Best 4184 quotes in «books quotes» category

It was a different life out here, but make no mistake: Lazlo was every bit the dreamer he had always been, if not more. He might have left his books, but he carried all his stories with him.

It was a fruit we had never seen before, larger than an apple, about the size of a grapefruit. It was round and yellow like the leaves of a neglected book.

It was a high ceilinged room with tall, large-panes windows. Apart from the doorway was the desk where book had been checked out in days when books were still being checked out. He stood there for a moment looking around the silent room, shaking his head slowly. All these books, he thought, the residue of a planet's intellect, the scrapings of futile minds, the leftovers, the potpourri of artifacts that had no power to save men from perishing.

It was a pity that most people didn't actually go to libraries anymore, not when they could sit in the comfort of their own quarters and access files electronically. Want to read the new hot interstellar caper novel, or the latest issue of Beings holozine? Input the name, touch a control, and zip - it's in your datapad. . . . There were, of course, old-fashioned beings who would still actually trundle down to where the files were. On some worlds the most ancient libraries kept books - actual bound volumes of printed matter - lined up neatly on shelves, and readers would walk the aisles, take a volume down, sniff the musty-dusty odor of it, and then carry it to a table to leisurely peruse. There weren't many of those readers left, and they were growing rarer all the time . . . But there were some who still knew how to actually turn a page - and for those who were willing to do so, the rewards could be great indeed.

It was as if some people believed there was a divide between the books that you were permitted to enjoy and the books that were good for you, and I was expected to choose sides. We were all expected to choose sides. And I didn't believe it, and I still don't. I was, and still am, on the side of books you love.

It was always after reading tales such as these that she wondered how on earth it was that some young ladies did not read at all, or declared they had no interest in it. Didn't they know how you could feel so much from a book? Didn't they know how your heart could race and break from words on a page? Had they never read something so wonderful and horrible that they felt as though the very would should stop and pause to acknowledge the depth of feeling it produced?

It was as if she was a wannabe Persian cat who had just tasted sour milk.

It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connect me with all the people that were alive, or who had ever been alive.

It was a well-aimed arrow. Had anyone even noticed she was no longer at the library? All the people she'd worked with, worked for? All the patrons she'd helped? Had she been so replaceable that her absence hadn't caused a single ripple? Hadn't she mattered at all?

It was books that made me feel that perhaps I wasn't completely alone.

It was, in many ways, her dream bookshop. Not least because all the books had already been read. Books that had already been read were the best.

It was her eyes and my eyes and I felt a surging sensation of rightness, of saying the right thing at the right time to the right person.

It was impossible to feel alone in a room full of favorite books. I had the sense that they knew me personally, that they'd read me cover to cover as I'd read them.

It was immediately clear that the book had been undisturbed for a very long time, perhaps even since it had been laid to rest. The librarian fetched a checked duster, and wiped away the dust, a black, thick, tenacious Victorian dust, a dust composed of smoke and fog particles accumulated before the Clean Air acts.

It was in Durmond that I made the wonderful discovery of interlibrary loan, the greatest invention since the light bulb. […] All the libraries were linked together, so no matter where I moved, as long as I had a library card I would be part of a web as powerful and beautiful as the one in Charlotte’s Web. Just as Charlotte the spider wrote messages in her web that transformed Wilbur the ordinary pig into “some pig,” this web would transform me. I would eventually collect nearly fifty different library cards. I was snagged forever in the wonderful web of the public library system.

It was in that tree that I learned to read, filled with the passions that can only come to the bookish, grasping, very young, bewildered by almost all of what I read, sweating in the attempt to understand a world of adults I fled from in real life but desperately wanted to join in books. (I did not connect the grown men and women in literature with the grown men and women I saw around me. They were, to me, another species.)

It was not merely that his brother was dead. His brain, too young to realize the full paradox, wondered with an obscure self- pity why it was that the pulse of his brother's fear went on and on, when Francis was now where he had always been told there was no more terror and no more--darkness.

It wasn't that she was shallow, exactly, but everyone knows, looks are important for media work...

It wasn't that time stopped in the library. It was as if it were captured, collected here, and in all libraries -- and not only my time, my life, but all human time as well. In the library, time is dammed up--not just stopped but saved.

It was soon painfully clear that when he looked at me what he mainly saw was a cute animal, clownish and a little stupid, something like a very small dog with buckteeth. He had no inkling of my true character, that I was in fact grossly cynical, moderately vicious, and a melancholy genius, or that I had read more books than he had.

