Best 33 quotes in «bookish quotes» category

An author writes only half the book. The rest is written by readers.

(A couple approaches the desk) BOOKSELLER: Can I help you find something? MAN: Yeah, we're looking for a vocabulary book. It's either called The Soars or The Sars. BOKSELLER: Let me look it up and see what we have. WOMAN: Oh, it's OK; I made a note of the title. (Customer pulls a napkin from her purse and lays it down for the bookseller to read. Written on it is 'The Saurus').

And to love such a librarian requires a surrendering to her eccentricities, a bowing to her pathological quietness, an obeisance to a reticence that is utterly untreatable. If you cannot commit to this sort of dedication, then let her be. Let her wander in wonder among her books and live out her days in her own world without you.

Books gnaw at me from around the edges of my life, demanding more time and attention. I am always left hungry.

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

Delighted," Jess said. "I think all houses should be stuffed with books. It makes them--" "Homes?" the doctor finished. "You are quite the heretic, for someone in a Library uniform." "Guilty.

Here in the realm of books she’s self-assured. She has some of the control she doesn’t have anywhere else.

I have grown to realize that there are very few impossibilities in our world.

It was this that made him attractive to women, who liked the sense that he was not altogether manly. There was something unusual about him, or something behind him. It might be that he was bookish -- never came to see you without taking up the book on the table (he was now reading, with his bootlaces trailing on the floor)...

Pippa is virtually engaged to Lord Castleton; we expect he'll propose within a matter of days of her return to London." His hand stilled for a moment before continuing its long, slow slide. "How did she and Castleton come to know each other?" She thought of the plain, uninspiring earl. "The same way it happens with anyone, really. Balls, dinners, dancing. He seems nice enough, but... I do not care for the idea of him with Pippa." "Why not?" "Some would say she's peculiar, but she's not. She's simply bookish, loves the sciences. She is fascinated by how things work. He doesn't seem to be able to keep up with her. But, honestly? I don't think she gives a fig one way or another about whether or whom she marries. As long as he has a library and a few dogs, she'll make a happiness of sorts for herself. I only wish she could find someone more... well, I hate to sound cruel, but... intelligent.

All of us are writers reading other people's writing, turning pages or clicking to the next screen with pleasure and admiration. All of us absorb other people's words, feeling like we have gotten to know the authors personally in our own ways, even if just a tiny bit. True, we may also harbor jealousy or resentment, disbelief or disappointment. We may wish we had written those words ourselves or berate ourselves for knowing we never could or sigh with relief that we didn't, but thank goodness someone else has.

Back home, I went to my closet and pulled out the old engineer’s transit case stored there. When we were kids, Emma and I had found it in the attic, dusty and empty, and the leather strap used to carry it had a small cut in it. The tag on the top of the wooden-hinged lid read Circa 1907. It was mostly weatherproof and offered plenty of room for the things I valued—like books.

CUSTOMER: I'm looking for a book about the Holocaust; my daughter's very interested in World War II. But I don't want it to be a sad book. BOOKSELLER: ...Not a sad one? CUSTOMER: No. No sad bits at all.

I have given up on reality and am now simply searching for a good fantasy.

Love gives insight, Maggie, and insight often gives foreboding. Listen to me, let me supply you with books; do let me see you sometimes, be your brother and teacher, as you said at Lorton. It is less wrong that you should see me than that you should be committing this long suicide.

Mom, I feel good. This dress makes me feel like someone I didn't know I could be. I've never owned anything like it. But if when you see this - when you see me- you think it's a pity, that it's a shame I didn't lose a few, then screw you, Mom. Try harder.

She was a poetry book with the wrong dust jacket, shelved in the Reference section.

She wrote books—and she was happy.

That the author is speaking only to us, that he is writing only for us, that no one on Earth has the same relationship to that author as we do. I have the same fantasy every time I read a book I love, no matter who wrote it, no matter when it was written. That the author has written his book only for me.

The pen provides a pathway for the musings of the heart.

There had been a time when words had been the only place he could find solace. No book ever lost patience with him or told him to sit still. When his tutors had thrown up their hands in frustration, it was the library that had taught Nikolai military history, strategy, chemistry, astronomy. Each spine had been an open door away whispering, Come in, come in. Here is the land you’ve never seen before. Here is a place to hide when you’re frightened, to play when you’re bored, to rest when the world seems unkind.

Those who spend the greater part of their time in reading or writing books are, of course, apt to take rather particular notice of accumulations of books when they come across them. They will not pass a stall, a shop, or even a bedroom-shelf without reading some title, and if they find themselves in an unfamiliar library, no host need trouble himself further about their entertainment.

Well, you know what they say, the reader is the final contributor. Cheers for doing the heavy lifting.

Whenever one of us introduced an old favorite, we savored the other's first delight like a shared meal eaten with a newly acquired gusto, as if we'd never truly tasted it before.

She decided at once that she and the boy were cut of the same bookish cloth, and could quite possibly become co-conspirators.

Sitting in the brightly lit library, surrounded by books, in total silence, that was ma personal zenith.

That's the most important thing. If I keep reading, maybe I can hold my own.

The book she held had collapsed against her chest, planted like a shield between her tender heart and all that discouraged and despaired.

The cats are asleep at the end of my bed and all around me, the thundery silence of L'Escarènere, caught at last in the rising flood of warm air, carrying the sand from the south. The Alps are folded above in the flickering light. And on the desk in the room beneath lies the writing which insists that the only escape is through the absolute destruction of everything you have ever known, loved, cared for, believed in, even the shell of yourself must be discarded with contempt; for freedom costs no less than everything, including your generosity, self-respect, integrity, tenderness - is that really what i wanted to say? It's what I have said. Worse still, I have pointed out the sheer creative joy of this ferocious destructiveness and the liberating wonder of violence. And these are dangerous messages for which I am no longer responsible.

The nobles had made reading unpopular, as it showed that one couldn’t afford to buy spells or magical devices, since one had to get knowledge to do things the ordinary way; even if this view held little logic, the king himself was known to insult readers as “bookfaces” or “unable to think for themselves, so they need to spout what others have said,” and these opinions became popular, as did most views expressed by the king or his son.

This is every reader's catch-22: the more you read, the more you realize you haven't read; the more you yearn to read more, the more you understand that you have, in fact, read nothing. There is no way to finish, and perhaps that shouldn't be the goal.

To whom do books belong? The books we read and the books we write are both ours and not ours. They're also theirs.

Why, he was so handsome and brave that no one would ever have suspected that he was bookish!