A Bookshelf Quotes & Sayings

My friend Simon managed only sixteen of the seventeen League games - he smashed his head on a bookshelf in London a few hours before the Grimsby game on the 28th of Decemebr; his girlfriend had to take his car keys away from him because he kept making dazed attempts to drive from Fulham up to the Abbey. — Nick Hornby

Harriet, to hide her excitement, had turned to the bookshelves in the corner between the windows and the fireplace. The books, untidily arranged, some standing, some piled on their sides, with newspapers and magazines wedged among them, confused her. There were no sets and a great many were paper-backed. She saw friends - Mr. Dickens was present - and nodding acquaintances - Laurence Sterne, for instance, and Theodore Dreiser - but they were among strangers: Henry Miller, Norman Douglas, Saki, Ronald Firbank, strangers all. — Jack Iams

When I pass a bookshelf, I like to pick out a book from it and thumb through it. When I see a newspaper on the couch, I like to sit down with it ... Reading is one of the main things I do. Reading is everything. Reading makes me feel I've accomplished something, learned something, become a better person. — Nora Ephron

Self-control is an exhaustible resource. This is a crucial realization, because when we talk about "self-control," we don't mean the narrow sense of the word, as in the willpower needed to fight vice (smokes, cookies, alcohol). We're talking about a broader kind of self-supervision. Think of the way your mind works when you're giving negative feedback to an employee, or assembling a new bookshelf, or learning a new dance. You are careful and deliberate with your words or movements. It feels like there's a supervisor on duty. That's self-control, too. — Chip Heath

Language is my whore, my mistress, my wife, my pen-friend, my check-out girl. Language is a complimentary moist lemon-scented cleansing square or handy freshen-up wipette. Language is the breath of God, the dew on a fresh apple, it's the soft rain of dust that falls into a shaft of morning sun when you pull from an old bookshelf a forgotten volume of erotic diaries; language is the faint scent of urine on a pair of boxer shorts, it's a half-remembered childhood birthday party, a creak on the stair, a spluttering match held to a frosted pane, the warm wet, trusting touch of a leaking nappy, the hulk of a charred Panzer, the underside of a granite boulder, the first downy growth on the upper lip of a Mediterranean girl, cobwebs long since overrun by an old Wellington boot. — Stephen Fry

He turned toward the bookshelf, his back to her, saying nothing. He held out one hand and she gave him the Eliot to shelve. His voice was rough. "'Our words have wings, but fly not where we would.'"
Caroline stepped back into her heels. "I always thought she stole that line from Homer. He was all about the 'winged words' in the Odyssey, and then Eliot comes along with that line and everyone falls all over it."
Brooks seemed to be examining the shelf again. "I thought you liked George Eliot."
"I do. I think she was brilliant. But what does that line mean, anyway? Is it about influence? Writing? Distance?" She shrugged, wishing he would step away from the books and turn around.
"Maybe it means that sometimes what we say doesn't come across the way we mean it to." He finally turned, his lips tilted up a bit at the corners. "I always liked 'nothing is so good as it seems beforehand.' I think that's the perfect Eliot quote for the moment we head off to a garden party. — Mary Jane Hathaway

I have on my bookshelf a series of books with opposite titles: 'The Alpha Strategy' and the 'Omega Strategy'; 'Asia Rising' and 'Asia Falling'; 'Free to Choose' and 'Free to Lose'; 'How to Win Friends and Influence People' and 'How to Lose Friends and Alienate People.' Visitors love the collection. — Mark Skousen

Brad got me this great thing for Christmas. It's a bookshelf that has a book on every religion. That's how we plan to raise our kids. Teach them about all religions. They can pick one or be a student of all of them. We'll celebrate Kwanzaa for our girl. We'll celebrate moon and water festivals for our boys. We'll take them to temples in certain countries. Also to church. — Angelina Jolie

Honey, have you seen my measuring tape?"
"I think it's in that drawer in the kitchen with the scissors, matches, bobby pins, Scotch tape, nail clippers, barbecue tongs, garlic press, extra buttons, old birthday cards, soy sauce packets thick rubber bands, stack of Christmas napkins, stained take-out menus, old cell-phone chargers, instruction booklet for the VCR, some assorted nickels, an incomplete deck of cards, extra chain links for a watch, a half-finished pack of cough drops, a Scrabble piece I found while vacuuming, dead batteries we aren't fully sure are dead yet, a couple screws in a tiny plastic bag left over from the bookshelf, that lock with the forgotten combination, a square of carefully folded aluminum foil, and expired pack of gum, a key to our old house, a toaster warranty card, phone numbers for unknown people, used birthday candles, novelty bottle openers, a barbecue lighter, and that one tiny little spoon."
"Thanks, honey."
AWESOME! — Neil Pasricha

