Best 4184 quotes in «books quotes» category

but I grew to love these spontaneous gatherings in shopping malls, university bookstores, and specialty bookshops that couldn't be replaced by the big chains, all the spaces with coffee, comfortable chairs, and the presence of books that allow people to browse and discover interests they didn't know they had.

But I loved the library simply because it was a library. I love libraries. I like reading, but I love libraries. Being surrounded by books makes me feel safe, the way some people need trees or mountains around them to feel secure. Not me – nature’s not what I cling to. I cling to books.

But I hope that I will never have a life that is not surrounded by books, by books that are bound in paper and cloth and glue, such perishable things for ideas that have lasted thousands of tears, or just since the most recent Harry Potter. I hope I am always walled in by the very weight and breadth and clumsy, inefficient, antiquated bulk of them, hope that I spend my last days on this Earth arranging and rearranging them on thrones of good, honest pine, oak, and mahogany, because they just feel good in my hands, because I just like to look at their covers, and dream of the promise of the great stories inside.

But in the book," I say, "the mockingbird is supposed to be a symbol of innocence. That's why it's a sin to kill one." "Who says it's a symbol of innocence?" asks Mort. "Teachers," I tell him. "Book reviewers, critics --" "Wikipedia," Elena calls from behind the window display.

But I think the most important thing those books gave me was a kind of faith. My books promised me that life wasn’t just made up of workaday tasks and prosaic things. The world is bigger and more colorful and more important than that.

But 'I worked hard on this' doesn’t exempt you from criticism. Those harsh reviews aren’t about anyone being out to get me. It’s not an Authors vs. Reviewers thing. It’s people taking the time to express their opinions because they care about this stuff." [Us vs. Them vs. Grow the Hell Up (Blog post, September 1, 2013)]

But it's not a cancer book, because cancer books suck.

But love, the great narcotic, was the hothouse in which all the selves burst into their fullest bloom...

...but one can't be irredeemable who shows reverence for books.

But maybe they understood more about life than I did. From an early age they knew what little value the world placed in books, and so didn't waste their time with them. Whereas I, even now, persist in believing that these black marks on white paper bear the greatest significance, that if I keep writing, I might be able to catch the rainbow of consciousness in a jar.

But Neve, you can’t start a book and leave it halfway through,’ he’d said implacably. ‘It’s almost as bad as turning down the corner of the page, instead of using a bookmark.

But now books and men had gone their separate ways. Who has the patience for a book? Only a book.

But one learns from books and reels only that certain things can be done. Actual learning requires that you do those things.

But preserve your mistrust of the page, for a book is a fortress, a place of weeping, the key to a desert, a river that has no bridge, a garden of spears.

But stranger than that was the feeling he had, that everything had been worth it, that all his miseries were going to end, that he was going to a life that would be as good as, perhaps better than, anything he had read about in books.

But really it says everything that’s wrong about the publishing industry, that a quarter of a million people bought and read a sex and shopping novel that wasn’t even written by one of those footballer girlfriends, and yet most of the shortlisted titles on the Orange Prize, which is an award for women writers, don’t even sell ten thousand copies. It’s just not right.

But radical feminist or not, Alesha Parkhurst loved British freedoms as much as Karen Andersen.

But Rosine had read books . . . so many books ... Her over-excited memory was filling her mind with terrifying images . . . The very excess of her imaginings forced her to take a grip on herself.

But sir, I'm seventeen," I reply bluntly. "I'm genetically programmed to want to make statements.

But stories are like people, Atticus. Loving them doesn’t make them perfect. You try to cherish their virtues and overlook their flaws. The flaws are still there, though. " "But you don’t get mad. Not like Pop does." "No, that’s true, I don’t get mad. Not at stories. They do disappoint me sometimes." He looked at the shelves. "Sometimes, they stab me in the heart.

But suddenly, Pentunia spied the Book. The firecrackers had blown it open so that the pages showed. She had never seen them before. Now she saw that there was something written inside the Book which she could not read. So she sat down and thought and thought and thought, until at last she sighed, 'Now I understand. It was not enough to carry wisdom under my wing. I must put it in my mind and in my heart. And to do that I must learn to read.

But the act of rereading contains profundities, and challenges, all its own. Going back to a book — sometimes the same physical copy of it — that you fell in love with years ago is a way both of measuring the distance you’ve traveled in the intervening years and of daring that past self to find new evidence for that old love.

But the not-very-highbrow truth of the matter was that the reading was how I got my ya-yas out. For the sake of my bookish reputation I upgraded to Tolstoy and Steinbeck before I understood them, but my dark secret was that really, I preferred the junk. The Dragonriders of Pern, Flowers in the Attic, The Clan of the Cave Bear. This stuff was like my stash of Playboys under the mattress.

But the book! The siren song of the book!

But the library - especially one so vast - is no mere cabinet of curiosities; it's a world, complete and uncompleteable, and it is filled with secrets.

But then again, in addition to paper and cardboard...a little illuminated box, that contains thousands and thousands of stories? People aren’t fascinated by that? Really?

But the books she read changed her. Word by word. Idea by idea.

But they never again passed up the opportunity to read a good book, together.

But the stories had made him different, too. They had shaped his appetite, his moral prejudices, who he was.

But to her, libraries were like hotels: secret villages inhabited by passing strangers from a thousand different worlds brought together just for a few hours.

