7,712 Quotes About Books

Look,' he says, 'have you ever looked forward to reading a book so much you can't actually start it?''Oh totally. All the time - if I had a grain of self-restraint I never would've been able to read the last Harry Potter book. The anticipation was painful. You know like what if it does live up to the last ones? What if it's not what I hope it'll be?

Overhyped books are the empty calories of the literary world.

Don't forget, and don't let your reader forget, that the small world in which you have held him for the last hour or two hasn't ended. Be aware, and make him aware, that tomorrow all of its remaining inhabitants will pick up the broken fragments of their lives, and carry on.

Have you ever looked forward to reading a book so much you can’t actually start it?

Why does one begin to write? Because she feels misunderstood, I guess. Because it never comes out clearly enough when she tries to speak. Because she wants to rephrase the world, to take it in and give it back again differently, so that everything is used and nothing is lost. Because it's something to do to pass the time until she is old enough to experience the things she writes about.

What's the use trying to read Shakespeare, especially in one of those little paper editions whose pages get ruffled, or stuck together with sea-water?

The flickering candlelight conspired with the silence, and we only interrupted each other’s reading to share a casual delight.

Libraries can in general be too narrow or too wide for the soul.

Books you have read share a deep ontological similarity with books you haven't: both can be profoundly fuzzy. At times books you haven't read shine more brightly than those you have, and often reading part of a book will shape your mind more decisively than reading all of it; there is no inherent epistemic superiority to having read a book or not having read it.