50+ Literary Quotes: Insights from Authors on Books & Reading

“When writers die they become books, which is, after all, not too bad an incarnation.[As attributed by Alastair Reid in Neruda and Borges, The New Yorker, June 24, 1996; as well as in The Talk of the Town, The New Yorker, July 7, 1986]”

“Writers are the exorcists of their own demons.”

“Personally, I am a hedonistic reader; I have never read a book merely because it was ancient. I read books for the aesthetic emotions they offer me, and I ignore the commentaries and criticism.”

“I have an idea that the only thing which makes it possible to regard this world we live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create out of the chaos. The pictures they paint, the music they compose, the books they write, and the lives they lead. Of all these the richest in beauty is the beautiful life. That is the perfect work of art.”

“She should have done science, not spent all her time with her head in novels. Novels gave you a completely false idea about life, they told lies and they implied there were endings when in reality there were no endings, everything just went on and on and on.”

“Books may look like nothing more than words on a page, but they are actually an infinitely complex imaginotransference technology that translates odd, inky squiggles into pictures inside your head.”

“Only my books anoint me, and a few friends, those who reach into my veins.”

“There’s a hunger for stories in all of us, adults too. We need stories so much that we’re even willing to read bad books to get them, if the good books won’t supply them.”

“A successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out of it.”

“Authors like cats because they are such quiet, lovable, wise creatures, and cats like authors for the same reasons.”

“What refuge is there for the victim who is oppressed with the feeling that there are a thousand new books he ought to read, while life is only long enough for him to attempt to read a hundred?”

“You want to remember that while you’re judging the book, the book is also judging you.”

“His hands were weak and shaking from carrying far too many books from the bookshop. It was the best feeling.”

“I read the fuck out of every book I can get my hands on.”

“After that, the book will fade, the way all books fade in your mind. But I hope you will remember this:A man walking fast down a dark lonely street. Quick steps and hard breathing, all wonder and need. A bell above a door and the tinkle it makes. A clerk and a ladder and warm golden light, and then: the right book exactly, at exactly the right time.”

“I was raised among books, making invisible friends in pages that seemed cast from dust and whose smell I carry on my hands to this day.”

“When a reader falls in love with a book, it leaves its essence inside him, like radioactive fallout in an arable field, and after that there are certain crops that will no longer grow in him, while other, stranger, more fantastic growths may occasionally be produced.[Books vs. Goons, L.A. Times, April 24, 2005]”

“I attempted briefly to consecrate myself in the public library, believing every crack in my soul could be chinked with a book.”

“The ability to read awoke inside of me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive.”

“You forget everything. The hours slip by. You travel in your chair through centuries you seem seem to see before you, your thoughts are caught up in the story…”

“Don’t mark up the Library’s copy, you fool! Librarians are Unprankable. They’ll track you down! They have skills!”

“Without libraries what have we? We have no past and no future.”

“Books can be dangerous. The best ones should be labeled This could change your life.””

“There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book and a tired man who wants a book to read.”

“Wear the old coat and buy the new book.”

“An unread book does nobody any good. Stories happen in the mind of a reader, not among symbols printed on a page.”

“The failure to read good books both enfeebles the vision and strengthens our most fatal tendency — the belief that the here and now is all there is.”

“There was another reason [she] took her books whenever they went away. They were her home when she was somewhere strange.”

“Life is too short to read books that I’m not enjoying.”

“Reading gives us someplace to go when we have to stay where we are.”

“I’ll bet opening a store called Boobs and Books would increase literacy. I prefer a hands-on approach to learning.”

“The Book of Life, I’m still writing it—both literally and literarily. So far I’ve written the Table of Contents. Right now it’s more of a coffee table.”

“Knocking on a door is so violent. Instead, try talking to the door to get it to open up to you. I should write a self-help book for door-to-door salesmen.”

“I’m trying to translate what my cat says and put it in a book, but how many homonyms are there for meow?”

“I attempted briefly to consecrate myself in the public library, believing every crack in my soul could be chinked with a book.”

“I gave him my best cryptic smile. He did not fall down to his feet, kiss my shoes, and promise me the world. I must be getting rusty.”

“I wrote an edible cookbook. The pages are made out of tortillas. It’s also the Book of Love. (Batteries and hot sauce sold separately.)”

“Early on I set out to write the next Great American Novel, and then later on I set out the silverware and enjoyed my dinner in silence.”

“What better place to kill time than a library?”

“The world is a hellish place, and bad writing is destroying the quality of our suffering.”

“If you surround yourself with the good and righteous, they can only raise you up.”

“There is no scent so pleasant to my nostrils as that faint, subtle reek which comes from an ancient book.”

“Never Let anyone tell you that you can’t; show them that you can.”

“Ahhh. Bed, book, kitten, sandwich. All one needed in life, really.”

“Books, which we mistake for consolation, only add depth to our sorrow.”

“An artist is someone who can hold two opposing viewpoints and still remain fully functional.”

“There are perhaps no days of our childhood we lived so fully as those we believe we left without having lived them, those we spent with a favorite book.”

“As long as you have any floor space at all, you have room for books! Just make two stacks of books the same height, place them three or four feet apart, lay a board across them, and repeat. Viola! Bookshelves!”

“Literature is my Utopia”

“I suppose it’s not a social norm, and not a manly thing to do — to feel, discuss feelings. So that’s what I’m giving the finger to. Social norms and stuff…what good are social norms, really? I think all they do is project a limited and harmful image of people. It thus impedes a broader social acceptance of what someone, or a group of people, might actually be like.”