books

"I love the place; the magnificent books; I require books as I require air."

"Everyone creates realities based on their own personal beliefs. These beliefs are so powerful that they can create [expansive or entrapping] realities over and over.~Kuan Yin"

"She closed the book and put her cheek against it. There was still an odor of a library on it, of dust, leather, binding glue, and old paper, one book carrying the smell of hundreds."

"There are no faster or firmer friendships than those formed between people who love the same books."

"How is it that, a full two centuries after Jane Austen finished her manuscript, we come to the world of Pride and Prejudice and find ourselves transcending customs, strictures, time, mores, to arrive at a place that educates, amuses, and enthralls us? It is a miracle. We read in bed because reading is halfway between life and dreaming, our own consciousness in someone else's mind."

"Reading is reading - no matter what the material."

"There are many horrible sights in the multiverse. Somehow, though, to a soul attuned to the subtle rhythms of a library, there are few worse sights than a hole where a book ought to be.Someone had stolen a book."

"After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world."

"A word to the unwise.Torch every book.Char every page.Burn every word to ash.Ideas are incombustible.And therein lies your real fear."

"Only the ship is made of books, its sails thousands of overlapping pages, and the sea it floats upon is dark black ink."

"Buying a book is not about obtaining a possession, but about securing a portal."

"It is a good rule after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between."

"Associate with the noblest people you can find; read the best books; live with the mighty; but learn to be happy alone."

"I cannot sleep unless I am surrounded by books."

"Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new after all."

"Well, I don't like the first bit and I don't know the last bit. So I'm really hoping the middle bit is exceptional."

"What is the quality you most like in a man? The ability to return books."

"The failure to read good books both enfeebles the vision and strengthens our most fatal tendency -- the belief that the here and now is all there is."

"Early on I set out to write the next Great American Novel, and then later on I set out the silverware and enjoyed my dinner in silence."

"Literature is the art of discovering something extraordinary about ordinary people, and saying with ordinary words something extraordinary."