Wendy Welch Quotes & Sayings

Books, be they physical objects or electronic pulses, are way cool. They are idea houses. So let those who want to read from machines. Those who love the feel, the smell, the gilt edging and the pretty covers and the soft paper, and the kinetic memories will enjoy the physical objects. Either form can be artifact. So long as we're all reading, and gaining joy from it, does it really matter so much? — Wendy Welch

Third places are those needed spaces, neither home nor work, where we are known by our names and valued for being whatever we decide to be -- the clown, the intellectual, the quiet person. Being part of a family is a wonderful thing, and I'm all for team-building at work, but having a place where you don't have to be anything to anyone makes a pleasant breather. — Wendy Welch

In case the term is unfamiliar, the best description ever for 'cozies' is 'murder mysteries where no one cares who got killed because they're all distracted by cooking new recipes or following intricate handicraft instructions.'"--The Little Bookstore of Big Stone Gap — Wendy Welch

Anyone getting starry-eyed about owning a bookstore should ask herself a few questions: Can you lift a box weighing fifty pounds? Do you know what cat pee on paper smells like and can you get it out? Will you exude patience while solving puzzles that start "I'm looking for a book..." and peter out somewhere between "it has 'The' in the title" and "It has a red cover and the author was a soldier whose last name started with S. Or was it Z? — Wendy Welch

I remember as a very young child being warned that libraries and bookstores were quiet places where noise wasn't allowed. Here was yet another thing the adults had gotten wrong, for these book houses pulsed with sounds; they just weren't noisy. The books hummed. The collective noise they made was like riding on a large boat where the motor's steady thrum and tickle vibrated below one's sneakers, ignorable until you listened, then omnipresent and relentless, the sound that carried you forward. Each book brimmed with noises it wanted to make inside your head the moment you opened it; only the shut covers prevented it from shouting ideas, impulses, proverbs, and plots into that sterile silence. — Wendy Welch

Another lesson for bookshop owners: "Learn how to listen yet let it pass through you." Thanks to some therapist friends, I have finally acquired that tough skill. But it wasn't part of our anticipated job description. — Wendy Welch

Books are not just things, but dynamic artifacts, milestones showing where the road took a sudden turn on our individual journeys -- our very individual journeys, since a book that changed one person's life is another person's dreaded English assignment. There's no rhyme or reason to what impacts whom except the alchemy of timing, temperament, and title. — Wendy Welch

The essential criterion for running a bookstore is less "Do you like books?" than "Do you like people?" Ironically, we find that having unlimited access to more reading material than we ever could have imagined means we read less. Chuck and Dee Robinson own Village Books [...]He once said in an interview with business writer Rober Spector, "If you're opening a bookstore because you love reading books, then become a night watchman because you'll be able to read more books that way." He was right. It's amazing how just the sight of so much intellectual fodder quells the appetite, let alone how little time remains to read once the shelves have been straightened, the day's swap credits assessed and put away, and the sales taxes tallied. — Wendy Welch

When the occasional customer tells us his or her dream of running a bookstore someday, we recognize our own naivete in that enthusiasm. They may have some inkling about long hours and low pay, but rarely do they know about the fires, the guerrilla bargainers, the bereavements, or the prisons. Neither did we - then. But we sure do now. In all honesty, the scariest, hardest, saddest, and most important stories found in a bookshop aren't in the books, they're in the customers. — Wendy Welch