But what matters is not the similarities your imagination finds, but the similarities that are implicit in the image, and they are not necessarily the same. I have noticed that the more imaginative readers are often the less successful. Their minds leap to what they think is there rather than waiting with patience. And what matters most of all is where the chosen meaning comes in the hierarch of meaning, you see, and for that there is no alternative to the books. That is why the only alethiometers we know about are kept in or by great libraries.

But when I read, I am completely alone. I have privacy from her and from everyone.

But what were even gold and silver, precious stones and clockwork, to the bookshops, whence a pleasant smell of paper freshly pressed came issuing forth, awakening instant recollections of some new grammar had at school, long time ago, with ‘Master Pinch, Grove House Academy’, inscribed in faultless writing on the fly-leaf! That whiff of russia leather, too, and all those rows on rows of volumes, neatly ranged within – what happiness did they suggest! And in the window were the spick-and-span new works from London, with the title-pages, and sometimes even the first page of the first chapter, laid wide open: tempting unwary men to begin to read the book, and then, in the impossibility of turning over, to rush blindly in, and buy it! Here too were the dainty frontispiece and trim vignette, pointing like hand-posts on the outskirts of great cities to the rich stock of incident beyond; and store of books, with many a grave portrait and time-honoured name, whose matter he knew well, and would have given mines to have, in any form, upon the narrow shelf beside his bed … What a heart-breaking shop it was!

But you love books, then,” Aunt Queen was saying. I had to listen. “Oh, yes,” Lestat said. “Sometimes they are the only thing that keeps me alive.” “What a strange thing to say at your age,” she laughed. “No, but one can feel desperate at any age, don’t you think? The young are eternally desperate,” he said frankly. “And books, they offer one hope —- that a whole universe might open up from between the covers, and falling into that new universe, one is saved.

But your problems are not going to continue for the rest of your life

But you should know that about Dauntless- girl, guy, whatever, it doesn't matter here. What matters is what you've got in your gut.

But while we are confined to books, though the most select and classic, and read only particular written languages, which are themselves but dialects and provincial, we are in danger of forgetting the language in which all things and events speak without metaphor, which alone is copious and standard. Much is published, but little printed. The rays which stream through the shutter will be no longer remembered when the shutter is wholly removed. No method nor discipline can supersede the necessity of being forever on the alert. What is a course of history, or philosophy, or poetry, no matter how well selected, or the best society, or the most admirable routine of life, compared with the discipline of looking always at what is to be seen? Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a seer? Read your fate, see what is before you, and walk on into futurity.

But who can say what's best? That's why you need to grab whatever chance you have for happiness where you find it, and not worry too much about other people. My experience tells me that we get no more than two or three such chances in a lifetime, and if we let them go, we regret it for the rest of our lives.

Buy books, then, that you have read with profit and pleasure and hope to read and reread. Buy books that you may underscore passages and write upon the margins, thus assuring yourself that the book is your own. Keep the books that mean the most to you close at hand, one or two, if possible, on a table at your bedside. Do not hide away your favorite books or keep them locked in enclosed shelves. Do not keep them under glass.

Buy books. Unlike high calorie food, they don't give heart attacks.

Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them; but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents.

But words are things, and a small drop of ink,       Falling like dew, upon a thought, produces That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think;       ’T is strange, the shortest letter which man uses Instead of speech, may form a lasting link       Of ages; to what straits old Time reduces Frail man, when paper — even a rag like this, Survives himself, his tomb, and all that’s his.

Buying, borrowing, or stealing the book is the easy part.

By reading the writings of the most interesting minds in history, we meditate with our own minds and theirs as well. This is to me is a miracle.

By studying, understanding and do the wills of the book, you renounce your mortal life.

By way of this unprecedented, unbridled literary promiscuity, I have made some pleasant discoveries.

Cakes are like books: There are new ones you want to read and old favorites you want to reread.

Calling a book "Young Adult" is just a fancy way of saying the book is censored.

Calling a book "Young Adult" is just a fancy way of saying the book is censored. People used to say they like to read books about romance, true crime, comedy, horror or science fiction. But these days people simply say they like to read "Young Adult" books. As if that were a topic. But that's the thing: Young Adult is not a topic, it's a level of censorship. Saying "I like Young Adult books" is just another way of saying "I like books that have been dumbed down for children. I like books with no big words and no difficult abstract concepts. Nothing that will strain my brain." People like to brag that they used to start reading at an early age, as if that were a badge of honor, a sign of intelligence. Nobody brags about when they started to watch TV. But books are being dumbed down so much these days, it's really not a sign of great intelligence when you're a grown up and you struggle your way through Green Eggs and Ham.

Cam starts laughing, "Oh, I love it when she reads." He turns to Lucy who's face is starting to contort and turn to a bright shade of red, "She reads these smutty books, like full on dirty shit, full of sex and like... bdsm shit." "I'm not joking boys, they're like full on pornographic. Talking about silky shafts and veiny dicks and shit," Logan is now on the ground holding his side from the pain of laughing too hard. "Sometimes she'll be reading, then all of sudden she'll put her book down and look at me like she wants to eat me, literally eat me!" he yells, laughing harder, still swatting away her hands that are trying to shut him up, "I mean I don't mind it, not at all. It's hot as fuck. And she wants to try everything she reads in these books. Like... everything. She learns everything from these books... so I don't give a shit when, of how much she reads, I get rewards.