Imagine what it would be like to have a bookshelf filled only with books that you really love. Isn't that image spellbinding? For someone who loves books, what greater happiness could there be? — Marie Kondo

When Maddie prepared for bed behind her screen that night, she emerged to find the most terrible sight yet.

"Oh, really, Logan. That just isn't fair."
He looked up from his reclines pose in her bedroom chaise longue, his face partly covered behind a book bound in dark green leather. "What?"

"You're reading Pride and Prejudice?"

He shrugged. "I found it on your bookshelf."
Seeing him read any book was bad enough. But her favorite book? This was sheer torture.

"Just promise me something, please," she said.

"What's that?"

"Just promise me that I'm not going to come out from around this screen one night and find you holding a baby." That seemed the only possibility more devastating to her self-control.

"He chucked. "It doesna seem likely."

"Good. — Tessa Dare

Mum's mobile was the most immoblie cell phone in the world. It often lived on the top of the bookshelf closest to the front door. It was there so she'd see it before she left the house. The trouble was, Mum was alwayd leaving the house in a mad rush and the mobile stayed put. — Catherine Bateson

You could eat sushi off my bookshelf. My cleaning regime is like a battleground. I'm Genghis Khan and my cleaning products are my Mongolian army and I take no prisoners. The rest of my life is an experiment in chaos so I like to keep my flat neat. — Ryan Adams

Vassily cleared his throat, probably impatient with Gabriel's bookshelf manners. 'You'll have to excuse me,' Gabriel said, putting back the booklet, 'I have a severe addiction to ink.'
'Don't we all?' Vassily nodded. 'Thank God we have other addictions to assuage it a little. — Jean-Christophe Valtat

I was yelling at a dame with a frontage that would have made a good bookshelf. — Rex Stout

The dragon flew up and settled in the crook of Mina's hood, and quickly became invisible again.
"I don't trust that thing," Jared shot back.
"Relax, I find him quite cute. Isn't that right, Ander?" She held up a finger and felt the invisible dragon rub its face against her.
"Great, you've named it, now you're gonna want to keep it. But I'm telling you that thing better be house-trained." He turned to the bookshelf and began to pull open the book to open the hidden exit door.
Mina felt Ander leave her shoulder but didn't let Jared know he was missing. She saw Constance's teacup float mysteriously above Jared's head. She clapped her hand over her mouth to contain the laughter. A second later the cup turned over, spilling lukewarm tea on Jared's unsuspecting head.
"Oh, it better not have just peed on me!" he screamed. — Chanda Hahn

You ever buy a book and not read it? You feel almost guilty having it up on a bookshelf. People are like, "Hey, how's that book?" "I haven't read it." "Oh, did you just buy it?" "I've had it since high school." "Well, can I borrow it?" "No." — Jim Gaffigan

If I walk into a place, a party, say, and there's a bookshelf, I immediately gravitate toward it. Unless there's a bar. But even then, it's only a matter of a few rounds before I make my way to the bookshelf. If there are good books on it, I may never leave the spot all night. Anybody I really want to talk to is going to make his or her way to that bookshelf sooner or later, anyway, right? Books are a nexus. They start conversations, and they continue conversations, and they make people better conversationalists. I have not found this to be the case with Iron Chef, or even alcohol. — Jonathan Evison

I had definitely never heard of anyone peeing in a cup and leaving it in their own office on a bookshelf to evaporate and be absorbed back into their body through the pores on their face. — Tina Fey

I see the beatitudes of books displayed on a bookshelf. — Lailah Gifty Akita

I've reread 'The Secret Garden' every year as an adult. I have a battered copy on my bookshelf - it's really quite a mess! The experience of reading the novel keeps deepening for me. — Ellen Potter

