#books

"Nothing ever invented provides such sustenance, such infinite reward for time spent, as a good book."

"We need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us."

"I wanted to pull down a book, open it proper, and gobble up page after page"

"And she never could remember; and ever since that day what Lucy means by a good story is a story which reminds her of the forgotten story in the Magician's Book."

"I was flipping channels, watching this cheerleading program on MTV. They took a field hockey girl and “transformed” her into a cheerleader by the end of the show. I was just wondering: what if she liked field hockey better?"

"A good book has no ending."

"Reading was my escape and my comfort, my consolation, my stimulant of choice: reading for the pure pleasure of it, for the beautiful stillness that surrounds you when you hear an author's words reverberating in your head."

"If anything attacked us, we could just panic at it until it went away."

"I'd like to emphasize that when a reader finishes a great novel, he will immediately begin looking for another. If someone loves your book, it increases the chance that he or she will look at mine. So there is no competition between writers. Another writer's success helps build a larger readership for all of us."

"Give me books, French wine, fruit, fine weather and a little music played out of doors by somebody I do not know."

"My books are water; those of the great geniuses is wine. Everybody drinks water."

"I long ago abandoned myself to a blind lust for the written word. Literature is my sandbox. In it I play, build my forts and castles, spend glorious time."

"Books are like mirrors: if a fool looks in, you cannot expect a genius to look out."

"great books are the ones we need"

"Allowing yourself to stop reading a book - at page 25, 50, or even, less frequently, a few chapters from the end - is a rite of passage in a reader's life, the literary equivalent of a bar mitzvah or a communion, the moment at which you look at yourself and announce: Today I am an adult. I can make my own decisions."

"When I want to read a novel, I write one."

"It did occur to me that the effect of good literature may be as dizzying as that of alcohol."

"There was another reason [she] took her books whenever they went away. They were her home when she was somewhere strange. They were familiar voices, friends that never quarreled with her, clever, powerful friends -- daring and knowledgeable, tried and tested adventurers who had traveled far and wide. Her books cheered her up when she was sad and kept her from being bored."

"Unpacking books is a revelatory activity."

"A wonderful thing about a book, in contrast to a computer screen, is that you can take it to bed with you."