Bibliophile Quotes

“If you truly love a book, you should sleep with it, write in it, read aloud from it, and fill its pages with muffin crumbs.”
― Anne Fadiman

“I grabbed my book and opened it up.

I wanted to smell it.

Heck, I wanted to kiss it.

Yes, kiss it.

That's right, I am a book kisser.

Maybe that's kind of perverted or maybe it's just romantic and highly intelligent.”
― Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

“She closed the book and put her cheek against it. There was still an odor of a library on it, of dust, leather, binding glue, and old paper, one book carrying the smell of hundreds.”
― Shannon Hale, The Goose Girl

“The one way of tolerating existence is to lose oneself in literature as in a perpetual orgy.”
― Gustave Flaubert

“There is nothing like the smell of books, both new and old. If someone ever bottled the smell, I would be all over it .”
― Tiffany King, Meant to Be

“I took my time, running my fingers along the spines of books, stopping to pull a title from the shelf and inspect it. A sense of well-being flowed through me as I circled the ground floor. It was better than meditation or a new pair of shoes- or even chocolate. My life was a disaster, but there were still books. Lots and lots of books. A refuge. A solace. Each one offering the possibility of a new beginning.”
― Beth Pattillo, Jane Austen Ruined My Life

“We lusty bibliophiles know that reading, unlike just about anything else, is both good for you and loads of fun.”
― Kevin Smokler, Bookmark Now: Writing in Unreaderly Times: A Collection of All Original Essays from Today's (and Tomorrow's) Young Authors on the State of the Art -- ... Hustle -- in the Age of Information Overload

“What's a horizon?' Lazlo asked, straight-faced. 'Is it like the end of an aisle of books?”
― Laini Taylor, Strange the Dreamer

“When you sell a man a book you don’t sell him just twelve ounces of paper and ink and glue - you sell him a whole new life. Love and friendship and humour and ships at sea by night - there’s all heaven and earth in a book, a real book I mean.”
― Christopher Morley, Parnassus on Wheels

“Still. Four words.

And I didn’t realize it until a couple of days ago, when someone wrote in to my blog:

Dear Neil,

If you could choose a quote - either by you or another author - to be inscribed on the wall of a public library children’s area, what would it be?

Thanks!

Lynn

I pondered a bit. I’d said a lot about books and kids’ reading over the years, and other people had said things pithier and wiser than I ever could. And then it hit me, and this is what I wrote:

I’m not sure I’d put a quote up, if it was me, and I had a library wall to deface. I think I’d just remind people of the power of stories, and why they exist in the first place. I’d put up the four words that anyone telling a story wants to hear. The ones that show that it’s working, and that pages will be turned:

“… and then w”
― Neil Gaiman, Stories: All-New Tales

“In reading, friendship is restored immediately to its original purity. With books there is no forced sociability. If we pass the evening with those friends—books—it’s because we really want to. When we leave them, we do so with regret and, when we have left them, there are none of those thoughts that spoil friendship: “What did they think of us?”—“Did we make a mistake and say something tactless?”—“Did they like us?”—nor is there the anxiety of being forgotten because of displacement by someone else. All such agitating thoughts expire as we enter the pure and calm friendship of reading.”
― Marcel Proust

“Shara was already an avid reader by then, but she had never realized until that moment what books meant, the possibility they presented: you could protect them forever, store them up like engineers store water, endless resources of time and knowledge snared in ink, tied down to paper, layered on shelves.... Moments made physical, untouchable, perfect, like preserving a dead hornet in crystal, one drop of venom forever hanging from its stinger.
She felt overwhelmed. It was--she briefly thinks of herself and Vo, reading together in the library--a lot like being in love for the first time.”
― Robert Jackson Bennett, City of Stairs

“Never before had I felt trapped, so seduced and caught up in a story,' Clara explained, 'the way I did with that book. Until then, reading was just a duty, a sort of fine one had to pay teachers and tutors without quite knowing why. I had never known the pleasure of reading, of exploring the recesses of the soul, of letting myself be carried away by imagination, beauty, and the mystery of fiction and language. For me all those things were born with that novel. This is a world of shadows, Daniel, and magic is a rare asset. That book taught me that by reading, I could live more intensely. It could give me back the sight I had lost. For that reason alone, a book that didn't matter to anyone, changed my life.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

