Books & Reading Quotes

“I've been saving books for all these years, and they've been saving me for my entire life.”

“Bookshops are the most charming of all shops because they relate themselves so intimately to their visitors. Mr. Rowlandson's had stairs worn by the footfalls of four generations of book-hunters. Against the background of his overflowing shelves, with his old-fashioned clothes, his stooping shoulders, his iron-gray hair, and his firm, tender, and melancholy face,—you will never visit his shop without wishing to frame him as he stands, and set him in the window, among the other rare old prints. Not that all the books in his shop are old; the moderns are there, too. But these newer books are the minority. The composed, brown calf bindings give the shop its tone,—and its faint odor, too; a cultivated taste, the liking for that odor of old books.”

“A Full and True Account, of the Battle Fought last Friday, between the Ancient and the Modern Books in St. James's Library”

“Mike Heck: Look, I'm trying not to find out the scores of three football games. And every second I spend out here is another second I risk somebody telling me who won. Imagine you had three books you didn't know the endings to and you're out in a place where a lot of people know the endings. Brick Heck: I don't understand — if I had three books, why would I go out? Mike: Exactly.”

“The literary man must needs be a thinking one, and every day he lives he becomes wiser—if wiser, then better—if better, then happier.”

“In short, do you collect? I cannot think of a more richly rewarding and, at the same time, less lucrative occupation than that of anthology making, and I am happy to be a victim of this delightful disease.”

“Anthologizing is great fun, a fine stimulant for your reading, and, so far as I can determine, the only activity during which one can be both an individualist and a collectivist at the same time.”

“At times, I feel like a remnant of Victoriana, living in a time warp... if I were living a hundred years ago, I would have it made! I often wonder if the stories of Andersen and Grahame and Milne were submitted today, would they be accepted? Would they be considered too harsh or demanding of their young readers? They did not compromise with reality. They did not condescend. They used big words. They made no fuss over death. And their teddy bears and badgers and brave tin soldiers talked! I am at home and comfortable with them.”

“Emmy read all sorts of pretty books, every word of which I eagerly listened to, and felt so much interested, and so delighted, and so anxious and curious to hear more. She read pretty stories of little boys and girls, and affectionate mammas and aunts, and kind old nurses, and birds in the fields and woods, and flowers in the gardens and hedges; and then such beautiful fairy tales; and also pretty stories in verse, all of which gave me great pleasure, and were indeed my earliest education.”

“If you plant a book deep enough in the soil it will come back every spring. Draughts cannot kill it. Nor frosts. Nor overhot suns. Nor overcold snows.... It is alive? Does its nerve tingle when you touch it? Does it still answer you back life for life? Here is a book... made five hundred years before we commenced our Christian total of years. Is it a corpse? No. It still has red in its cheeks. Its eyes sparkle. Its handclasp is warm.... You do not need to set back the clock to get contemporary with it.... It takes me back and forward with equal ease. Time has nothing to do with [it]. It has bettered all the challenges of time. It has neither age nor youth. It has life.”

“I suggest to you that the only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little farther down our particular path than we have yet got ourselves. I suggest to you, furthermore, that when you feel that you could almost have written the book yourself — that's the moment when it's influencing you.”

“The oldest books are still only just out to those who have not read them.”