Adventures are funny things.
Some streak down upon you like a storm.
Others emerge after many years have passed and something forgotten is revealed.
They can be discovered on a dusty bookshelf or the yellowed pages of an ancient map.
They promise great reward, but no adventure is without risk. — Wayne Thomas Batson

Don Raimondo tells me what he can't tell them. "The emptiness on the surface of a wall left by a sold bookshelf is the deepest I know. I take away with me the banished books, I give them a second life. Like the second coat in painting, used for finishing, a book's second life is its best." He's rescued the library of a lover of American literature. — Erri De Luca

I grew up in the 'hood around prostitutes, drug dealers, killers, and gangbangers, but I also grew up juxtaposed: On the doorknob outside of our apartment, there was blood from some guy who got shot; but inside, there was National Geographic magazines and encyclopedias and a little library bookshelf situation. — Lupe Fiasco

You know what the best kind of organic certification would be? make an unannounced visit to a farm and take a good long look at the farmer's bookshelf. Because what you're feeding your emotions and thoughts is what this is really all about. the way I produce a chicken is an extension of my worldview. You can learn more about that by seeing what is sitting on my bookshelf than having me fill out a whole bunch of forms. Joel Salatin — Michael Pollan

All books are hyggelig, but classics written by authors such as Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Leo Tolstoy, and Charles Dickens have a special place on the bookshelf. At the right age, your kids may also love to cuddle up with you in the hyggekrog and have you read to them. Probably not Tolstoy. — Meik Wiking

Joey glanced at his alarm clock and saw it was just before midnight. His eyes drifted to his bookshelf. Lined up in a row, in the order of their publication, were all of the Spook Boys books, a series of kids' books about two adventurous brothers who were constantly getting into mischief as they explored haunted houses and spooky old castles, or tried to solve mysteries involving missing diamonds or stolen paintings. Joey envied the characters in those books - he wanted his own life to be made up of such exciting, implausible adventures. But maybe his imagination had gotten carried away. Maybe his mind, saturated with such fictional tales, was more than willing to play tricks on him when it came to houses like the one on Creep Street. — The Blood Brothers

A novel is a hearty meal, but poems are the Belgian chocolates of the bookshelf. You can pick one and linger over it. Savour the aroma, the taste, the melting texture, the sweet craving it leaves behind! Or you can scoff down as many as you can eat. It's up to you. — Vicky Arthurs

Each and every one of us has moments like these, times when a book becomes more than a book. It is a touchstone and the stories between the pages are reflections of us. They remind us of who we were, who we are now and how we got there. The next time you have a bout of nostalgia, I encourage you not to pull out the old photo album. Head to your bookshelf instead, and see what surfaces. I guarantee it will be more than you think.

The pen is mightier than a lot of things. The sword was just the first one down. — Emily Asher-Perrin

Because who wants an incredibly written book sitting on their bookshelf if they have to stare at a shitty cover? — Colleen Hoover

Sumire was so bereft of household goods the place looked deserted. There weren't any curtains in the windows and the books that didn't fit into the bookshelf lay piled on the floor like a gang of intellectual refugees. — Haruki Murakami

He had the tool to break down the walls that imprisoned his people. He had the tool to rip away the veil to the Holy of Holies so that his flock could come before the Lord and be cleansed, made whole, transformed, and have a personal, loving relationship with their creator. That very tool san on Hannah's bookshelf right now, gathering dust until Sunday morning. Her Savior was there, waiting to speak to her and show her the way home again, the way back to love. YOUR WORD IS LIFE! Why didn't more people understand that? — Francine Rivers

I looked at the titles on the bookshelf and found a book on Greek mythology next to a book of poetry, which was flanked by a book on German philosophy. "How are these organized?"
"They're not."
I turned to him. "How do you find anything? There must be thousands of books here."
"I like the search. It's like visiting old friends. — Julianne Donaldson

A bookshelf is a biography written by others. — Kat Lehmann

She studies the endless rows of titles on the bookshelf, then whirls toward me. "Okay. Admit it."

"Admit what?"

She points an accusing finger at me. "You're smart."

I snort loudly. "Of course I'm smart."

"You sure as hell don't act like it." Allie crosses her arms over the front of her loose striped sweater. "In fact, I feel like you go out of your way to make everyone believe you're a dummy. With your 'baby dolls' and foul language and the way you throw 'ain't' into a sentence every so often."

