books

"I am simply a 'book drunkard.' Books have the same irresistible temptation for me that liquor has for its devotee. I cannot withstand them."

"If you would tell me the heart of a man, tell me not what he reads, but what he rereads."

"Do you understand now why books are hated and feared? Because they reveal the pores on the face of life. The comfortable people want only the faces of the full moon, wax, faces without pores, hairless, expressionless."

"Second-hand books are wild books, homeless books; they have come together in vast flocks of variegated feather, and have a charm which the domesticated volumes of the library lack. Besides, in this random miscellaneous company we may rub against some complete stranger who will, with luck, turn into the best friend we have in the world."

"You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me."

"Books wrote our life story, and as they accumulated on our shelves (and on our windowsills, and underneath our sofa, and on top of our refrigerator), they became chapters in it themselves."

"All thoughts, secret or spoken, belong in a coffee table book written in Braille, so you can really feel the emotions."

"Yo soy carne muerta. Translation: I am dead meat."

"Governments and fashions come and go but Jane Eyre is for all time."

"I think a good book is a good book forever.I don't think they get less good because times change."

"Books: a beautifully browsable invention that needs no electricity and exists in a readable form no matter what happens."

"Computers don't kill books; people do."

"Be careful about reading health books. Some fine day you'll die of a misprint."

"Of course I loved books more than people."

"A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say."

"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."

"As it unfolded, the structure of the story began to remind me of one of those Russian dolls that contain innumerable ever-smaller dolls within. Step by step the narrative split into a thousand stories, as if it had entered a gallery of mirrors, its identity fragmented into endless reflections."

"My books are friends that never fail me."(Letter to his mother, Margaret A. Carlyle; 17 March 1817)"

"I have gone to [this bookshop] for years, always finding the one book I wanted - and then three more I hadn’t known I wanted."

"From that time on, the world was hers for the reading. She would never be lonely again, never miss the lack of intimate friends. Books became her friends and there was one for every mood."