quotations about books
It is quite too common a practice, both in readers and the more superficial class of critics, to judge a book by what it is not, a matter much easier to determine than what it is.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
The Round Table
Books are nothing but repositories for those lies the author wants his reader to believe.
GLEN COOK
Water Sleeps
There are men that will make you books, and turn them loose into the world, with as much dispatch as they would do a dish of fritters.
MIGUEL DE CERVANTES
Don Quixote
I would like to save all books, those that are banned, those that are burned, or forgotten with contempt by the mandarins who want to tell us what is good and what is bad. Every book has a soul ... and I believe every book is worth saving from either bigotry or oblivion.
CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON
"An interview with Carlos Ruiz Zafon", Book Browse
I think a book that is over 400 pages should be split in two. I don't know that there's anything that interesting that can go on for 700 pages. I think that is a little bit indulgent.
CHRIS ABANI
The Boston Globe, Mar. 22, 2014
Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry.
UMBERTO ECO
The Name of the Rose
Book publishing would be so much easier without the authors.
DAN BROWN
The Lost Symbol
To say that the publishing world is not interested in literature is to overstate it. They are extremely interested in it, they just don’t want to publish it, you see. Publishers are brave, as brave as the famous diving horses of Atlantic City, but they’re increasingly owned by conglomerates, businesses which have nothing to do with publishing, and these companies demand a certain profit out of their publishing divisions. They take very few risks and they publish an enormous number of things which look like books, sort of feel like books, but in reality are buckets of peanut butter with a layer of whipped cream on top.
DONALD BARTHELME
"A Symposium on Fiction"
The reading of a fine book is an uninterrupted dialogue in which the book speaks and our soul replies.
ANDRÉ MAUROIS
An Art of Living
A book is a suicide postponed.
EMIL CIORAN
The Trouble with Being Born
A book ... should resemble a tranquil lake, in whose glassy surface the varied wonders of the earth and sky are faithfully imaged.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Only in today's sick society can a man be persecuted for reading too many books.
MARKUS ZUSAK
The Book Thief
For some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die.
ANNE LAMOTT
Bird by Bird
Books were the sustenance of God. And His munitions.
RéGIS DEBRAY
God: An Itinerary
There are many, many types of books in the world, which makes good sense, because there are many, many types of people, and everybody wants to read something different.
DANIEL HANDLER (as Lemony Snicket)
The Bad Beginning
It's tricky turning a book into a movie. Sometimes people love the book so much that no adaptation lives up to what they imagined. You can avoid that disappointment by never, ever reading books.
CRAIG FERGUSON
The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, Mar. 21, 2012
In books we never find anything but ourselves. Strangely enough, that always gives us great pleasure, and we say the author is a genius.
THOMAS MANN
letter
The majority of the books of our time give one the impression of having been manufactured in a day out of books read the day before.
CHAMFORT
The Cynic's Breviary
The lessons taught in great books are misleading. The commerce in life is rarely so simple and never so just.
ANITA BROOKNER
Novelists in Interview
There is no frigate like a book
To take us lands away,
Nor any coursers like a page
Of prancing poetry.
This traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of toll;
How frugal is the chariot
That bears a human soul!
EMILY DICKINSON
"There is no frigate like a book"