50+ Book Lover Quotes: Celebrate the Beauty & Power of Reading

“Let children read whatever they want and then talk about it with them. If parents and kids can talk together, we won’t have as much censorship because we won’t have as much fear.”

“The books – the generous friends who met me without suspicion – the merciful masters who never used me ill!”

“For some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you.”

“Books to the ceiling,Books to the sky,My pile of books is a mile high.How I love them! How I need them!I’ll have a long beard by the time I read them.”

“There must be something in books, something we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don’t stay for nothing.”

“When we read a story, we inhabit it. The covers of the book are like a roof and four walls. What is to happen next will take place within the four walls of the story. And this is possible because the story’s voice makes everything its own.”

“One glance at a book and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for 1,000 years. To read is to voyage through time.”

“I am simply a ‘book drunkard.’ Books have the same irresistible temptation for me that liquor has for its devotee. I cannot withstand them.”

“There is something about words. In expert hands, manipulated deftly, they take you prisoner. Wind themselves around your limbs like spider silk, and when you are so enthralled you cannot move, they pierce your skin, enter your blood, numb your thoughts. Inside you they work their magic.”

“He liked the mere act of reading, the magic of turning scratches on a page into words inside his head.”

“Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.”

“Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him.”

“It’s not that I don’t like people. It’s just that when I’m in the company of others – even my nearest and dearest – there always comes a moment when I’d rather be reading a book.”

“Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die.”

“We read books to find out who we are. What other people, real or imaginary, do and think and feel… is an essential guide to our understanding of what we ourselves are and may become.”

“I am not absentminded. It is the presence of mind that makes me unaware of everything else.”

“I know every book of mine by its smell, and I have but to put my nose between the pages to be reminded of all sorts of things.”

“Books make great gifts because they have whole worlds inside of them. And it’s much cheaper to buy somebody a book than it is to buy them the whole world!”

“Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.”

“Books were safer than other people anyway.”

“To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.”

“For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them.”

“Honesty is the first chapter of the book wisdom.”

“Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.”

“Literature is news that stays news.”

“If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.”

“A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one’s neighbor — such is my idea of happiness.”

“A book is a dream that you hold in your hands.(As quoted on BookRiot, June 18, 2013)”

“Only bad books have good endings.If a book is any good, it’s ending is always bad – because you don’t want the book to end.”

“Why can’t people just sit and read books and be nice to each other?”

“A literary academic can no more pass a bookstore than an alcoholic can pass a bar.”

“The covers of this book are too far apart.”

“I am awfully greedy; I want everything from life. I want to be a woman and to be a man, to have many friends and to have loneliness, to work much and write good books, to travel and enjoy myself, to be selfish and to be unselfish… You see, it is difficult to get all which I want. And then when I do not succeed I get mad with anger.”

“Picking five favorite books is like picking the five body parts you’d most like not to lose.”

“So many people enter and leave your life! Hundreds of thousands of people! You have to keep the door open so they can come in! But it also means you have to let them go!”

“I have a passion for teaching kids to become readers, to become comfortable with a book, not daunted. Books shouldn’t be daunting, they should be funny, exciting and wonderful; and learning to be a reader gives a terrific advantage.”

“Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one’s hand.”

“They turned to Angel. We will call you Little One,”the leader said, obviously deciding to dispense with the whole confusing name thing.”Okay,”said Angel agreeably. “I’ll call you Guy in a White Lab Coat.”He frowned.”That can be his Indian name,”I suggested.””

“I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves.”

“Take no heed of her…. She reads a lot of books.”

“It’s not all bad. Heightened self-consciousness, apartness, an inability to join in, physical shame and self-loathing—they are not all bad. Those devils have been my angels. Without them I would never have disappeared into language, literature, the mind, laughter and all the mad intensities that made and unmade me.”

“If only there could be an invention that bottled up a memory, like scent. And it never faded, and it never got stale. And then, when one wanted it, the bottle could be uncorked, and it would be like living the moment all over again.”

“Books are always obviously having conversations with other books, and some times they’re amiable and sometimes not.”

“Fiction is art and art is the triumph over chaos… to celebrate a world that lies spread out around us like a bewildering and stupendous dream.”

“Doctor Who: You want weapons? We’re in a library. Books are the best weapon in the world. This room’s the greatest arsenal we could have. Arm yourself!(from Tooth and Claw in Season 2)”

“Books don’t offer real escape, but they can stop a mind scratching itself raw.”

“That’s what I love about reading: one tiny thing will interest you in a book, and that tiny thing will lead you to another book, and another bit there will lead you onto a third book. It’s geometrically progressive – all with no end in sight, and for no other reason than sheer enjoyment.”

“We live and breathe words.”

“The world was a terrible place, cruel, pitiless, dark as a bad dream. Not a good place to live. Only in books could you find pity, comfort, happiness – and love. Books loved anyone who opened them, they gave you security and friendship and didn’t ask anything in return; they never went away, never, not even when you treated them badly.”

“I went to a bookstore and asked the saleswoman, ‘Where’s the self-help section?’ She said if she told me, it would defeat the purpose.”