books

"Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts. I was better after I had cried, than before--more sorry, more aware of my own ingratitude, more gentle."

"I listened as the words became sentences and the sentences became pages and the pages became feelings and voices and places and people."

"And books, they offer one hope -- that a whole universe might open up from between the covers, and falling into that universe, one is saved."

"Learning became her. She loved the smell of the book from the shelves, the type on the pages, the sense that the world was an infinite but knowable place. Every fact she learned seemed to open another question, and for every question there was another book."

"There are two motives for reading a book; one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it."

"Books can ignite fires in your mind, because they carry ideas for kindling, and art for matches."

"People talk about books being an escape, but here on the tube, this one feels more like a lifeline...The motion of the train makes her head rattle, but her eyes lock on the words the way a figure skater might choose a focal point as she spins, and just like that, she's grounded again."

"Libraries will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no libraries."

"For books are more than books, they are the lifeThe very heart and core of ages past,The reason why men lived and worked and died,The essence and quintessence of their lives."

"By reading the writings of the most interesting minds in history, we meditate with our own minds and theirs as well. This is to me is a miracle."

"Books are for nothing but to inspire"

"I think that every reader on earth has a list of cherished books as unique as their fingerprints....I think that, as you age, you tend to gravitate towards the classics, but those aren't the books that give you the same sort of hope for the world that a cherished book does."

"Books are like friends to me. Words come alive on the page."

"The dirtiest book of all is the expurgated book."

"... just as food is necessary to the life of the body, so good reading is necessary to the life of the soul."

"Insensibly he formed the most delightful habit in the world, the habit of reading: he did not know that thus he was providing himself with a refuge from all the distress of life; he did not know either that he was creating for himself an unreal world which would make the real world of every day a source of bitter disappointment."

"Only my books anoint me, and a few friends, those who reach into my veins."

"Censorship is the child of fear and the father of ignorance."

"What better place to kill time than a library?"

"A girl should be two things: who and what she wants."