books

"Sometimes I sensed that the books I read in rapid succession had set up some sort of murmur among themselves, transforming my head into an orchestra pit where different musical instruments sounded out, and I would realize that I could endure this life because of these musicales going on in my head."

"No one knows as well as I how much nonsense is printed in books."

"The contents of someone's bookcase are part of his history, like an ancestral portrait."(About Books; Recoiling, Rereading, Retelling, New York Times, February 22, 1987)"

"You have everything needed for the extravagant journey that is your life."

"There are essentially two things that will make you wise -- the books you read and the people you meet."

"I believe that today more than ever a book should be sought after even if it has only one great page in it. We must search for fragments, splinters, toenails, anything that has ore in it, anything that is capable of resuscitating the body and the soul."

"When was the last time you read a book? The truth now. And picture books don't count-I mean something with print in it."

"As a fan of Agatha Christie, I think a brilliant mystery novel would be trying to identify the meat contents in a McDonald’s hamburger."

"I am eternally grateful for my knack of finding in great books, some of them very funny books, reason enough to feel honored to be alive, no matter what else might be going on."

"I can imagine no greater bliss than to lie about, reading novels all day."

"V-Day…if you need this one day in a year to show everyone else you truly care for “your loved one” I think it’s quite stupid. I hate this commercialism. It’s all artificial, and has nothing to do with real love."

"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."

"Please, no matter how we advance technologically, please don't abandon the book. There is nothing in our material world more beautiful than the book."(Acceptance speech, National Book Award 2010 (Nonfiction), November 17, 2010)"

"When a reader falls in love with a book, it leaves its essence inside him, like radioactive fallout in an arable field, and after that there are certain crops that will no longer grow in him, while other, stranger, more fantastic growths may occasionally be produced."[Books vs. Goons, L.A. Times, April 24, 2005]"

"Books to the ceiling,Books to the sky,My pile of books is a mile high.How I love them! How I need them!I'll have a long beard by the time I read them."

"If you surround yourself with the good and righteous, they can only raise you up. If you surround yourself with the others, they will drag you down into the doldrums of mediocrity, and they will keep you there, but only as long as you permit it."

"Your mail could've waited."Daemon followed me into the kitchen. "What is it? Just books?"Grabbing the OJ from the fridge, I sighed. People who didn't heart books didn't understand."

"I solemnly swear that I am up to no good."

"Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind."

"If you're texting Magnus to say 'I think u r kewl,' I'm going to kill you.""Who's Magnus?"Max inquired."He's a warlock,"said Alec."A sexy, sexy warlock,"Isabelle told Max, ignoring Alec's look of total fury."But warlocks are bad,"protested Max, looking baffled."Exactly,"said Isabelle."