quotations about books
Don't judge a book by its cover.
ENGLISH PROVERB
My main disappointment was always that a book had to end. And then what? But I don't think I was ever disappointed by the books. I must have been what any author would consider an ideal reader. I felt every pain and pleasure suffered or enjoyed by all the characters. Oh, but I identified!
EUDORA WELTY
Conversations with Eudora Welty
What makes the success of many books consists in the affinity there is between the mediocrity of the author's ideas and those of the public.
CHAMFORT
The Cynic's Breviary
You know, not every good book needs to be a movie, or a television series, or a video game. There's great work in those mediums, of course, but sometimes a book should remain a book. I still believe nothing tells a story with the richness and complexity of a good novel. When people say they think a book would make a good movie, they say this sometimes because, if it worked, they already saw all the images in the movie theatre that is in their brains. And sometimes that is the way it should stay.
CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON
"Carlos Ruiz Zafon's love letter to literature", New Zealand Listener, Mar. 14, 2013
An unliterary man may be defined as one who reads books once only.
C. S. LEWIS
"On Stories", Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories
No two persons ever read the same book, or saw the same picture.
MADAME SWETCHINE
"Airelles,", The Writings of Madame Swetchine
There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts.
CHARLES DICKENS
Oliver Twist
All books are either dreams or swords,
You can cut, or you can drug, with words.
AMY LOWELL
Sword Blades and Poppy Seeds
It is only a novel ... or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language.
JANE AUSTEN
Northanger Abbey
Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered.
W. H. AUDEN
"Reading", The Dyer's Hand and Other Essays
I want to do something splendid ... something heroic or wonderful that won't be forgotten after I'm dead ... I think I shall write books.
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT
Little Women
The covers of this book are too far apart.
AMBROSE BIERCE
The Devil's Dictionary
A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading it.
WILLIAM STYRON
attributed, Writers at Work
The best books are those which lift us to a higher plane where we breathe a purer atmosphere.
ORISON SWETT MARDEN
Architects of Fate
There is more treasure in books than in all the pirates' loot on Treasure Island and at the bottom of the Spanish Main ... and best of all, you can enjoy these riches every day of your life.
WALT DISNEY
attributed, Peter's Quotations: Ideas for Our Time
Books are but pictures--the world is their original; to know the former well, we must necessarily have much acquaintance with the colors and shades of the latter.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections
Books are not seldom talismans and spells.
WILLIAM COWPER
The Task
The prosperity of a book lies in the minds of readers. Public knowledge and public taste fluctuate; and there come times when works which were once capable of instructing and delighting thousands lose their power, and works, before neglected, emerge into renown.
GEORGE HENRY LEWES
The Principles of Success in Literature
For out of old fields, as men saith,
Cometh all this new corn from year to year;
And out of old books, in good faith,
Cometh all this new science that men learn.
GEOFFREY CHAUCER
"Parliament of Foules"
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.
CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON
The Shadow of the Wind