books

"Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life."

"A good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life."

"For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them."

"She wasn't bitter. She was sad, though. But it was a hopeful kind of sad. The kind of sad that just takes time."

"No two persons ever read the same book."

"A book is a mirror: if an ape looks into it an apostle is hardly likely to look out."

"Never lend books, for no one ever returns them; the only books I have in my library are books that other folks have lent me."

"But there is in everything a reasonable division of labour. I have written the book, and nothing on earth would induce me to read it."

"I think it’s the books that you read when you’re young that live with you forever."

"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."

"He liked the mere act of reading, the magic of turning scratches on a page into words inside his head."

"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 love books, by the way, way more than movies. Movies tell you what to think. A good book lets you choose a few thoughts for yourself."

"Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become."

"How do you explain to a nonreader that books aren't just things but treasured friends? Companions?"

"More people are leaving TV behind to read my books than ever before. In the last year alone I gained over two readers (three, to be exact). So I’d like to take a moment and say thanks mom, dad, and kidnap victim I keep chained in the basement."

"If I could convert books to wine, I’d start with The Grapes of Wrath. I’ve never read it, but maybe tonight I’ll be thirsty enough."

"If I'd observed all the rules I'd never have got anywhere."

"I hate books; they only teach us to talk about things we know nothing about."

"القراءة المبالغ فيها لا تجعل منا أذكياء. بعض الناس يبتلعون الكتب, وهم يفعلون ذلك بدون فاصل للتفكير الضروري. وهو ضروري لكي يهضم المقروء ويبنى ويتبنى ويُفهم"