Bibliophile Quotes

“For all her faults, it was actually my mom who instilled in me a love of reading, and books, for which I will always be grateful. She’s a complete bibliophile, so I’ve pretty much grown up around libraries and books.”

“If you truly love a book, you should sleep with it, write in it, read aloud from it, and fill its pages with muffin crumbs.”

“And because when all the words of promises and memories fade, these words that are written are the only one that remain. People may change and things may happen when we least expect it to but all these written words are what will keep it all alive. Over and over again. It remains.”

“For him that stealeth, or borroweth and returneth not, this book from its owner,Let it change into a serpent in his hand and rend him. Let him be struck with palsy and all his members blasted. Let him languish in pain crying out for mercy, Let there be no surcease to his agony till he sink in dissolution. Let bookworms gnaw his entrails in token of the worm that dieth not.When at last he goeth to his final punishment, Let the flames of Hell consume him forever.[attributed to the Monastery of San Pedro in Barcelona, Spain]”

“With thought, patience, and discrimination, book passion becomes the signature of a person's character. ”

“For me, every book is an individual with its own identity and has to be nurtured and taken care of, so that it may survive for a longer period.”

“It needs to be repeated that books are much more than merely vehicles for text. Awareness of the way a book is created, the materials of which it is made, flipping through the volume to see how it is arranged, the intended readership, the clues of the previous ownership and use, and potential problems in its conservation - all these become almost instinctive for experienced readers. (For rare-book custodians, such things as smelling a volume or shaking a leaf to hear the rattle provide further "forensic" information.) This is like an extension to the metadata (such as a book's Dewey class number), which is still largely absent from e-books.”

“...bookstores, libraries... they're the closest thing I have to a church.”

“I'm so glad I have my own copy. I can read them again and again. I can read them again and again on trains, all my life, and every time I do I'll remember today and it will connect up. (Is that magic?)”