Book Lover Quotes

“...she made her home in between the pages of books.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, Linger

“As I stood outside in Cow Lane, it occurred to me that Heaven must be a place where the library is open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

No ... eight days a week.”
― Alan Bradley, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

“I stepped into the bookshop and breathed in that perfume of paper and magic that strangely no one had ever thought of bottling.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Angel's Game

“Books are not made for furniture, but there is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house.”
― Henry Ward Beecher

“There are few sights sadder than a ruined book.”
― Lemony Snicket, The Wide Window

“Some women have a weakness for shoes... I can go barefoot if necessary. I have a weakness for books.”
― Oprah Winfrey

“As long as you have any floor space at all, you have room for books! Just make two stacks of books the same height, place them three or four feet apart, lay a board across them, and repeat. Voila! Bookshelves!”
― Jan Karon

“I prefer to be left alone with my books.”
― Alison Weir, Innocent Traitor

“One day, she ventured to the palace library and was delighted to find what good company books could be.”
― E. Lockhart, We Were Liars

“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

“I love inscriptions on flyleaves and notes in margins, I like the comradely sense of turning pages someone else turned, and reading passages someone long gone has called my attention to.”
― Helene Hanff, 84, Charing Cross Road

“Do you know that books smell like nutmeg or some spice from a foreign land? I loved to smell them when I was a boy. Lord, there were a lot of lovely books once, before we let them go.”
― Ray Bradbury

“A house without books is like a room without windows. No man has a right to bring up his children without surrounding them with books, if he has the means to buy them. It is a wrong to his family. He cheats them! Children learn to read by being in the presence of books. The love of knowledge comes with reading and grows upon it.”
― Henry Ward Beecher, Eyes and ears

“I cannot remember a time when I was not in love with them--with the books themselves, cover and binding and the paper they were printed on, with their smell and their weight and with their possession in my arms, captured and carried off to myself.”
― Eudora Welty

“I spent my life folded between the pages of books.”
― Tahereh Mafi, Shatter Me

“. . . finally, I couldn't imagine how I could live without books, and I stopped dreaming about marrying that Chinese prince. . . .”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, White Nights

“The summer movies are coming out. My advice: just stay home and burn a good book.”
― Stephen Colbert

“Beware of books. They are more than innocent assemblages of paper and ink and string and glue. If they are any good, they have the spirit of the author within. Authors are rogues and ruffians and easy lays. They are gluttons for sweets and savories. They devour life and always want more. They have sap, spirit, sex. Books are panderers. The Jews are not wrong to worship books. A real book has pheromones and sprouts grass through its cover.”
― Erica Jong, Seducing the Demon: Writing for My Life

“Books are the flung-open windows to a parallel universe.”
― Kevin Ansbro

“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

“He loved books, those undemanding but faithful friends.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“I wanted more time with the books. I wanted to spend the day in a quiet corner, sitting against a window, lost in words and worlds I had never been given access to.”
― Kiersten White, The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein

“I look at him, look at the book, remember, this book, this moment, the first book I ever loved”
― Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler's Wife

“Overhyped books are the empty calories of the literary world.”
― Kevin Ansbro

“A book is much more than a delivery vehicle for its contents.”
― Allison Hoover Bartlett, The Man Who Loved Books Too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession

“I always looked for a place where I could sit in solace and read, and you know what offered me that comfortable solitude? Books.”
― Neeraj Agnihotri, In The Name Of Blasphemy

“God is indeed able to make you what He wants you to be.”
― Jaachynma N.E. Agu, The Prince and the Pauper

“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

“Books are the way to my heart. They’re how I travel. - Chandler -”
― Jess Bryson, Stealing Summer

“Don't ask why I know so many random facts. The answer is and always will be books.”
― Navya Mehta, Sun and Moon