I flash her a grin. "Nope, that's just how I fucking talk, baby doll. Ain't nothing wrong with that. — Elle Kennedy

I source images and ideas from different parts of my experiences, and sometimes they are things that are made-up, or just appear out of nowhere, like out of a dream or an image that I've seen in a book, or even the title of a book that I'm staring at on a shelf. It's a good way to write songs, just stare at a bookshelf! — Julia Stone

Currently, the Library of Congress houses eighteen million books. American publishers add another two hundred thousand titles to this stack each year. This means that at the current publishing rate, ten million new books will be added in the next fifty years. Add together the dusty LOC volumes with the shiny new and forthcoming books, and you get a bookshelf-warping total of twenty-eight million books available for an English reader in the next fifty years! But you can read only 2,600 - because you are a wildly ambitious book devourer ... For every one book that you choose to read, you must ignore ten thousand other books simply because you don't have the time (or money!). — Tony Reinke

There is more to life than a job. I didn't ever want to look back and point to a bookshelf of videotapes and say, 'That's been my life.' It's so much easier to write a resume than it is to craft a spirit. — Jane Clayson

My mom didn't write, but she loved to read. She liked books 'that made you a little nervous.' Stephen King, Dean Koontz and Peter Straub were the three wise men of our family bookshelf. — Michael Easton

There weren't any curtains in the windows, and the books that didn't fit into the bookshelf lay piled on the floor like a bunch of intellectual refugees. — Haruki Murakami

In some way, the magazine helped validate a new kind of American manhood--the kind of guy who would court you with mix tapes, sported Converse Chuck Taylors and shaggy bedhead on his lanky frame, wept over the disappearing rain forest, and had Backlash on his bookshelf. — Kara Jesella

Clary raised her eyebrows at Jace. "You hate bergamot?"
Jace had wandered over to the narrow bookshelf and was examining its contents. "You have a problem with that?"
"You may be the only guy my age I've ever met who knows what bergamot is, much less that it's in Earl Grey tea."
"Yes, well," Jace said, with a supercilious look, "I'm not like other guys. Besides," he added, flipping a book off the shelf, "at the Institute we have to take classes in basic medicinal uses for plants. It's required."
"I figured all your classes were stuff like Slaughter 101 and Beheading for Beginners. — Cassandra Clare

When life throws a wrench in your plans, catch it and build an IKEA bookshelf. — Tyler Oakley

Are you still with this man?
On no, She sniffed. I realized pretty quickly I couldn't marry a man without a bookshelf.
No bookshelf?
In his house. Not even a little one in his loo for the Reader's Digest.
Many people in this country don't read books.
He didn't have one book. Not even a true crime. Or a Jeffrey Archer. I mean, what does that tell you about someone's character? — Jojo Moyes

My insides exploded from the brilliance of it all. There was nothing more stunning than a man who not only knew the most classic stories of all time, but also found a way to make his body his own personal bookshelf. — Brittainy C. Cherry

More people should visit Antarctica, metaphorically speaking, on their own. That is one of the conclusions I have reached, one of my recommendations: explore something, even if it's just a bookshelf. Make a stab in the dark. Read off the beaten path. Your attention is precious. Be careful of other people trying to direct how you dispense it. Confront your own values. Decide what it is you are looking for an then look for it. Perform connoisseurship. We all need to create our own vocabulary of appreciation, or we are trapped by the vocabulary of others. — Phyllis Rose

Life's best adventures are as close as your nearest bookshelf. Tour Europe with the Count of Monte Cristo. Dance a ball with Mr Darcy. Hunt down bad guys with Stephanie Plum. Amazing things can happen when you read. — Ally Carter

And as I surveyed the clutter of his study I was pleased to see that he was a man after my own heart. All of his money appeared to have been spent on either books or shelves to hold them. — Ross King

Sometimes I'll pick up the "heart of the jungle" fossil on my bookshelf, or pull out my old field notebooks from my desk drawer, warped by Amazonian rains and the river's steam, the scent of the jungle still on their pages. I do this to remind myself that fiction does not have a monopoly on the unbelievable. — Andres Ruzo

