BOOK QUOTES VII

quotations about books

Books are influential in proportion to their obscurity, provided that the obscurity be that of inexpressible Realities. The Bible is the most obscure book in the world. He must be a great fool who thinks he understands the plainest chapter of it.

COVENTRY PATMORE

The Rod


When you’re reading a novel, I think the reason you care about how any given plot turns out is that you take it as a data point in the big story of how the world works. Does such-and-such a kind of guy get the girl in the end? Does adultery ever bring happiness? How do winners become winners?

ELIF BATUMAN

interview, The Rumpus, Apr. 25, 2012


Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered.

W. H. AUDEN

"Reading", The Dyer's Hand and Other Essays


I'm much more willing to buy a novel electronically by someone I don't know. Because if halfway through I think, I don't really like this, I can just stop. I can't throw books out, even if I think they're crummy. I feel like I've got to give it to the library. I've got to loan it to somebody, or I keep it on my shelf. It's like a plant.

SUSAN ORLEAN

Newsweek, Jul. 13, 2009


Books are but pictures--the world is their original; to know the former well, we must necessarily have much acquaintance with the colors and shades of the latter.

NORMAN MACDONALD

Maxims and Moral Reflections


The greatest book is not the one whose message engraves itself on the brain, as a telegraphic message engraves itself on the ticker-tape, but the one whose vital impact opens up other viewpoints, and from writer to reader spreads the fire that is fed by the various essences, until it becomes a vast conflagration leaping from forest to forest.

ROMAIN ROLLAND

Journey Within


Books are all right, but dead men's brains are no good unless you mix a live one's with them.

GEORGE HORACE LORIMER

Old Gorgon Graham


Thank God for books as an alternative to conversation.

W. H. AUDEN

The Complete Works of W. H. Auden


One of the great things about books is sometimes there are some fantastic pictures.

GEORGE W. BUSH

"W's Greatest Hits: The top 25 Bushisms of all time", Slate, January 12, 2009


Many books require no thought from those who read them, and for a very simple reason--they made no such demand upon those who wrote them.

CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Lacon


The greatest advantage of books does not always come from what we remember of them, but from their suggestiveness. A good book often serves as a match to light the dormant power within us.

ORISON SWETT MARDEN

Architects of Fate


The thing one reads and likes, and then forgets, is of no account. The thing that stays, and haunts one, and refuses to be forgotten, that is the sincere thing.

THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH

Ponkapog Papers


Books are not seldom talismans and spells.

WILLIAM COWPER

The Task


Books admitted me to their world open-handedly, as people for their most part, did not. The life I lived in books was one of ease and freedom, worldly wisdom, glitter, dash and style.

JONATHAN RABAN

For Love and Money


Books are the training weights of the mind.

EPICTETUS

The Art of Living


Books are always obviously having conversations with other books, and some times they're amiable and sometimes not.

CHINA MIÉVILLE

The City and the City


I want to do something splendid ... something heroic or wonderful that won't be forgotten after I'm dead ... I think I shall write books.

LOUISA MAY ALCOTT

Little Women


A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

G. K. CHESTERTON

Heretics


For out of old fields, as men saith,
Cometh all this new corn from year to year;
And out of old books, in good faith,
Cometh all this new science that men learn.

GEOFFREY CHAUCER

"Parliament of Foules"


You know, not every good book needs to be a movie, or a television series, or a video game. There's great work in those mediums, of course, but sometimes a book should remain a book. I still believe nothing tells a story with the richness and complexity of a good novel. When people say they think a book would make a good movie, they say this sometimes because, if it worked, they already saw all the images in the movie theatre that is in their brains. And sometimes that is the way it should stay.

CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON

"Carlos Ruiz Zafon's love letter to literature", New Zealand Listener, Mar. 14, 2013