“A library should fill our leisure with adventure. It is a refuge from the commonplace and the dull, a sanctuary where all the trials, the tribulations, and the boredoms of the outer world are forbidden and where such an evil thing as a tax-collector may be forgotten and, peradventure, forgiven.”
― E. Norman Torry, Round My Library Fire: A Book about Books

“She didn't quite share her husband's passion for antiquarian books, but she understood it. She understood that if you cracked Rhys open, he would probably have paperback pages inside him instead of organs.”
― S.T. Gibson, Evocation

“This was it. She had achieved her dream. Surely life would be downhill from here, but for now she would bask in every second of this celebration of those most wonderful moments in history when magic had occurred, resulting in a special something humanity could hold, love, learn from, adore, for all eternity.”
― W.H. Lockwood, A Lesson in Love and Death

“Of all kinds of human weaknesses, the craze for collecting old books is the most excusable. During the early phases of the disease, the book-lover is content to purchase only books which he [sic] reads. Next he buys books which he means to read; and as his store accumulates, he hopes to read his purchases; but by-and-by he takes home books in beautiful bindings and of early date, but printed in extinct languages he cannot read.”
― Robert Milne Williamson, Bits from an Old Book Shop

“Books aren't life, only a decoration for it, and little more than that.”
― Manuel Vilas, Ordesa

“I never lend books I expect to require again.”
― Anne Perry

“One culture invents clay tablets.
Others- ink, scrolls, papyrus, print...
But somehow, all the classics are written by another.”
― Puchkov Dmitriy (Goblin)

“I try to alternate reading something educational with reading something fun, a sort of Nabisco frosted Mini-Wheats reading program.”
― Sam Wiebe, Last of the Independents: Vancouver Noir

“Save trees, buy ebooks.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Aşk Mafia: Armor of The World

“Ebooks are to print books what EVs are to gas vehicles.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Aşk Mafia: Armor of The World

“Save Trees, Buy Ebooks (The Sonnet)

Oh, I know so well, the euphoria of bibliosmia!
So, buy only the priceless books in printed form.
If explorers of knowledge don't act responsible,
All glory of bibliophilia is fraudulent and wrong.

Literature is just the same, no matter the format,
You gotta prioritize between ebooks and print form.
In pursuit of knowledge ebooks are environment-friendly,
Therefore, keep your print book buying to bare minimum.

We cherish music totally electronically these days,
We no longer clutter the shelves with CDs or vinyls.
Why not do the same with literature, especially when,
Ebooks are to print books what EVs are to gas vehicles.

Printed books will always be special, so buy one book
by your favorite author in print, rest in digital form.
Save trees, buy ebooks, that's the new book lovers' norm.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Aşk Mafia: Armor of The World

“And I'll have to stay home. For another nine or ten years or who knows how long.. Till I'm old enough to move out and travel on my own. It's just "sigh" I don't know if I can wait that long. And I don't know if I'll be satisfied ever again - living vicariously through my books.

I just know... that I don't want to go home yet. I am not ready.”
― Reimena Yee, My Aunt Is a Monster

“When I travel, I find myself drawn into bookstores and to books I wonder if I will ever see again.”
― Henry Petroski, The Book on the Bookshelf

“The bookshelf the floor on which books stand; it is the bed on which they sleep until a prince of a reader wakes them up or a talent scout promises to make them a star. Books open up their hearts, but bookshelves simply pine.”
― Henry Petroski, The Book on the Bookshelf

“Book Bans Are Dumb
(Sonnet 1587)

Book bans are dumb,
It makes the mind numb.
If banning books were justice,
Middle ages would've been fun.

I’ve got Mein Kampf on my shelf,
next to bible, quran and vedanta.
You cannot fathom the wholeness of life,
if you let expansion be dictated by law.

Expansion can't be contained by law,
concocted in the gutter of tribalism.
Burning books doesn't prevent darkness,
It only obstructs illumination.

Book bans are dumb,
it makes the world numb.
Read reason, fiction, the lot -
Stretch your mind beyond medieval vision.”
― Abhijit Naskar, World War Human: 100 New Earthling Sonnets

“Love is for the heart what books are for the brain.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Little Planet on The Prairie: Dunya Benim, Sorumluluk Benim

“Safest place for a book is on the shelf, but that's neither its place nor purpose. A book is supposed to have wrinkled pages, cover ripped, and spine broken, still unbent - that's how you know it's a book well read, and the same holds true for a life well lived.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Azad Earth Army: When The World Cries Blood