#books

"Most of what makes a book 'good' is that we are reading it at the right moment for us."

"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."

"A good book is always on tap; it may be decanted and drunk a hundred times, and it is still there for further imbibement."

"An artist is someone who can hold two opposing viewpoints and still remain fully functional."

"We're going to meet a lot of lonely people in the next week and the next month and the next year. And when they ask us what we're doing, you can say, We're remembering. That's where we'll win out in the long run. And someday we'll remember so much that we'll build the biggest goddamn steamshovel in history and dig the biggest grave of all time and shove war in it and cover it up."

"but for my own part, if a book is well written, I always find it too short."

"I always thought it was Mo Be Dick. I know Mo, and he is a dick."

"I understood books. I did not understand boys—especially alien boys."

"This must be what an addict feels like, I think, trying to fight the pull of one last, quick read. My fingers itch toward the binding, and finally, with a sigh of regret, I just grab the book and open it, hungrily reading the story."

"Everyone creates realities based on their own personal beliefs. These beliefs are so powerful that they can create [expansive or entrapping] realities over and over.~Kuan Yin"

"Knowing I lov'd my books, he furnish'd me From mine own library with volumes that I prize above my dukedom."

"Books were only one type of receptacle where we stored a lot of things we were afraid we might forget. There is nothing magical in them at all. The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the Universe together into one garment for us."

"When you re-read a classic you do not see in the book more than you did before. You see more in you than there was before."

"Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove anything."

"We don’t need a list of rights and wrongs, tables of dos and don’ts: we need books, time, and silence. Thou shalt not is soon forgotten, but Once upon a time lasts forever."

"Because when I read, I don't really read; I pop a beautiful sentence into my mouth and suck it like a fruit drop, or I sip it like a liqueur until the thought dissolves in me like alcohol, infusing brain and heart and coursing on through the veins to the root of each blood vessel."

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

"Overall, the library held a hushed exultation, as though the cherished volumes were all singing soundlessly within their covers."

"I also did some jail time a few years ago. Spent a whole summer in jail reading books. I pumped a ton of new knowledge and new thinking into myself."

"What amazes me is that most days feel useless. I don't seem to accomplish anything-just a few pages, most of which don't seem very good. Yet, when I put all those wasted days together, I somehow end up with a book of which I'm very proud."