Quotes and Sayings about Books

A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone.

"One must always be careful of books," said Tessa, "and what is inside them, for words have the power to change us."

If you have never spent whole afternoons with burning ears and rumpled hair, forgetting the world around you over a book, forgetting cold and hunger-

If you have never read secretly under the bedclothes with a flashlight, because your father or mother or some other well-meaning person has switched off the lamp on the plausible ground that it was time to sleep because you had to get up so early-

If you have never wept bitter tears because a wonderful story has come to an end and you must take your leave of the characters with whom you have shared so many adventures, whom you have loved and admired, for whom you have hoped and feared, and without whose company life seems empty and meaningless-

If such things have not been part of your own experience, you probably won't understand what Bastian did next.

I do believe something very magical can happen when you read a good book.

If you don't like to read you haven't found the right book.

Books are mirrors: you only see in them what you already have inside you.

Few things leave a deeper mark on the reader, than the first book that finds its way to his heart.

Never memorize what you can look up in books.

Jeod: "Books are my friends, my companions. They make me laugh and cry and find meaning in life."

I'm sorry, but how can one possibly pay attention to a book with no pictures in it?

Every book, every volume you see here, has a soul. The soul of the person who wrote it and of those who read it and lived and dreamed with it. Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs his eyes down its pages, its spirit grows and strengthens.

One should never underestimate the power of books.

Books are a uniquely portable magic.

If you stop to think about it, you’ll have to admit that all the stories in the world consist essentially of twenty-six letters. The letters are always the same, only the arrangement varies. From letters words are formed, from words sentences, from sentences chapters, and from chapters stories.

Of all the worlds that man has created, the one in books is the most impressive.

Only the very weak-minded refuse to be influenced by literature and poetry.

'And what is the use of a book,' thought Alice, 'without pictures or conversation?'

If my books can help children become readers, then I feel I have accomplished something important.

I stepped into the bookshop and breathed in that perfume of paper and magic that strangely no one had ever thought of bottling.

Books are a uniquely portable magic.

When all else fails, give up and go to the library.

The world is like a book. Those who don't travel read only one page.

This is the real magic of fantasy fiction: it can feed souls and change lives.

He loved libraries. Nowhere else in the world felt so safe and homey. Nowhere else smelled like books and dust and happy solitude quite like a library did.

Open Books, Not Legs
Blow Minds, Not Guys

I read a book one day and my whole life was changed.

You cannot write for children. They're much too complicated. You can only write books that are of interest to them.

A bookstore is one of the only pieces of physical evidence we have that people are still thinking.

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.

Books are ships which pass through the vast sea of time.

A book can take you around the world and back, all you have to do is open it.

I like books that aren't just lovely but that have memories in themselves. Just like playing a song, picking up a book again that has memories can take you back to another place or another time.

Pen, paper and books are the gunpowder of the mind.

Books should make somebody look at how they feel, be honest with themselves.

But books – they’re different. When you watch a film, you’re sort of an outsider looking in. With a book – you’re right there. You are inside. You are the main character.

Books are as useful to a stupid person as a mirror is useful to a blind person.

The books transported her into new worlds and introduced her to amazing people who lived exciting lives. She went on olden-day sailing ships with Joseph Conrad. She went to Africa with Ernest Hemingway and to India with Rudyard Kipling. She travelled all over the world while sitting in her little room in an English village.

So Matilda’s strong young mind continued to grow, nurtured by the voices of all those authors who had sent their books out into the world like ships on the sea. These books gave Matilda a hopeful and comforting message: You are not alone.

Fiction is the truth inside the lie.

Have courage to make use of your books!

No man can be called friendless who has God and the companionship of good books.

There is no friend as loyal as a book.

Once, in my father's bookshop, I heard a regular customer say that few things leave a deeper mark on a reader than the first book that finds its way into his heart. Those first images, the echo of words we think we have left behind, accompany us throughout our lives and sculpt a palace in our memory to which, sooner or later - no matter how many books we read, how many worlds we discover, or how much we learn or forget - we will return.

A person who won't read has no advantage over one who can't read.

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.

"I kind of lost track of time..."
"For two hours?"
Elend nodded sheepishly. "There were books involved."

There's many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.

Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures.

A book, too, can be a star, a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe.

The power of a book lies in its power to turn a solitary act into a shared vision. As long as we have books, we are not alone.

If you only ever read one book in your life I highly recommend... keeping your f*cking mouth shut.

Poetry, she thought, wasn't written to be analyzed, it was meant to inspire without reason, to touch without understanding.

People aren't like numbers. They're more like letters. And those letters want to become stories. And dad said that stories need to be shared.

Do you know the best thing about broken hearts? They can only really break once the rest is just scratches.

Words are, in my not so humble opinion, our most inexhaustible source of magic, capable of both inflicting injury and remedying it.