There are two motives for reading a book; one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.
Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?
I cannot live without books.
Think before you speak. Read before you think.
You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.
So please, oh please, we beg, we pray, Go throw your TV set away, And in its place you can install A lovely bookshelf on the wall. Then fill the shelves with lots of books.
Good books don't give up all their secrets at once.
Books may well be the only true magic.
Many people, myself among them, feel better at the mere sight of a book.
I spent my life folded between the pages of books. In the absence of human relationships I formed bonds with paper characters. I lived love and loss through stories threaded in history; I experienced adolescence by association. My world is one interwoven web of words, stringing limb to limb, bone to sinew, thoughts and images all together. I am a being comprised of letters, a character created by sentences, a figment of imagination formed through fiction.
Reader's Bill of Rights 1. 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
There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.
That's the thing about books. They let you travel without moving your feet.
Books are mirrors: you only see in them what you already have inside you.
Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty. There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.
Books are my friends, my companions. They make me laugh and cry and find meaning in life.
Books are like mirrors: if a fool looks in, you cannot expect a genius to look out.
Reading was my escape and my comfort, my consolation, my stimulant of choice: reading for the pure pleasure of it, for the beautiful stillness that surrounds you when you hear an author's words reverberating in your head.
If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.
No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally โ and often far more โ worth reading at the age of fifty and beyond.