Not being the sort to throw a book, she pounded her fist on her cushion.

People who believe they have bad luck create bad luck. Those who believe they are very fortunate, that the world is a generous place filled with trustworthy people, live in exactly that kind of world.

What an author doesn’t know could fill a book.

I do things like get in a taxi and say, “The library, and step on it.

People listening to songs are like people reading novels: for a few minutes, for a few hours, someone else gets to come in and hijack that part of your brain that’s always thinking. A good...

Someone ought to publish a book about the doomsayers who keep publishing books about the end of publishing.

Books have a unique way of stopping time in a particular moment and saying: Let’s not forget this.

It seems to me that not only the writing in most children’s books condescends to kids, but so does the art. I don’t want to do that.

This book has nothing to do with cats. Or mice. Or self-motivation. This book is 100% 50% finished. But don’t worry, I finished the good half. But don’t be mistaken—the good half isn’t good at...

Reading is going toward something that is about to be, and no one yet knows what it will be.

When you lose yourself in a book the hours grow wings and fly.

I’m not one of those pious types who spend their whole lives hunched on prayer rugs while their eyes and hearts remain closed to the outside world. They read the Qur’an only on the surface....

The novel was set in an unspecified near future, because setting a novel in the present in a time of unprecedented technological and social dislocation seemed to me shortsighted…. To write a book set in...

There is no Frigate like a Book To take us Lands awayNor any Coursers like a Page Of prancing Poetry – This Traverse may the poorest takeWithout oppress of Toll – How frugal is the...

I would rather read a mediocre book than waste time sitting around with people making small talk.

The worn soles of Daffy’s boots skidded on the icy stones. He’d been saving up for a new pair for Christmas, but then he’d come across an encyclopaedia in ten volumes, going cheap. Boots might...

I think books are like people, in the sense that they’ll turn up in your life when you most need them.

And books! …she would buy them all over and over again; she would buy up every copy, I believe, to prevent their falling into unworthy hands; and she would have every book that tells her...

Even a book can be dangerous in the wrong hands, and when that happens, you blame the hands, but you also read the book.

Did you ever hear anyone say, ‘That work had better be banned because I might read it and it might be very damaging to me’?

For six months, then, Emma, at fifteen years of age, made her hands dirty with books from old lending libraries.

Books—they weren’t ladders out of the abyss, but they were companions.

The glamour’s off. Almost any question you ask can be answered. It’s only the questions that you didn’t know to ask that remain, dancing the can-can behind your back. The unknown unknowns.

People in books were always so charming, and all their thoughts and actions so comprehensible. They all invariably had a clear, well-defined object in life, and strove through a few hundred engrossing pages to attain...

An English writer telephoned me from London, asking questions. One was, ‘What’s your alma mater?’ I told him, ‘Books.

Reading yourself as a fiction as well as a fact is the only way to keep the narrative open – the only way to stop the story from running away under its own momentum, often...

It is untrue that fiction is nonutilitarian. The uses of fiction are synonymous with the uses of literature. They include refreshment, clarification of life, self-awareness, expansion of our range of experiences, and enlargement of our...

The library turned out to be a very pleasant place, but it was not the comfortable chairs, the huge wooden bookshelves, or the hush of people reading that made the three siblings feel so good...

If you love books enough, books will love you back.

Everything is an echo of something I once read.Dream, hope, and celebrate life!Love always comes back in a song.One thing we all have in common is a love for food and drink.Memories never die, and...

The pen to a writer is like a cigarette to a smoker; they need it to take the edge off.

Give me books, French wine, fruit, fine weather and a little music played out of doors by somebody I do not know.

Historical novels are, without question, the best way of teaching history, for they offer the human stories behind the events and leave the reader with a desire to know more.

Novels arise out of the shortcomings of history.

…and Jo laid the rustling sheets together with a careful hand, as one might shut the covers of a lovely romance, which holds the reader fast till the end comes, and he finds himself alone...

Just aiming a speely input device, or a Farspark chambre, or whatever you call it… a speelycaptor… at something doesn’t collect what is meaningful to me. I need someone to gather it in with all...

Over the years I have collected so many books that, in aggregate, they can fairly be called a library.I don’t know what percentage of them I have read. Increasingly I wonder how many of them...

When I started this book last year, I had a small reception in mind. A few copies in my hand to share with close friends, maybe a small gathering… I never imagined that my book...

J. Alfred Prufrock measured his life out in coffee spoons. I measure mine out in pages.

This must be what an addict feels like, I think, trying to fight the pull of one last, quick read. My fingers itch toward the binding, and finally, with a sigh of regret, I just...

Once I had opened a book and read its pages, those characters could never be taken away from me. Even if the books were burned, they would still live on in my mind.

And on the subject of burning books: I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength or their powerful political connections or their great wealth, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted...

You are what you eat and read.

People talk about books being an escape, but here on the tube, this one feels more like a lifeline…The motion of the train makes her head rattle, but her eyes lock on the words the...

Censorship is the child of fear and the father of ignorance.

For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a...

If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.

I’m a big believer in big books, and that doesn’t necessarily mean long books.

A book is a magical thing that lets you travel to far-away places without ever leaving your chair.

I’d volunteer to go to prison, as long as there are books. Because with books I am free.