books

"He had no money and no home; he lived entirely on the road of the racing circuit, sleeping in empty stalls, carrying with him only a saddle, his rosary, and his books....The books were the closest thing he had to furniture, and he lived in them the way other men live in easy chairs."

"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."

"Don Quixote could never manage without his patient servant Sancho Panza."

"Many people, myself among them, feel better at the mere sight of a book."

"A book is a garden, an orchard, a storehouse, a party, a company by the way, a counselor, a multitude of counselors."

"Books have a way of finding their way into our lives, usually, right when we need them the most."

"When I touched her body,I believed she was God.In the curves of her formI found the birth of Man,the creation of the world,and the origin of all life."

"Reading is important.Books are important.Librarians are important. (Also, libraries are not child-care facilities, but sometimes feral children raise themselves among the stacks.)"

"There are too many books in the world to read in a single lifetime; you have to draw the line somewhere."

"I hate when people ask what a book is about. People who read for plot, people who suck out the story like the cream filling in an Oreo, should stick to comic strips and soap operas. . . . Every book worth a damn is about emotions and love and death and pain. It's about words. It's about a man dealing with life. Okay?"

"If every library is in some sense a reflection of its readers, it is also an image of that which we are not, and cannot be."

"The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame."

"There is no mistaking a real book when one meets it. It is like falling in love."

"Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book. And then there are books like An Imperial Affliction, which you can't tell people about, books so special and rare and yours that advertising your affection feels like betrayal"

"Books are a uniquely portable magic."

"One of my heroes, G.K. Chesterton, said, "The old fairy tales endure forever. The old fairy tale makes the hero a normal human boy; it is his adventures that are startling; they startle him because he is normal."Discovering that the modern world can still contain the wonder and strangeness of a fairy tale is part of what my novels are about."

"I had found a new friend. The surprising thing is where I’d found him – not up a tree or sulking in the shade, or splashing around in one of the hill streams, but in a book. No one had told us kids to look there for a friend. Or that you could slip inside the skin of another. Or travel to another place with marshes, and where, to our ears, the bad people spoke like pirates."

"Books turn people into isolated individuals, and once that's happened, the road only grows rockier. Books wire you to want to be Steve McQueen, but the world wants you to be SMcQ23667bot@hotmail.com."

"Yes, when I get big and have my own home, no plush chairs and lace curtains for me. And no rubber plants. I'll have a desk like this in my parlor and white walls and a clean green blotter every Saturday night and a row of shining yellow pencils always sharpened for writing and a golden-brown bowl with a flower or some leaves or berries always in it and books . . . books . . . books. . . ."

"This is no book. Whoever touches this touches a man."