#books

"I was with book, as a woman is with child."

"If you have read 6,000 books in your lifetime, or even 600, it's probably because at some level you find 'reality' a bit of a disappointment."

"The shelf was filled with books that were hard to read, that could devastate and remake one's soul, and that, when they were finished, had a kick like a mule."

"Books are the most tolerant of friends."

"Someone once wrote that a novel should deliver a series of small astonishments. I get the same thing spending an hour with you."

"There is more treasure in books than in all the pirates' loot on Treasure Island and best of all, you can enjoy these riches every day of your life."

"...to her all books were the same and, as with her subjects, she felt a duty to approach them without prejudice...Lauren Bacall, Winifred Holtby, Sylvia Plath - who were they? Only be reading could she find out."

"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."

"It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it."

"When a reader falls in love with a book, it leaves its essence inside him, like radioactive fallout in an arable field, and after that there are certain crops that will no longer grow in him, while other, stranger, more fantastic growths may occasionally be produced."[Books vs. Goons, L.A. Times, April 24, 2005]"

"Be as careful of the books you read, as of the company you keep; for your habits and character will be as much influenced by the former as the latter."

"The books transported her into new worlds and introduced her to amazing people who lived exciting lives. She went on olden-day sailing ships with Joseph Conrad. She went to Africa with Ernest Hemingway and to India with Rudyard Kipling. She travelled all over the world while sitting in her little room in an English village."

"I attempted briefly to consecrate myself in the public library, believing every crack in my soul could be chinked with a book."

"I love everything that is old; old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wines."

"Maybe the books can get us half out of the cave. They just might stop us from making the same damm insane mistakes!"

"We are made wholeBy books, as by great spaces and the stars"

"All books are divisible into two classes: the books of the hours, and the books of all Time."

"However much you study, you cannot know without action. A donkey laden with books is neither an intellectual nor a wise man. Empty of essence, what learning has he whether upon him is firewood or book?"

"A library outranks any other one thing a community can do to benefit its people. It is a never failing spring in the desert."

"If you have a dream, don’t just sit there. Gather courage to believe that you can succeed and leave no stone unturned to make it a reality."