq Ice

To be perfectly honest, I think she became sick of Society during her debut season. Better to lock herself in her room with her books than to spend her life paying calls and going to balls.

~ Shanna Swendson

The boy was a model pupil, forgettable and easily forgotten, and he sent much of his spare time in the back of the English class where there were shelves of old paperbacks, and in the school library, a large room filled with books and old armchairs, where he read stories as enthusiastically as some children ate.

~ Neil Gaiman

My next option is to only write a list of the books I like, but then again, I don’t read a book I don’t like so it doesn’t solve any of my problems.

~ Genesis Quihuis

Reading takes you places; it is all up to your imagination. The world (or in this case book) is your canvas, go paint it.

~ Bob

But I hope I will never have a life that is not surrounded by books, by books that are bound in paper and cloth and glue, such perishable things for ideas that have lasted thousands of years, or just since the most recent Harry Potter. I hope I am always walled in by the very weight and breadth and clumsy, inefficient, antiquated bulk of them, hope that I spend my last days on this Earth arranging and rearranging them on thrones of good, honest pine, oak, and mahogany, because the just feel good in my hands, because I just like to look at their covers, and dream of the promise of the great stories inside.

~ Rick Bragg

Reading literary fiction stimulates cognition beyond the brain functions related to reading, say, magazine articles, interviews, or most online nonfiction reporting.

~ Susan Reynolds

Leave me alone,Do me a favor, abandon me,I want to think about,You me and the idea of forever.

~ Rohit Hora

I rushed to the living room to protect myself from I don't know what, behind my best friend, a book.

~ Marjane Satrapi

The ending of a book is, in my experience, both the best and worst part to read. For the ending will often determine whether you love or hate the book.Both emotions lead to disappointment. If the ending was good, and the book was worth your time, then you are left annoyed and depressed because there is no more book to read. However, if the ending was bad, then it's too late to stop reading. You're left annoyed and depressed because you wasted so much time on a book with a bad ending.Therefore, reading is obviously worthless, and you should go spend your time on other, more valuable pursuits.

~ Brandon Sanderson

I'll have enough books when they fill my room like the stars fill the sky.

~ E.v. Fairfall

Few people will understand that to love is like being able to select and read a good book. They don’t just stop at the title or the cover. They stop because...they wanted to read the content. The wanted to read each word, each sentence, each line, but most of all, what was in between the lines...

~ Lauren Klarfeld

At both school and at home, I lost myself in books.

~ Daniel D. Maurer

Fiction was a way for me to escape into another world. I would lose myself and all my shame, insecurity, and fear in those books. I would let time slip away in the pages of other worlds. Reading was a life long gift I grew to cherish.

~ Daniel D. Maurer

Tyrena did not laugh again but her smile slashed upward in a twist of green lips. “Martin, Martin, Martin,” she said, “the population of literate people has been declining steadily since Gutenberg’s day. By the twentieth century, less than two percent of the people in the so-called industrialized democracies read even one book a year. And that was before the smart machines, dataspheres, and user-friendly environments.

~ Dan Simmons

For a book to be a good one a reader must have a connection with the characters and identify with them and have the story hold their attention and want more

~ Brenda Kay Winters

Everybody should read something. Otherwise we all fall down into the pit of ignorance. Many are down there. Some people fall in it forever. Their lives mean nothing. They should not exist. (From the short story, Charity.)

~ Charles Baxter

But I can understand now why people read, why they like to get lost in somebody else's life. Sometimes I'll read a sentence and it will make me sit up, jolt me, because it is something that I have recently felt but never said out loud. I want to reach into the page and tell the characters that I understand them, that they're not alone, that I'm not alone, that it's okay to feel like this.

~ Cecelia Ahern

we became the books we read.

~ Matthew Kelly

They take their drama firsthand, in the real world, while I prefer the drama of fictional characters–in worlds where things happen for a reason, where questions are answered, where conflicts are always resolved.

~ Kat O'keeffe