41 Quotes by Andy Miller

It would be a good thing to buy books if one could also buy the time to read them; but one usually confuses the purchase of books with the acquisition of their contents.

I felt the unmistakable certainty that I had been in the presence of great art, and that my heart had opened in reply.

In short, this was a period in which the phrase ‘you’re never alone with a good book’ started to sound less like a promise and more like a threat.

It occurred to me that I had been extraordinarily fortunate to have grown up in a prosperous country in an era when, for pretty much the first time in its history, I could read whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted to. And what had I done with this freedom? I had slowly, though unintentionally, abused it. My reading life had become an accumulation of bad habits, short cuts and lies.

On average, everyone has read The Da Vinci Code. You have probably read it. Even if you have not read it, statistically you have.

The writer in me was stirring again, pushing the editor aside.

Is it wrong to prefer books to people? Not at Christmas. A book is like a guest you have invited into your home, except you don’t have to play Pictionary with it or supply it with biscuits and stollen.

All these sorts of book feature in The Year of Reading Dangerously, which could yet be called Fifty Shades of Great.

Somebody once described the Internet as a library where all the books have been taken off the shelves and dumped in the middle of the floor. Disorganisation, however, is not the issue. The Internet is the greatest library in the universe; unfortunately someone has removed all the ‘no talking’ signs.