#books

"Books are a uniquely portable magic."

"So many books, so little time."

"Jake went in, aware that he had, for the first time in three weeks, opened a door without hoping madly to find another world on the other side. A bell jingled overhead. The mild, spicy smell of old books hit him, and the smell was somehow like coming home."

"A war of ideas can no more be won without books than a naval war can be won without ships. Books, like ships, have the toughest armor, the longest cruising range, and mount the most powerful guns."

"There is something wonderful about a book. We can pick it up. We can heft it. We can read it. We can set it down. We can think of what we have read. It does something for us. We can share great minds, great actions, and great undertakings in the pages of a book."

"Beware you be not swallowed up in books! An ounce of love is worth a pound of knowledge."

"The world’s greatest achievers have been those who have always stayed focussed on their goals and have been consistent in their efforts."

"She should have done science, not spent all her time with her head in novels. Novels gave you a completely false idea about life, they told lies and they implied there were endings when in reality there were no endings, everything just went on and on and on."

"I regained my soul through literature after those times I'd lost it to wild-eyed gypsy girls on the European streets."

"Science fiction films are not about science. They are about disaster, which is one of the oldest subjects of art."

"I wanted to explain that I am constantly overestimating and underestimating the human race - that rarely do I even simply estimate it. I wanted to ask her how the same thing could be so ugly and so glorious, and its words and stories so damning and brilliant...I AM HAUNTED BY HUMANS."

"Wear the old coat and buy the new book."

"Read a thousand books, and your words will flow like a river."

"The book thief has struck for the first time – the beginning of an illustrious career."

"I read to be alone. I read so as not to be alone."

"Which of us has not felt that the character we are reading in the printed page is more real than the person standing beside us?"

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

"Stephenie Meyer: Her vampires are sparkly, which I think we can all agree is wrong."

"Our society accepts the book as a given, but the act of reading -- once considered useful and important, as well as potentially dangerous and subversive -- is now condescendingly accepted as a pastime, a slow pastime that lacks efficiency and does not contribute to the common good."

"All of us can think of a book... that we hope none of our children or any other children have taken off the shelf. But if I have the right to remove that book from the shelf - that work I abhor - then you also have exactly the same right and so does everyone else. And then we have no books left on the shelf for any of us."