quotations about books
A book is a mirror: if an ape looks into it an apostle is hardly likely to look out.
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG
"Notebook E", Aphorisms
When a book's pattern and the shape of its inner life is as plain to the reader as it is to the author -- then perhaps it is time to throw the book aside, as having had its day, and start again on something new.
DORIS LESSING
Partisan Review, 1973
A book should be an axe to chop open the frozen sea inside us.
J. M. COETZEE
Summertime
A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us.
W. H. AUDEN
attributed, 20,000 Quips & Quotes
All her life she had known that books were living things, not just a convergence of concept and ink, intellect and paper. They did not breathe or think, but they grew and gave a sense of potential so much larger than whatever was written on their pages.
TIM LEBBON
Dawn