Books and bookcases cropping up in stuff that I've written means that they have to be reproduced on stage or on film. This isn't as straightforward as it might seem. A designer will either present you with shelves lined with gilt-tooled library sets, the sort of clubland books one can rent by the yard as decor, or he or she will send out for some junk books from the nearest second-hand bookshop and think that those will do. Another short cut is to order in a cargo of remaindered books so that you end up with a shelf so garish and lacking of character it bears about as much of a relationship to literature as a caravan site does to architecture. A bookshelf is as particular to its owner as are his or her clothes; a personality is stamped on a library just as a shoe is shaped to the foot. — Alan Bennett

So please, oh please, we beg, we pray,
Go throw your TV set away,
And in its place you can install
A lovely bookshelf on the wall.
Then fill the shelves with lots of books. — Roald Dahl

I love drafting like I love eating ice cream or having sex; I love revising like I love doing logic puzzles; I love line-editing like I love perfectly organizing a bookshelf; I hate reviewing copyedits and the second round of proofreading because, by then, I'm getting pretty tired of my own words. They all have their own challenges, though. — Tim Pratt

Granted, a long book can be as daunting as a hard one. I nearly reached for 'Game of Thrones' until I saw the bookshelf sagging under the burden of those other volumes. — Dave Morris

On the bookshelf of life, God is a useful work of reference, always at hand but seldom consulted. — Dag Hammarskjold

If the Bible is what it claims to be, how can we allow it to remain on a bookshelf? — Steven J. Lawson

In design-speak, 'a library' means a room lined with books, floor-to ceiling, but it all depends on the space you have. You may have a free-standing bookshelf of your favorite books if that's all you have room for. — Nate Berkus

The thing about this bookshelf is that each of these books is a vast experience unto itself, while also being both self-contained and superbly useless. Reading any one of them doesn't get you anywhere particularly meaningful; you haven't arrived or graduated; you've just gone and done something that passed the time. It's like taking a long walk with a friend who's got a lot to say. There's not cumulative purpose to it - it's just an excellent way to waste your life. — Jonathan Lethem

Mr. Wodehouse is a prose stylist of such startling talent that Frankie nearly skipped around with glee when she first read some of his phrases. Until her discovery of Something Fresh on the top shelf of Ruth's bookshelf one bored summer morning, Frankie's leisure reading had consister primarily of paperback mysteries she found on the spinning racks at the public library down the block from her house, and the short stories of Dorothy Parker. Wodehouse's jubilant wordplay bore itself into her synapses like a worm into a fresh ear of corn. — E. Lockhart

I was a bit of a delinquent growing up, a very poor student - I nearly failed several grades before dropping out of high school and getting a G.E.D. But I still read a lot. Thrillers and war novels, mostly, along with the occasional literary novel from my parents' bookshelf. — Philipp Meyer

Anna's spiritual formation was relegated to cultural expressions of faith: the Christmas Baby Jesus and his gifts, the Easter risen Christ and his chocolate bunnies, and a copy of The Thorn Birds pulled from her mother's bookshelf. — Jill Alexander Essbaum

I work in our living room, a strange room in a strange, topsy-turvy house. I work underneath this enormous bookshelf. — Nick Harkaway

Thwack. The nail drove deeper, as if Montgomery was driving it into my very heart. How hard was it to fix a loose nail? He hit it again and again, determined to set that bookshelf straight. Determined to do something right, after so much wrong. — Megan Shepherd

Race, class, childhood experience, the books I found on my mother's bookshelf, the albums I found in my father's basement - these things are all part of who I am and will always be a part of my work. — Rashid Johnson

The first book by an African American I read was Carl T. Rowan's memoir, Go South to Sorrow. I found it on the bookshelf at the back of my fifth-grade classroom, an adult book. I can remember the quality of the morning on which I read. It was a sunlit morning in January, a Saturday morning, cold, high, empty. I sat in a rectangle of sunlight, near the grate of the floor heater in the yellow bedroom. And as I read, I became aware of warmth and comfort and optimism. I was made aware of my comfort by the knowledge that others were not, are not, comforted. Carl Rowan at my age was not comforted. — Richard Rodriguez

I have a nice bookshelf in my office, but not my house. I'm crass, but not that crass. — Jerry Seinfeld

I had to put this slim volume back into my bookshelf and drink a J&B on the rocks, followed by two Xanax, to recover from the effort. — Bret Easton Ellis

Behind every writer stands a very large bookshelf. — Justin Cronin

Every stylish man should have a copy of 'The Fountainhead' by Ayn Rand on his bookshelf. — Orlando Bloom

