27 Quotes About Bibliophilia

Our goal as adults is not to love all books alike, or as few as possible, but rather to love as widely and as well as our limited selves will allow.

I CANNOT LIVE WITHOUT A LIBRARY, and I cannot live without a garden,” says Vik Muniz. “A garden is where we negotiate with nature—a place between the wild and the tame—and a library is where we confront everything.

Books are such great gifts, because they don’t just say what you think about the book, but about the person you’re giving them to.”MARK LEE

I’ll sit in the living room and I’ll go through them, either looking for something I remember seeing, or for something to catch my eye and inspire me. And with books, there’s still an element of serendipity; you see new elements from day to day.”Kathleen Hackett & Stephen Antonson

Knausgaard alternates between periods of intense reading and not reading at all; the mountains of books are, he says, largely aspirational. He classifies them into three categories: books he wants to read, books he has to read, and books he feels he ought to read. In the last, unchanging category—which he calls the superego heap—you’ll find a large number of books on philosophy.

I have a bad memory and too many books,” distributed among four homes, “so I waste lots of time walking around searching” for a specific book. This has its upside: he’s often surprised by books he’d forgotten.

Things turn up in strange places all the time. For example library books, which possess a disconcerting ability to move from place to place, seemingly of their own volition.

He flicked through the yellowed rough-cut pages and breathed its musty smell. It filled him with a strange excitement, as if he'd caught a whiff of ancient, buried cities.

The book is the precious material expression of a past emotion, or the chance of having one in years to come, and to get rid of it would bring the risk of a serious sense of loss. (p. 28)