books

"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."

"In a bookstore you can find me in the romance section, because I’m not a lover, I’m a reader."

"The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story."

"It's a reflex. Hear a bell, get food. See an undead, throw a knife. Same thing, really."

"In my view, nineteen pounds of old books are at least nineteen times as delicious as one pound of fresh caviar."

"Tell me I didn't imagine it, Leo. Tell me that even though our bodies were in seperate states, our star selves shared an enchanted place. Tell me that right around noon today (eastern time) you had the strangest sensation: a tiny chill on your shoulder...a flutter in the heart...a shadow of strawberry-banana crossing your tongue...tell me you whispered my name."

"Five exclamation marks, the sure sign of an insane mind."

"To all my librarian friends, champions of books, true magicians in the House of Life. Without you, this writer would be lost in the Dust."

"There are many, many types of books in the world, which makes good sense, because there are many, many types of people, and everybody wants to read something different."

"I, with a deeper instinct, choose a man who compels my strength, who makes enormous demands on me, who does not doubt my courage or my toughness, who does not believe me naïve or innocent, who has the courage to treat me like a woman."

"There is more treasure in books than in all the pirates' loot on Treasure Island and best of all, you can enjoy these riches every day of your life."

"Books allow you to take flight, unlike the chicken wings I stapled to my back before eating them."

"No man can be called friendless who has God and the companionship of good books."

"Books are the mirrors of the soul."

"From the moment I picked up your book until I put it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it."

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

"We are never allowed to forget that some books are badly written; we should remember that sometimes they're badly read, too."

"The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – which you had thought special and particular to you. Now here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out and taken yours."

"One glance at a book and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for 1,000 years. To read is to voyage through time."

"I read a book one day and my whole life was changed."