Quotes about Books

What a vast fertility of pleasure books hold for me! (...) I think I could happily live here & read forever.

But here, none too soon, are the second-hand bookshops. Here we find anchorage in these thwarting currents of being; here we balance ourselves after the splendours and miseries of the streets.

and he glanced at the backs of the books, with an awakened curiosity that went below the binding. No one who can read, ever looks at a book, even unopened on a shelf, like one who cannot.

I never thought, when I used to read books, what work it was to write them.... It's work enough to read them sometimes.... As to the writing, it has its own charms.

You shall read them, if you behave well,' said the old gentleman kindly; 'and you will like that, better than looking at the outsides,--that is, in some cases; because there are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts.

And my experience with public libraries is that the first volume of the book I inquire for is out, unless I happen to want the second, when that is out.

In childhood all books are books of divination, telling us about the future, and like the fortune-teller who sees a long journey in the cards or death by water they influence the future. I suppose that is why books excited us so much. What do we ever get nowadays from reading to equal the excitement and the revelation in those first fourteen years?

There is nothing more inimical to writing than the spirit of fundamentalism. Fundamentalism abhors the play of signs, the endlessness of writing. Fundamentalism means nothing more or less than going back to an origin and staying there. It stands for one founding book and, thereafter, no more books.

Books are the money of Literature, but only the counters of Science.

An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens . . . There has never been a moment of my life in which I should have relinquished for it the enjoyments of my family, my farm, my friends and books.

I've written many nonfiction books, but that's a special gift.

Some women have a weakness for shoes. i can go barefoot if necessary. I have a weakness for books.