The book smelled dusty and old but also carried a sweet tang, a hint of something inviting. She opened to the first page and started to read, pronouncing the words in a reverent whisper.
Libraries raised me.
Tucking my nose into a book makes me completely oblivious to my surroundings. I would have made a terrible spy in the army – the first person to hand me a novel would have been able to shoot my head clean off without me noticing.
Books are like imprisoned souls till someone takes them down from a shelf and frees them.
I think books are like people, in the sense that they’ll turn up in your life when you most need them.
Of course anyone who truly loves books buys more of them than he or she can hope to read in one fleeting lifetime. A good book, resting unopened in its slot on a shelf, full of majestic potentiality, is the most comforting sort of intellectual wallpaper.
I’m pretty sure my addiction to reading has just reached a whole new level.
Sometimes I sensed that the books I read in rapid succession had set up some sort of murmur among themselves, transforming my head into an orchestra pit where different musical instruments sounded out, and I would realize that I could endure this life because of these musicales going on in my head.
You should write because you love the shape of stories and sentences and the creation of different words on a page. Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write.
People don’t expect too much from literature. They just want to know they’re not alone with being confused.
Some say life is the thing, but I prefer reading.
Only the nonreader fears books.
Why does everyone think a girl who prefers books to people must be in want of a life?
Once you read something, you can’t erase it from your brain.
I never understood people who don’t have bookshelves.
Reading the Bible will help you get to know the word, but it’s when you put it down and live your life that you get to know the author.
No one knows as well as I how much nonsense is printed in books.
Oh! it is absurd to have a hard-and-fast rule about what one should read and what one shouldn’t. More than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn’t read.
Books didn’t make me wallow in darkness, darkness made me wallow in books.
The love between a writer and a reader is never celebrated.