Books Quotes - Page 16

...story is a powerful stimulant with tremendous influence over how we think and act. Like meth, only safer.

I am thankful to my teachers who taught me how to read.

Buying a book is not about obtaining a possession, but about securing a portal.

I believe in the magic of books. I believe that during certain periods in our lives we are drawn to particular books--whether it's strolling down the aisles of a bookshop with no idea whatsoever of what it is that we want to read and suddenly finding the most perfect, most wonderfully suitable book staring us right in the face. Unblinking. Or a chance meeting with a stranger or friend who recommends a book we would never ordinarily reach for. Books have the ability to find their own way into our lives.

Once you have read a book you care about, some part of it is always with you.

My books hold between their covers every story I've ever known and still remember, or have now forgotten, or may one day read; they fill the space around me with ancient and new voices.

Perhaps too much value is assigned to memory, not enough to thinking. Remembering is an ethical act, has ethical value in and of itself. Memory is, achingly, the only relation we can have with the dead.

When a reader falls in love with a book, it leaves its essence inside him, like radioactive fallout in an arable field, and after that there are certain crops that will no longer grow in him, while other, stranger, more fantastic growths may occasionally be prod

It starts so young, and I'm angry about that. The garbage we're taught. About love, about what's "romantic." Look at so many of the so-called romantic figures in books and movies. Do we ever stop and think how many of them would cause serious and drastic unhappiness after The End? Why are sick and dangerous personality types so often shown a passionate and tragic and something to be longed for when those are the very ones you should run for your life from? Think about it. Heathcliff. Romeo. Don Juan. Jay Gatsby. Rochester. Mr. Darcy. From the rigid control freak in The Sound of Music to all the bad boys some woman goes running to the airport to catch in the last minute of every romantic comedy. She should let him leave. Your time is so valuable, and look at these guys--depressive and moody and violent and immature and self-centered. And what about the big daddy of them all, Prince Charming? What was his secret life? We dont know anything about him, other then he looks good and comes to the rescue.

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 their senses, mix it round in their head, and make it over into words.

Fantasy is silver and scarlet, indigo and azure, obsidian veined with gold and lapis lazuli. Reality is plywood and plastic, done up in mud brown and olive drab. Fantasy tastes of habaneros and honey, cinnamon and cloves, rare red meat and wines as sweet as summer. Reality is beans and tofu, and ashes at the end.

Of course anyone who truly loves books buys more of them than he or she can hope to read in one fleeting lifetime. A good book, resting unopened in its slot on a shelf, full of majestic potentiality, is the most comforting sort of intellectual wallpaper.

You are more likely to find three TVs inside a randomly selected house than you are to find a single book that is or was not read to pass an exam, to please God, or to be a better cook.

Once upon a time, you dragged a part of me into the world of the dead, and now Naoko has dragged another pat of me into that world.

Current "literature" [is] well-written books in which disgusting people do disgusting things to other disgusting people for no apparent reason and with no apparent resolution.

I do not like postmodernism, postapocalyptic settings, postmortem narrators, or magic realism. I rarely respond to supposedly clever formal devices, multiple fonts, pictures where they shouldn't be—basically, gimmicks of any kind. I find literary fiction about the Holocaust or any other major world tragedy to be distasteful—nonfiction only, please. I do not like genre mash-ups à la the literary detective novel or the literary fantasy. Literary should be literary, and genre should be genre, and crossbreeding rarely results in anything satisfying. I do not like children's books, especially ones with orphans, and I prefer not to clutter my shelves with young adult. I do not like anything over four hundred pages or under one hundred fifty pages. I am repulsed by ghostwritten novels by reality television stars, celebrity picture books, sports memoirs, movie tie-in editions, novelty items, and—I imagine this goes without saying—vampires.

I was on a walking tour of Oxford colleges once with a group of bored and unimpressable tourists. They yawned at Balliol's quad, T.E. Lawrence's and Churchill's portraits, and the blackboard Einstein wrote his E=mc2 on. Then the tour guide said, 'And this is the Bridge of Sighs, where Lord Peter proposed (in Latin) to Harriet,' and everyone suddenly came to life and began snapping pictures. Such is the power of books.

A library bears similar qualities to a hospital. Librarians are like doctors, books the prescriptions.

Poetry isn’t an island, it is the bridge. Poetry isn’t a ship, it is the lifeboat. Poetry isn’t swimming. Poetry is water.

You could write a book about things that you can't find on-line.

His hands were weak and shaking from carrying far too many books from the bookshop. It was the best feeling.

This is just a brief "off the top of the head" first blush analysis, and if one wanted to dig deeper, it wouldn't be difficult to discover more "gems" hidden in plain sight.Devil's Inception!

My eyes hunger to read more books then time allows me to devour.

But at night, when the library lamps are lit, the outside world disappears and nothing but the space of books remains in existence.

Of all books printed, probably not more than half are ever read. Many are embalmed in public libraries; many go into private quarters to fill spaces; many are glanced at and put away...scarcely opened until the fire needs kindling. The most ardent book-lovers are not always the greatest readers; indeed, the rabid bibliomaniac seldom reads at all. To him books are as ducats to the miser, something to be hoarded and not employed... So pleasant it is to buy book; so tiresome to utilize them.

To be honest I wrote it mainly from the reason and wanting something more than a life something which could explore my life at deeper level. Probably I have done it... probably I haven't done it... what I know is that I won't be for this Century like somebody famous... I will be still average, I can't go on the amazon and starting selling my works... I don't feel comfortable being in that state.

The Word is alive. We have always known it. But it needs to be uttered, aloud or in the mind of a reader. Without a consciousness to tickle them into life, those books were dead.

