Books Quotes

“Even when an extraordinary book ends at precisely the right point, with precisely the right words, and anything further would only destroy that perfection, it still leaves us wanting more pages. That is the paradox of reading.”
― Carsten Henn, The Door-to-Door Bookstore

“There's a kind of passion particular to the written word which stays fresh long after the ink or even the writer's veins are dry. You could call it the sacred duty of the reader to keep that spark alive.”
― M. L. Rio, If we were villains

“As early as she could remember, she was escaping into books, falling into stories, cloaking herself from the great summer storms with silken words.”
― Tori Bovalino, In These Hallowed Halls: A Dark Academia Anthology

“How nice, then, to go to Waterstones and not to have to disinfect yourself when you get home; yet sometimes as a reader I feel nostalgic for disorder, for the random and unpredictable. I find myself wanting to be free from categorization, or to introduce another kind; I wish bookshops had a shelf called Really Interesting Books. We all know what a RIB is, I think. It's a book that is about more than you imagined when first you picked it up. RIBs are like treasure maps—the marks on the paper are only symbolic indications of the riches to be recovered. They tell you things you always somehow knew, but had never been able to articulate. A RIB is like going on your travels, but also somehow like arriving home.”
― Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self: A Life in Writing

“They opened the door and stepped in.

They stopped.

The library deeps waited for them.

Out in the world, not much happened. But here in the special night, a land bricked with paper and leather, anything might happen, always did. Listen! and you heard ten thousand people screaming so high only dogs feathered their ears. A million folk ran toting cannons, sharpening guillotines; Chinese, four abreast, marched on forever. Invisible, silent, yes, but Jim and Will had the gift of ears and noses as well as the gift of tongues. This was a factory of spices from far countries. Here alien deserts slumbered. Up front was the desk where the nice old lady, Miss Watriss, purple-stamped your books, but down off away were Tibet and Antarctica, the Congo. There went Miss Wills, the other librarian, through Outer Mongolia, calmly toting fragments of Peiping and Yokohama and the Celebes.”
― Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes

“I'm writing a new book: "How To Not Be Seen By Invisible Entities." The book only appears to be blank, but that's because it has to be read with interdimensional eyes, and I help you achieve those in chapter three.”
― Jarod Kintz, Powdered Saxophone Music

“History is histrionic. Nothing much was happening, so historians had to fictionalize events to sell books.”
― Jarod Kintz, Powdered Saxophone Music

“Clare summarily called up her dear ones and relations out of books. They knew her. What did it matter if there had never been anyone about to talk to? These others knew the real world was not tables and chairs and meat and vegetables—or that, given food and shelter, you could surely agree to, had obligations to—venture out? With her head on her folded arms, she stood dreaming.”
― Elizabeth Harrower, The Watch Tower

“Oh! The lettuce! The lettuce got stuck! Remember the time..." I then
stop myself. “Sorry. Another...”

“Inside joke between you and Travis?” Martin finishes my sentence. “It seems to me like you are bringing up this Travis guy a lot tonight. Maybe he’s a little more than... just a friend?”

“No... no.” I stumble for words.”
― Sunshine Rodgers, The Characters Within

“But how to establish the exact moment in which a story begins? Everything has already begun before, the first line of the first page of every novel refers to something that has already happened outside the book. Or else the real story is the one that begins ten or a hundred pages further on, and everything that precedes it is only a prologue.”
― Italo Calvino

“Tomorrow, Reader and Other Reader, if you are together, if you lie down in the same bed like a settled couple, each will turn to the lamp at the side of the bed and sink into his or her book; two parallel readings will accompany the approach of sleep; first you, then you will turn out the light; returning from separated universes, you will find each other fleetingly in the darkness, where all separations are erased, before divergent dreams draw you again, one to one side, and one to the other. But do not wax ironic on this prospect of conjugal harmony: what happier image of a couple could you set against it?”
― Italo Calvino, If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler

“I can hardly conceive of how limited my perception would be without the books I have been privileged to read, how superficial my understanding of others, how underdeveloped my sympathies. And I mean here, especially, without fiction, which pus flesh and blood on, and soul and feeling in, other human beings. Precisely because of its appeal to my imagination, which -Webster's- dictionary defines as 'the act or power of forming a mental image of something not present to the senses or never before wholly perceived in reality,' in fiction I come to know and understand people I may not have met otherwise. And thus I am persuaded to a more compassionate, generous, and loving response in my life beyond books.”
― Nancy M. Malone, Walking a Literary Labyrinth