I'd give you some pants, but I don't wear any," a mage standing by a bookshelf remarked sympathetically. — Andrey Vasilyev

Out of habit, she stopped by the bookshelf in the living room to see if there was a paperback that she could stuff into her pocket for emergencies - you never knew when you might need a book to entertain and comfort and distract you in the day's empty places — Emily Croy Barker

I like to think that when I fall,
A rain-drop in Death's shoreless sea,
This shelf of books along the wall,
Beside my bed, will mourn for me. — Robert W. Service

I have on my bookshelf a book called 'Movie Monsters' by Alan Ormsby, a kids' book I got when I was in kindergarten. It started there. — Jason Henderson

Neel takes a sharp breath and I know exactly what it means. It means: I have waited my whole life to walk through a secret passage built into a bookshelf. — Robin Sloan

So we go around pigeonholing everything. We put cows in cowsheds, horses in stables, pigs in pigsties, and chickens in chicken coops. The same happens when Sophie Amundsen tidies up her room. She puts her books on the bookshelf, her schoolbooks in her schoolbag, and her magazines in the drawer. She folds her clothes neatly and puts them in the closet - underwear on one shelf, sweaters on another, and socks in a drawer on their own. Notice that we do the same thing in our minds. we distinguish between things made of stone, things made of wool, and things made of rubber. We distinguish between things that are alive or dead, and we distinguish between vegetables, animal, and human — Jostein Gaarder

The bookshelf, like the book, has become an integral part of civilization as we know it, its presence in a home practically defining what it means to be civilized, educated, and refined. — Henry Petroski

The Dick, Jane, and Spot primers have gone to that bookshelf in the sky. I have, in some ways, a tender feeling toward them, so I think it's for the best. — Chris Van Allsburg

The cleanest book on a dusty bookshelf is usually a dirty one. — Ashwin Sanghi

Adrienne Mayor's inquiry into the myth
and surprising reality
of Amazon women begins with the fierce Greek huntress Atalanta, but takes us deep into the past and as far afield as the Great Wall of China. With the restless curiosity and meticulous scholarship that have become her hallmark, the author once again has found a gap in my bookshelf and filled it, admirably. — Steven Saylor

I think, to give our bookshelf a little credit, our area of the library and the bookstore has attracted stronger writers as it's started to thrive. — Margaret Stohl

We have a generation of kids who may never see a bookshelf or never see books in houses. What are they going to think about books? How will books become meaningful in their lives except as yet another form of digitalized content? A book is not just digitalized content. — Jeanette Winterson

Now how do we know you're really from Edenton?" he said.
"And the point of lying would be?" Gabriel asked. "So we could have a complete stranger chauffeur us to another complete stranger's house for proper English tea at," he looked at a clock on the bookshelf, "two in the morning? Mia, he's discovered our nefarious plan."
Edgar rubbed his black shorn hair and squinted at Gabriel "Smartass teenagers. My favorite. — Elisa Nader

Ask anyone with a big book collection, and they'll tell you moving them was the hardest part of the move. Take down a bookshelf and there's often no less than four, possibly up to eight, good Lord if it's over ten, boxes of dense material. This is the single greatest argument for welcoming ebooks. Abandoning print and having your Kindle on display instead doesn't sound like such a bad idea while carrying book box number seven to the car. — Lauren Leto

The bedroom in my apartment is far too small to hold a nightstand. There is, however, this bookshelf. Yes, I stow whatever I'm reading on the lower shelf, but more importantly, it's where I keep a collection of ghost books. — Matthew Tobin Anderson

She has a bookshelf for a heart, and ink runs through her veins, she'll write you into her story with the typewriter in her brain. Her bookshelf's getting crowded. With all the stories that's she's penned, of all the people who flicked through her pages but closed the book before it ended. And there's one pushed to the very back, that sits collecting dust, with its title in her finest writing, 'The One's Who Lost My Trust'. There's books shes scared to open, and books she doesn't close. Stories of every person she's met stretched out in endless rows. Some people have only one sentence while others once held a main part, thousands of inky footprints that they've left across her heart. You might wonder why she does this, why write of people she once knew? But she hopes one day she'll mean enough for someone to write about her too. — E.H.

