#books

"If I told you that my global audience has shot up 100% in the last six months, what would you say? If you were to say, “So you went from one reader to two readers?” you’d be absolutely correct. And after I had congratulated you on your keen guess, I’d thank you for being 50% of my reading base."

"A novel is not an allegory.... It is the sensual experience of another world. If you don't enter that world, hold your breath with the characters and become involved in their destiny, you won't be able to empathize, and empathy is at the heart of the novel. This is how you read a novel: you inhale the experience. So start breathing."

"The covers of this book are too far apart."

"Whenever you read a good book, somewhere in the world a door opens to allow in more light."

"The best morals kids get from any book is just the capacity to empathize with other people, to care about the characters and their feelings. So you don't have to write a preachy book to do that. You just have to make it a fun book with characters they care about, and they will become better people as a result."

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

"Book collecting is an obsession, an occupation, a disease, an addiction, a fascination, an absurdity, a fate. It is not a hobby. Those who do it must do it."

"But at night, when the library lamps are lit, the outside world disappears and nothing but the space of books remains in existence."

"If the self-help books worked, it would be a shrinking industry not a growing one."

"Worst of all, the inner vault is guarded by a live dragon, attended by fifty naked women armed with poisoned spears, each of them sworn to die in Requin's service. All redheads.-You're just making that up, Jean."

"Five exclamation marks, the sure sign of an insane mind."

"I like libraries. It makes me feel comfortable and secure to have walls of words, beautiful and wise, all around me. I always feel better when I can see that there is something to hold back the shadows."

"I love books, they're in my blood."

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

"Lolita is famous, not I. I am an obscure, doubly obscure, novelist with an unpronounceable name."

"For all the books in his possession, he still failed to read the stories written plain as day in the faces of the people around him."

"One glance at a book and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for 1,000 years. To read is to voyage through time."

"When I was in my twenties and broke, I'd buy books before food. A meal will sustain you for a few hours, a good book will sustain you for life."

"If a book is well written, I always find it too short."

"Honesty is the first chapter of the book wisdom."