books

"A good book ... leaves you wanting to reread the book. A great book compels you to reread your own soul."

"Men, I thought, were more trouble than they were worth. Really, one should stick to books where one sees the hero coming a mile off."

"I only want power so I can get books."

"I thought... that we could at least talk about books."

"The world is dark, and light is precious.Come closer, dear reader.You must trust me.I am telling you a story."

"Reading is the royal road to intellectual eminence...Truly good books are more than mines to those who can understand them. They are the breathings of the great souls of past times. Genius is not embalmed in them, but lives in them perpetually."

"Rule number one: Don't fuck with librarians."

"Book collecting is an obsession, an occupation, a disease, an addiction, a fascination, an absurdity, a fate. It is not a hobby. Those who do it must do it. Those who do not do it, think of it as a cousin of stamp collecting, a sister of the trophy cabinet, bastard of a sound bank account and a weak mind."

"If I told you that my global audience has shot up 100% in the last six months, what would you say? If you were to say, “So you went from one reader to two readers?” you’d be absolutely correct. And after I had congratulated you on your keen guess, I’d thank you for being 50% of my reading base."

"You get a little moody sometimes but I think that's because you like to read. People that like to read are always a little fucked up."

"Well, right now I'm not dead. But when I am, it's like...I don't know, I guess it's like being inside a book that nobody's reading. [...] An old one. It's up on a library shelf, so you're safe and everything, but the book hasn't been checked out for a long, long time. All you can do is wait. Just hope somebody'll pick it up and start reading."

"Don't join the book burners. Don't think you're going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed. Don't be afraid to go in your library and read every book..."

"Writers are the exorcists of their own demons."

"Cakes are like books: There are new ones you want to read and old favorites you want to reread."

"How many cities have revealed themselves to me in the marches I undertook in the pursuit of books!"

"Far be it from me to keep a woman from her book. That could become dangerous"

"For this quiet, unprepossessing, passive man who has no garden in front of his subsidised flat, books are like flowers. He loves to line them up on the shelf in multicoloured rows: he watches over each of them with an old-fashioned gardener's delight, holds them like fragile objects in his thin, bloodless hands."

"A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading."

"If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it."

"Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it."