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Books have that strange quality, that being of the frailest and tenderest matter, they outlast brass, iron and marble.
Oct 1, 2025
Words are the only things that last for ever.
In the highest civilization the book is still the highest delight.
Book lovers are engaged with writers in a private communion that occurs in some vaporous cenacle of the mind.
I have considered rap music stars, and there is one in my new book, Lovers and Players, and there is also a hip-hop music mogul who I think you will like a lot.
Libraries were full of ideas-perhaps the most dangerous and powerful of all weapons.
Book lovers are thought by unbookish people to be gentle and unworldly, and perhaps a few of them are so. But there are others who will lie and scheme and steal to get books as wildly and unconscionably as the dope-taker in pursuit of his drug. They may not want the books to read immediately, or at all; they want them to possess, to range on their shelves, to have at command. They want books as a Turk is thought to want concubines - not to be hastily deflowered, but to be kept at their master's call, and enjoyed more often in thought than in reality.
I go into my library and all history unrolls before me.
I always get lost in the library,' he said, 'no matter how many times I go. In fact, I think I get lost there more, the more that I go. Like it's getting to know me and revealing new passages.
I shall die reading; since my book and a grave are so near.
I love an author the more for having been himself a lover of books.
Modern writers are the moons of literature; they shine with reflected light, with light borrowed from the ancients.
The reading of books, what is it but conversing with the wisest men of all ages and all countries.
Books have always a secret influence on the understanding.
Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind, which are delivered down from generation to generation as presents to the posterity of those who are yet unborn.
For one thing, I know every book of mine by its scent.
Books are not made for furniture, but there is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house.
My thought is, if you're a book lover, you're going to enjoy winning a book even if it's not something you'd ordinarily pick up on your own. It's a chance to expand your horizons a little.
Foreign novels are less action-oriented. They have a different pace; they’re more reflective. They challenge us to look for the story, find the story within the story.
I was a book lover from the beginning. I loved, love, words and images and ideas, the ways a book can make you feel things deeply or help you understand something you never even knew there were words for.
Books are more real when you read them outside.
Some read to think, these are rare; some to write, these are common; and some read to talk, and these form the great majority.
Books gratify and excite our curiosity in innumerable ways.
In my garden I spend my days; in my library I spend my nights.
We expect a great man to be a good reader.
Books are the depositary of everything that is most honourable to man.
The more I like a book, the more reluctant I am to turn the page. Lovers, even book lovers, tend to cling. No one-night stands or "reads" for them.
A room without books is like a life without meaning.
She is too fond of books, and it has turned her brain.
No two persons ever read the same book.
A house without books is like a room without windows.
Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.
No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting.
A book must be an ice-axe to break the seas frozen inside our soul.
Book lovers will understand me, and they will know too that part of the pleasure of a library lies in its very existence.
Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counsellors, and the most patient of teachers.
Books are the quietest and most constant of friends.
Books are my friends, my companions. They make me laugh and cry and find meaning in life.
Talent alone cannot make a writer. There must be a man behind the book.
There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.
It is significant that one says book lover and music lover and art lover but not record lover or CD lover or, conversely, text lover.
No book can be appreciated until it has been slept with and dreamed over.
All good and true book-lovers practice the pleasing and improving avocation of reading in bed ... No book can be appreciated until it has been slept with and dreamed over.
I'll have mine [The Book-Lovers' Anthology] till the day I die - and die happy in the knowledge that I'm leaving it behind for someone else to love. I shall sprinkle pale pencil marks through it pointing out the best passages to some book-lover yet unborn.
I was a big reader as a child. My father is a great book lover and a librarian, but he forbid me to read bad literature. I was not allowed to read Nancy Drew or books like that. I often say to him that me becoming a crime author is both a way of pleasing him and annoying him.
It is difficult, almost impossible, to find the book from which something either valuable or amusing may not be found, if the proper alembic be applied.
Books are the best type of the influence of the past.
A man may as well expect to grow stronger by always eating as wiser by always reading.
The superior excellence imputed to the book, which imitates the products of antique and obsolete processes, is conceived to be chiefly a superior utility in the aesthetic respect; but it is not unusual to find a well-bred book-lover insisting that the clumsier product is also more serviceable as a vehicle of printed speech.
Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.