A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.
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.
Books break the shackles of time, proof that humans can work magic.
Books tap the wisdom of our species – the greatest minds, the best teachers – from all over the world and from all our history. And they’re patient.
Books are key to understanding the world and participating in a democratic society.
It took the Church until 1832 to remove Galileo ’s work from its list of books which Catholics were forbidden to read at the risk of dire punishment of their immortal souls.
Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of magic.
Books permit us to voyage through time, to tap the wisdom of our ancestors.
What an astonishing thing a book is.
Books are like seeds. They can lie dormant for centuries and then flower in the most unpromising soil.
It was a joy! Words weren’t dull, words were things that could make your mind hum. If you read them and let yourself feel the magic, you could live without pain, with hope, no matter what happened to you.
If something burns your soul with purpose and desire, it’s your duty to be reduced to ashes by it. Any other form of existence will be yet another dull book in the library of life.
That’s how it is with books, isn’t it: They’re not in a hurry. They’ll wait for you till you’re ready. People empty me. I have to go away to refill.
It’s not so much that nothing means anything but more that it keeps meaning nothing. there’s no release, just gurus and self- appointed gods and hucksters. the more people say, the less there is to say. even the best books are dry sawdust.
I read my books at night, like that, under the quilt with the overheated reading lamp. Reading all those good lines while suffocating. It was magic.
I could read the great books but the great books don’t interest me.
It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.
There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts.
No one who can read, ever looks at a book, even unopened on a shelf, like one who cannot.
The New Testament is the very best book that ever was or ever will be known in the world.