“Books contain both our memories and our hopes, shape them, in some cases create them. Since the first human put chisel to stone, we have traveled a long distance in our inner and outward journeys, so much of what we know of these journeys preserved for us in writing. Now when an author puts the first word on paper or screen, she commits an act of hope. And every time we open a book, so do we. We hope for all kinds of things from a book--pleasure, knowledge, insight, intimacy, greater understanding of others and ourselves, beauty. But reading can also, in a deeper and more inchoate fashion, -give- us hope. Hope that there is a God whose extravagant fecundity is the source of the mysterious creative impulse of the artists among us. That the care and attention writers lavish on their characters are bestowed on us by our Creator. And that there is in life the kind of wholeness achieved in a great work of literature--a master narrative in which, though we cannot always see how, your story and mine have their part.”
― Nancy M. Malone, Walking a Literary Labyrinth

“Book lovers could spot a wrapped book from a mile away.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, Other Birds

“They were books speaking to other books, which was what books did, because no book was ever created in isolation, and literature was a long, ongoing conversation between stories.”
― John Connolly, The Land of Lost Things

“Even the bestselling books have some mediocre chapters. A few bad years don’t mean our life story is over.”
― Bhuwan Thapaliya

“Good morning, Grandma little owl,” he said, still running.
“Good morning, dear Nader… I’m trying to sleep. It was a long night,” said the kind owl, resting above a high rock.
“Well, then… happy dreams, grandma little owl,”
“Don’t wander far alone; the wolves might eat you,” warned the little owl before she surrendered to sleep.
Of course, the fawn was running at top speed; he couldn’t hear her advice.”
― Noora Ahmed Alsuwaidi, The Desert Heroes: Novel

“Imagine having nothing to read in the house but cookery books.”
― Susan Hill, Howards End Is on the Landing: A Year of Reading from Home

“Love Eternal, in Baskerville typeface. He'd chosen it for its clarity and beauty.”
― Pip Williams, The Bookbinder

“Books are like adventures. They take you to new places and let you be new people. The best ones teach you about life or inspire you.”
― Becky Dean, Love & Other Great Expectations

“, it was his observations, prying and intellect which had furthered his wisdom the most. That was why he wouldn’t rely solely on books or the words of others to relate the facts of the world of man, or that of the spirit, or the nature of existence. Since it is very easy for books to be wrong and men to lie, and even his senses could be misled.”
― Andrew James Pritchard, Way of the Snow Crane

“It was a dreary gray afternoon, the sort of day that begged for an endless cup of warm black tea and a thick book by the hearth.”
― Rebecca Ross, Letters of Enchantment

“Everybody needs books, Molly figured. No matter where they live, how they love, what they believe, whom they want to kill. We all want books. The moment you start thinking of books as some exclusive club, or the loving of books as a high distinction, then you're a bad bookseller.

Books are the best way to discover what people thought before you were born. And an author is just someone who tried their utmost to make sense of their own mess, and maybe their failure contains a few seeds to help you with yours.”
― Charlie Jane Anders, A People's Future of the United States: Speculative Fiction from 25 Extraordinary Writers

“What mattered was to read a few books very well, not squander one’s attention promiscuously on a great number of volumes.”
― School of Life

“I have lived a thousand lives and I've loved a thousand loves. I've walked on distant worlds and seen the end of time. Because I read>”
― George R.R. Martin

“When you read a book as a child, it becomes a part of your identity in a way that no other reading in your whole life does.”
― Nora and Delia Ephron

“Every now and then, he pulled the books out and touched the bookmarks but hadn't yet found the strength to pick up where they left off, to read the rest of the story.”
― Louise Penny, How the Light Gets In

“A mix of local news, world news, and shocking headlines coupled with experience and real life scenarios coated with imagination and intimate thoughts... the ones you can't say aloud = BOOKS”
― Niedria Kenny, Order in the Courtroom: The Tale of a Texas Poker Player

“Books are not a commodity. They are a ticket for another journey.”
― Clifford Thurlow, Making Short Films, 2nd Edition. Berg Publishers. 2008.

“11am I plan to sort out my books and record collection, which I've been trying to do since about 1959 and, of course, I never really do because then the newspapers arrive and my determination to do something constructive is wiped out by the fact it takes so long to read them. ['My Saturday', Sunday Telegraph, December 2023]”
― Tim Rice