I cannot live without books because books are my life.

I beseech thee, O Lord, let me have understanding: For it was not my mind to be curious of the high things, but of such as pass by us daily.

There’s nothing wrong with you at all. Sometimes people say or do things that are mean because there's something the matter with them. With Lydia, it seems there’s always something wrong with her.

Interlibrary loans are a wonder of the world and a glory of civilization. Libraries really are wonderful. They’re better than bookshops, even. I mean bookshops make a profit on selling you books, but libraries just sit there lending you books quietly out of the goodness of their hearts.

The Allatians believe that they have a writing system superior to all others. Unlike books written in alphabets, syllabaries, or logograms, an Allatian book captures not only words, but also the writer’s tone, voice, inflection, emphasis, intonation, rhythm. It is simultaneously a score and a recording. A speech sounds like a speech, a lament a lament, and a story re-creates perfectly the teller’s breathless excitement. For the Allatians, reading is literally hearing the voice of the past.But there is a cost to the beauty of the Allatian book. Because the act of reading requires physical contact with the soft, malleable surface, each time a text is read, it is also damaged and some aspects of the original irretrievably lost. Copies made of more durable materials inevitably fail to capture all the subtleties of the writer’s voice, and are thus shunned.In order to preserve their literary heritage, the Allatians have to lock away their most precious manuscripts in forbidding libraries where few are granted access. Ironically, the most important and beautiful works of Allatian writers are rarely read, but are known only through interpretations made by scribes who attempt to reconstruct the original in new books after hearing the source read at special ceremonies.

If certain aspect needs to be inconsistent, it must better be consistently inconsistent throughout the story.

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She had forced herself to learn to read – picked up bits and pieces, here and there, from the very few teachers who had been patient with her; from looking at words while out and about; from television, and from friends. And to avoid the shouting and drug-induced moaning, and the row of male visitors her mum would entertain, she would barricade herself in her room – there'd been no lock – and lose herself in books.

ah, life—the thingthat happensto uswhile we’re offsomewhere elseblowing ondandelions& wishingourselves intothe pages ofour favoritefairy tales.

No "we" should be taken for granted when the subject is looking at other people's pain.

...the rationale for the existence of literature lies precisely in its ability to work on issues that concern us deeply. And it does so in a way that keeps our motivation at its highest intensity. Literature is fuel for 'hot cognition.' One may presume that imaginative literature is a property that all human cultures possess and as such may provide humans with an evolutionary advantage.

No two persons ever read the same book.

Well there's these things called books.... They are like TV for smart people

Their beauty had always seemed to him like the beauty of pressed flowers - lovely, but dead.

Sometimes they would sit in the parlor together, both reading – in entirely separate worlds, to be sure, but joined somehow. When this happened, other people in the family couldn't bring themselves to disturb them. All that could be heard in the parlor was the sound of pages, turning.

I'm all right, Nic," Wolfe said, and finally looked at him. "We walked through the dungeons under Rome, survived Philadelphia, and this perfumed cage won't bring us to our knees. We're all stronger than that.""All right," Santi said. "But don't ask me to stop standing next to you. Because you know I will, however much you shout about it.

I am not man or beast; I am bibliosexual, and a seedy bibliosexual who haunts the streets, laden with carrier bags held by blistered fingers, stooping under the weight of the rucksack that has brought on sciatica and a Dickensian demeanour.

It is one of the strongest bonds, I think, that can spring up between people: sharing a passion for certain books and their authors.

Writing a long and substantial book is like having a friend and companion at your side, to whom you can always turn for comfort and amusement, and whose society becomes more attractive as a new and widening field of interest is lighted in the mind.

Ponder now by thyself, how great fruit of wickedness the grain of evil seed had brought forth. And when the ears shall be cut down, which are without number, how great a floor shall they fill?

If you know how to read, the World of Books is open to you, after all; and if you like to read, you'll read. If you don't, you'll forget whatever anybody makes you read, anyway.

There is no happiness in love, except at the end of an English novel.

All books are divisible into two classes: the books of the hours, and the books of all Time.

A story is a map of the world. A gloriously colored and wonderful map, the sort one often sees framed and hanging on the wall in a study full of plush chairs and stained-glass lamps: painstakingly lettered, researched down to the last pebble and participle, drawn with dash and flair, with cloud-goddesses in the corners and giant squid squirming up out of the sea...[T]here are more maps in the world than anyone can count. Every person draws a map that shows themselves at the center.

She pulls me further down. More trapped souls reach out to us, dressed in clothes from decades past. The girl ignores them as we descend along the timeline – decade by decade – towards the birth of the island.

Like Petrach's, my books know infinitely more than I do, and I'm grateful that they even tolerate my presence. At times I feel that I abuse the privilege.

I also did some jail time a few years ago. Spent a whole summer in jail reading books. I pumped a ton of new knowledge and new thinking into myself.

He pilfered a copy of Ulysses, but it was possibly the one book he did not finish. 'What's the point of it? I suspect it was a bit of a joke by Joyce. He just kept his mouth shut as people read into it more then there was. Pseudo-intellectuals love to drop the name Ulysses as their favorite book. I refused to be intellectually bullied into finishing it.

Never Let The Roosters Wake You!

I thought about Kizuki. "So you finally made Naoko yours," I heard myself telling him. Oh, well, she was yours to begin with. Now maybe, she's where she belongs. But in this world, in this imperfect world of the living, I did the best I could for Naoko.

Books are a poor substitute for female companionship, but they are easier to find.

Books measure time in both moments and years. We all grow old but the stories never will.

Bookworms are the most precious worms in the world when they are humans, feeding upon the paper's body with their starving minds.