#books

"That's the whole point of good propaganda. You want to create a slogan that nobody's going to be against, and everybody's going to be for. Nobody knows what it means, because it doesn't mean anything."

"In the shop we buy and sell them, but in truth books have no owner. Every book you see here has been somebody’s best friend."

"Each book was a world unto itself, and in it I took refuge."

"One of the convenient things about literature is that, despite copyrights [...] a book belongs to the reader as well as to the writer."

"Of course. You get everything from books."

"Far be it from me to keep a woman from her book. That could become dangerous"

"Books are to me as homemade tattoos are to an inmate. Can't get enough of them."

"Reader's Bill of Rights1. The right to not read 2. The right to skip pages 3. The right to not finish 4. The right to reread 5. The right to read anything 6. The right to escapism 7. The right to read anywhere 8. The right to browse 9. The right to read out loud 10. The right to not defend your tastes"

"Reading is not an end to itself, but a means to an end."

"V-Day…if you need this one day in a year to show everyone else you truly care for “your loved one” I think it’s quite stupid. I hate this commercialism. It’s all artificial, and has nothing to do with real love."

"Literature is the real life of imaginary people."

"I see all of us reading ourselves away from ourselves, straining in circles of light to find more light until the line of words becomes a trail of crumbs that we follow across a page of fresh snow"

"In other words, it's one of those books you thrust on your partner with an incredulous cry of "This is me!"

"Books are all the dreams we would most like to have and like dreams they have the power to change consciousness."

"She had lolled about for three years at Girton with the kind of books she could equally have read at home--Jane Austen, Dickens, Conrad, all in the library downstairs, in complete sets. How had that pursuit, reading the novels that others took as their leisure, let her think she was superior to anyone else?"

"A homeless man visited my store today. The few quarters that he had in his pocket he invested on books. I offered him free books, but he insisted on giving me his quarters. He walked away filled with joy as if he possessed the world's riches in his hands. In a way, he did. He left me smiling and knowing that he was wealthier than many others... (01-21-10)"

"The love of learning, the sequestered nooks,And all the sweet serenity of books"

"She breathed deeply of the scent of decaying fiction, disintegrating history, and forgotten verse, and she observed for the first time that a room full of books smelled like dessert: a sweet snack made of figs, vanilla, glue, and cleverness."

"I think it is good that books still exist, but they do make me sleepy."

"It was amazing how many books one could fit into a room, assuming one didn't want to move around very much."