...It was only ninety-four pages long, and so obviously wretchedly written it was destined to become a huge fad

It was so odd what brought out tenderness in people. It was never what you have expected.

It was the age, that time of life when every sight, every feeling, every thought came back, like a boomerang, to me. And worse, I was in love. Love with complications.

It was wonderful flirting with him, all the razor-edged literary banter, like Beatrice and Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing. A battle of wit, and a test, too.

It will be awesome audiobooks to go like films, but more longer!

It was true; books had saved me in my home remodeling projects, but they fell short in teaching me how to trust my instincts, and how to stop thinking with my educated brain and more with my kneecaps and butt cheeks.

It...whatever 'it' is, has swallowed me and I lie here in the pit of its cold dark stomach being eaten alive by its bile and I...I don't even know if I want to be saved.

It were better that we were not at all, than that we should live still in wickedness, and to suffer, and not to know wherefore.

It would be so great to have someone my own age to talk to, even if it was just about books.

Una casa senza libreria è una casa senza dignità, — ha qualcosa della locanda, — è come una città senza librai, — un villaggio senza scuole, — una lettera senza ortografia." ("A house without a library in it is without dignity, like a motel, or a city with no bookstores, a town without a school, or a misspelled letter.") [Pagine sparse]

… it would even be inexact to say that I thought of those who read it as readers of my book. Because they were not, as I saw it, my readers. More exactly they were readers of themselves, my book being a sort of magnifying glass … by which I could give them the means to read within themselves.

It would actually constitute more than a miracle, he realised. It would take divine intervention plus luck, plus some unknown element of cosmic wizardry.

I understand now that boundaries between noise and sound are conventions. All boundaries are conventions waiting to be transcended. One may transcend any convention if only one can first conceive of doing so. In moments like this, I can feel your heart beating as clearly as I can feel my own and I know that separation is an illusion, for my life extends far beyond the limitations of me.

I urge the believers to fight; if there be of you twenty steadfast, they shall overcome two hundred; and if there be of you a hundred, they shall overcome a thousand of those who disbelieve-

I used to get upset if somebody I didn't like loved a book I loved. That's MY book, I'd think.

I utilise all my spare moments. I've read twenty-seven of the Hundred Best Books. I collect ferns.

I used to be afraid about what people might say or think after reading what I had written. I am not afraid anymore, because when I write, I am not trying to prove anything to anyone, I am just expressing myself and my opinions. It’s ok if my opinions are different from those of the reader, each of us can have his own opinions. So writing is like talking, if you are afraid of writing, you may end up being afraid of talking

I've always found old bookstores exciting. Whenever I'm in a city that's new to me, I immedicately look through the telephone directory for BOOKS, USED AND RARE. Book dealers send me their catalogs, and I read them as carefully as I would a letter from an old friend, never knowing what treasure I might find. Sometimes the catalogs contain printed material other than books, such as old photographs, newspapers, pamphlets, postcards, and letters.

I've always believed in spreading the gospel of good books.

I've always loved joining clubs--although, in truth, they're usually book clubs." ~Robecca Steam

I've always felt that good writing does not have to be literary.

I've been very influenced by folklore, fairy tales, and folk ballads, so I love all the classic works based on these things -- like George Macdonald's 19th century fairy stories, the fairy poetry of W.B. Yeats, and Sylvia Townsend Warner's splendid book The Kingdoms of Elfin. (I think that particular book of hers wasn't published until the 1970s, not long before her death, but she was an English writer popular in the middle decades of the 20th century.) I'm also a big Pre-Raphaelite fan, so I love William Morris' early fantasy novels. Oh, and "Lud-in-the-Mist" by Hope Mirrlees (Neil Gaiman is a big fan of that one too), and I could go on and on but I won't!

I've even purposely looked for stories full of exactly this kind of angst, because I love the emotion behind it so much.

I've decided I don't like books that end with 'The End'. The fact that there are no more pages, suggests to me that the book has ended.

I’ve done everything I wanted to do, writing books, learning about things, but I’ve been swindled all the same because it’s never anything more.

I've never been so sure about the rest of my life than I am in this moment. This girl is the rest of my life.

I've never understood the desire for books with matched bindings. You don't go through life looking for sets of matched people, and books are just as individual.

I've read many more books than you. It doesn't matter how many you've read. I've read more. Believe me.

I’ve realized people can live in a world they’ve personally constructed through a distorted lens of guilt and shame, whether they deserve it or not.

I’ve read many more books than you. It doesn’t matter how many you’ve read. I’ve read more. Believe me. I’ve had the time.