“I go downstairs and the books blink at me from the shelves. Or stare. In a trick of the light, a row of them seems to shift very slightly, like a curtain blown by the breeze through an open window. Red is next to blue is next to cream is adjacent to beige. But when I look again, cream is next to green is next to black. A tall book shelters a small book, a huge Folio bullies a cowering line of Quartos. A child's nursery rhyme book does not have the language in which to speak to a Latin dictionary. Chaucer does not know the words in which Henry James communicates but here they are forced to live together, forever speechless.”
Source: Howards End is on the Landing: A Year of Reading from Home
“Great books are great in part because of what they ask of their readers: they are not readily encountered, easily assessed.”
Source: The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction
“In 1800s Paris, women were prohibited from studying the nude human form, because this would've ruined the wedding-night surprise. (Surprise! It's a penis.)”
Source: You Might Be a Zombie and Other Bad News
“After this, Boy became very curious about the mansion where the clothes and the food came from. He made me describe everything. Then he asked Good Thing 'Are there books in this mansion, too?'
'And pictures and jewels,' Good Thing said through me. 'What does Master wish me to fetch? There is a golden harp, a musical box like a bird, a—'
'Just books,' said Boy. 'I need to learn. I'm still so ignorant.”
Source: Unexpected Magic: Collected Stories – Riveting Fantasy Tales About Heroes, Wizards, and Beasts for Kids
“Let there be silence. Let there be misunderstandings. Let there be distance. I am done fixing what you keep breaking. I don’t care about you, or this so-called relationship, anymore.”
Source: Life Simplified: Quote - Unquote
“She was too tired to feel anything more, she wanted a book to do to her what books did: take away the world, slide it aside for a little bit, and let her please, please just be somewhere and somebody else”
Source: The Magician's Land
“Books are more precious than jewels. She truly believed this. What did a diamond bring you? A momentary flash of brilliance. A diamond scintillated for second; a book could scintillate forever.”
Source: How to Find Love in a Bookshop
“We have no time to waste on insignificant books, hollow books, books that are there to please...
We want books that cost their authors a great deal, books where you can feel the years of work, the backache, the writer's block, the author's panic at the thought that he might be lost: his discouragement, his courage, his anguish, his stubbornness, the risk of failure that he has taken.”
Source: A Novel Bookstore
“Books bring alluring colors to our mundane black and white world.”
“I inhaled the musty, leathery, old-papery scent and a shiver passed over me. If I had any idea of heaven, it was this: shelves and shelves of books, ten times as many as were upstairs, each with stories or pictures more exciting and beautiful than the next, and two overstuffed chairs big enough for me to sleep in.”
Source: Wild Things