55 Quotes About Bookshops

After all, a town without a bookshop was a town without a heart.

…secondhand bookstores have pilgrims. The words out of print are a call to arms for those who seek a Holy Grail made of paper and ink.

Lord, deliver us from what we already knew we wanted. Give us some new desires, the weirder the better.

I've always felt safe in bookshops. It's as though the stories inside them can rescue me from myself and the rest of the world. A literary sanctuary filled with shelves of paper-shaped parachutes, which will save you when you fall.

Books choose their readers, not the other way around. I believe that booksellers are the matchmakers. Thank you.

But here, none too soon, are the second-hand bookshops. Here we find anchorage in these thwarting currents of being; here we balance ourselves after the splendours and miseries of the streets.

Living in a bookshop is like living in a warehouse of explosives. Those shelves are ranked with the most furious combustibles in the world--the brains of men.

In a town like London there are always plenty of not quite certifiable lunatics walking the streets, and they tend to gravitate towards bookshops, because a bookshop is one of the few places where you can hang about for a long time without spending any money.

Second hand bookshops are best visited alone and in the rain.