#book

All the books we own, both read and unread, are the fullest expression of self we have at our disposal. ... But with each passing year, and with each whimsical purchase, our libraries become more and more able to articulate who we are, whether we read the books or not. ↗

— Nick Hornby

#identity #individuality #read

A good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read. ↗

— Terry Pratchett

#bookstore #discworld #read #reading #read

There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them. ↗

— Joseph Brodsky

#censorship #illiteracy #reading #read

Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry. When we consider a book, we mustn't ask ourselves what it says but what it means... ↗

— Umberto Eco

#believe

Neither novels or their readers benefit from any attempts to divine whether any facts hide inside a story. Such efforts attack the very idea that made-up stories can matter, which is sort of the foundational assumption of our species. ↗

— John Green

#books #fiction #on-fiction #effort

Books, books, books! I had found the secret of a garret room Piled high with cases in my father’s name; Piled high, packed large,--where, creeping in and out Among the giant fossils of my past, Like some small nimble mouse between the ribs Of a mastodon, I nibbled here and there At this or that box, pulling through the gap, In heats of terror, haste, victorious joy, The first book first. And how I felt it beat Under my pillow, in the morning’s dark, An hour before the sun would let me read! My books! ↗

— Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#literature #reading #terrorism

The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us. ↗

— Ray Bradbury

#magic #universe #magic

Beware the man of a single book. ↗

— St. Thomas Aquinas

#ignorance #illiteracy #limitation #ignorance

Yes, when I get big and have my own home, no plush chairs and lace curtains for me. And no rubber plants. I'll have a desk like this in my parlor and white walls and a clean green blotter every Saturday night and a row of shining yellow pencils always sharpened for writing and a golden-brown bowl with a flower or some leaves or berries always in it and books . . . books . . . books. . . . ↗

— Betty Smith

#reading #flowers

Second hand books are wild books, homeless books; they have come together in vast flocks of variegated feather, and have a charm which the domesticated volumes of the library lack. ↗

— Virginia Woolf

#library #wild