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Books Quotes

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Books Quotes

“Why do we need the things in books? The poems, the essays, the stories? Authors disagree. Authors are human and fallible and foolish. Stories are lies after all, tales of people who never existed and the things that never actually happened to them. Why should we read them? Why should we care? The teller and the tale are very different. We must not forget that. Ideas–written ideas–are special. They are the way we transmit our stories and our thoughts from one generation to the next. If we lose them, we lose our shared history. We lose much of what makes us human. And fiction gives us empathy: it puts us inside the minds of other people, gives us the gift of seeing the world through their eyes. Fiction is a lie that tells us true things, over and over.”

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Author:Neil Gaiman
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“When a child keeps asking you to tell him/her a story, what they instinctively really want to know is their true purpose and mission in life. Sadly, this knowledge was never sought out by their parents, and explains why children's books are a very hot and lucrative industry. Instead of telling your child how to become a compassionate citizen of the world, or how to live a meaningful existence by being a positive asset to humanity, you are conditioned by society to simply read your kid a fairytale.”

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Book:Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
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“As long as reading is for us the instigator whose magic keys have opened the door to those dwelling-places deep within us that we would not have known how to enter, its role in our lives is salutary. It becomes dangerous, on the other hand, when, instead of awakening us to the personal life of the mind, reading tends to take its place, when the truth no longer appears to us as an ideal which we can realize only by the intimate progress of our own thought and the efforts of our heart, but as something material, deposited between the leaves of books like a honey fully prepared by others and which we need only take the trouble to reach down from the shelves of libraries and then sample passively in a perfect repose of mind and body.”

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Author:Marcel Proust
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“The books we love offer a sketch of a whole universe that we secretly inhabit, and in which we desire the other person to assume a role. One of the conditions of happy romantic compatibility is, if not to have read the same books, to have read at least some books in common with the other person—which means, moreover, to have non-read the same books. From the beginning of the relationship, then, it is crucial to show that we can match the expectations of our beloved by making him or her sense the proximity of our inner libraries.”

LoveTruthRomanceReadingLiteratureRelationshipsImaginationBooksReadershipThe UniverseInteriorityCompatabilityInner Lives
Book:How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read
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“In the light of this reflection, the library seemed all the more disturbing to me. It was then the place of a long, centuries-old murmuring, an imperceptible dialogue between one parchment and another, a living thing, a receptacle of powers not to be ruled by a human mind, a treasure of secrets emanated by many minds, surviving the death of those who had produced them or had been their conveyors.”

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Book:The Name of the Rose
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“Fiction is a blessing to those of us who suffer from mental illness; I'm sure many would agree. To be able to escape into the minds and hearts of other people, is such a uniquely thrilling experience, that everyone should indulge in this freedom as often as possible. It will not only expand your mind in what is possible, but your heart as well, growing empathy for those who live lives so different from your own.”

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Book:With a Reckless Abandon
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“Hear my cry, O God the Reader; vouchsafe that this my book fall not still-born into the world wilderness. Let there spring, Gentle One, from out its leaves vigor of thought and thoughtful deed to reap the harvest wonderful. Let the ears of a guilty people tingle with truth, and seventy millions sigh for the righteousness which exalteth nations, in this drear day when human brotherhood is mockery and a snare. Thus in Thy good time may infinite reason turn the tangle straight, and these crooked marks on a fragile leaf be not indeed THE END”

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Book:The Souls of Black Folk
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“Do you know what it is?' [Toby] said thoughtfully. 'It's that they haven't had anything really awful happen to them. No wonder they seem so superficial and unfeeling.' It was certainly an interesting theory, ... [but] surely one didn't need to have suffered in order to possess empathy for those who had? All it required was a bit of imagination and a well-stocked library.”

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Book:The FitzOsbornes in Exile
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“I started carrying an old tour book for the Florida Keys in my bag with me at all times. I'd had it since I was a kid, and after my daddy died, I read it to escape back to memories of him taking me there. As I read it to my guys, we'd leave whatever hospital we were in, and go somewhere beautiful, away from trouble and worry. They'd all come home to Arkansas, a place that had birthed them but wouldn't claim them. So we left. . . . We went someplace else, where they were safe and warm. Where there was nothing to be hidden and nothing wrong with admiring the way the sun shone down on the beauty of men. As it it existed for that very reason -- to be admired and loved.”

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Book:All the Young Men: A Memoir of Love, AIDS, and Chosen Family in the American South
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“Now let’s take up the minorities in our civilization, shall we? Bigger the population, the more minorities. Don’t step on the toes of the dog-lovers, the cat-lovers, doctors, lawyers, merchants, chiefs, Mormons, Baptists, Unitarians, second-generation Chinese, Swedes, Italians, Germans, Texans, Brooklynites, Irishmen, people from Oregon or Mexico. The people in this book, this play, this TV serial are not meant to represent any actual painters, cartographers, mechanics anywhere. The bigger your market, Montag, the less you handle controversy, remember that! All the minor minor minorities with their navels to be kept clean. Authors, full of evil thoughts, lock up your typewriters. They did. Magazines became a nice blend of vanilla tapioca. Books, so the damned snobbish critics said, were dishwater. No wonder books stopped selling, the critics said. But the public, knowing what it wanted, spinning happily, let the comic books survive. And the three-dimensional sex magazines, of course. There you have it, Montag. It didn’t come from the Government down. There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship, to start with, no! Technology, mass exploitation, and minority pressure carried the trick, thank God. Today, thanks to them, you can stay happy all the time, you are allowed to read comics, the good old confessions, or trade journals.”

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Book:Fahrenheit 451
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“With diversity things I know people are always like, "oh don't force diversity!" I'm of the opinion that if I read your book and at the end of the book I'm like, it's kinda weird that there are no black people in this? Bad world building. The way I find easiest to explain especially to people who are maybe hesitant to change, is that if you took 100 random people off of the earth and were like "here's 100 people!" The chances of every single one of them being pale white and straight are very unlikely. So when I read a book and you introduce me to over a hundred characters and every single one of them is pale white and straight, it's bad world building. It doesn't feel like a real place to me.”

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Author:Kaylee Jaye
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“The unlikely group that resulted from the union of five diverse characters in their late twenties operated with surprising harmony. This cohesiveness could be attributed to two factors: 1) everyone’s issues and embarrassing pasts were plainly disclosed prior to the gang’s formation and 2) the clan had been expressly conceived as a male support group.”

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Book:Sex in the Title: A Comedy about Dating, Sex, and Romance in NYC
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“Jean-Guy Beauvoir hadn't much seen the use of libraries, though he'd never have said that to Annie or her parents, who saw les biblioteques as sacred places. He hadn't grown up going to one, and now, with the internet and easy access to information, he couldn't imagine why libraries still existed. That is, until he'd gone with Annie and Honore to a children's hour at their local library. He'd seen the wonder in his son's eyes as the librarian read to them. He'd seen Honore's excitement at getting to choose books himself to take out. How he clutched them to his chest, as though he could read with his heart. Through his infant son, Jean-Guy discovered that libraries held treasures. Not just the written word, but things that couldn't be seen.”

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Book:The Madness of Crowds
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