My mother wrote a couple of romances when I was a kid, and I always saw books in our bookshelf with 'Schroeder' on the spine. — Karl Schroeder

Who said I was going to give it to you?" He smiled and took a step toward me. "Maybe I have secret love for Fitzwilliam Darcy. We do share a name. I also need to get a gift for someone who would love it."
"If I can't have it, no one can." I narrowed my eyes in mock threat.
"Is that so?"
"You'll have to pry it from my cold, dead fingers." I backed into the bookshelf behind me.
"Maybe I just need to distract you long enough to steal it." He put a hand on the shelf by my head.
"And how do you plan on doing that?" I licked my lips.
"I have a few ideas." He moved his other hand, caging me in, and leaned down. — Nichole Chase

The Cat
The cat licks its paw and lies down in the bookshelf nook. She can lie in a sphinx position without moving for so many hours and then turn her head to me and rise and stretch and turn her back to me and lick her paw again as if no time had passed. It hasn't and she is the sphinx with all the time in the world in the desert of her time the cat knows where flies die wees ghosts in the motes of air and shadows in sunbeams. She hears the music of the spheres and the hum in the wires of houses and the hum of the universe in interstellar spaces but prefers domestic places and the hum of the heater. — Lawrence Ferlinghetti

A framed photo on a dusty bookshelf caught his attention; he moved closer and picked it up silently. A small girl with long blond hair was standing under a tree, her face tilted up in delight as its feathery leaves brushed across her face, framing it.
A willow tree. Willow. — L.A. Weatherly

I sometimes look at my bookshelf now and think about how someday I'm going to die without ever reading a lot of the books there. And one might be life-changingly good and I'll never know. — Jeff Zentner

[T]hat I could find company and consolation and hope in an object pulled almost at random from a bookshelf
felt akin to an instance of religious grace. — Jonathan Franzen

I would stay at my grandma's house on my birthday every year and I remember she had a bookshelf of murder mystery books along with really frightening books, like one on Jack the Ripper. She also had a poster of a shark in the closet which also terrified me at the time. — Christopher Bollen

Another bad cure is the sentence awkwardly stretched out by a "that" or "which" clause. For example, "Leaping from the couch he seized the revolver from the bookshelf that stood behind the armchair," or, "She turned, shrieking, throwing up her arms in terror at the sight of the gorilla that had arrive that morning from Africa, which had formerly been its home." What happens in such sentences, obviously, is that they tend to trail off, lose energy. — John Gardner

I remembered standing in the middle of the street in front of The Crooked Bookshelf, filled with the certainty of a future. I had heard the wolves howling behind the house and remembered how glad I had been to be human. — Maggie Stiefvater

The difference between a person who appreciates books, even loves them, and a collector is not only degrees of affection, I realized. For the former, the bookshelf is a kind of memoir; there are my childhood books, my college books, my favorite novels, my inexplicable choices. Many matchmaking and social networking websites offer a place for members to list what they're reading for just this reason: books can reveal a lot about a person. This is particularly true of the collector, for whom the bookshelf is a reflection not just of what he has read but profoundly of who he is: 'Ownership is the most intimate relationship that one can have to objects. Not that they can come alive in him; it is he who comes alive in them,' wrote cultural critic Walter Benjamin. — Allison Hoover Bartlett

Every time I get mad, I grab my hammer and make a bookshelf or something. — Anthony Mackie

If on a friend's bookshelf
You cannot find Joyce or Sterne
Cervantes, Rabelais, or Burton,
You are in danger, face the fact,
So kick him first or punch him hard
And from him hide behind a curtain. — Alexander Theroux

Using these toolkits is like trying to make a bookshelf out of mashed potatoes. — Jamie Zawinski

I should have known," I said. "Silence seemed smart, but now he's made this huge."

Mr. Rasmus grunted. "We need a plan."

"We have a plan," I snapped. "Is there anything we really could have done besides marrying me off faster?"

General Leger stood with his back against a bookshelf, still staring at the blank screen. "We could kill him."

I sighed. "I really don't want that to be my go-to move. — Kiera Cass

Oh, books, what books they used to know, Those children living long ago! So please, oh please, we beg, we pray, Go throw your TV set away, And in its place you can install A lovely bookshelf on the wall. — Roald Dahl

I long ago ran out of bookshelf space and so, like a museum with its art, simply rotate my books from the boxes to the shelves and back again. — Michael Dirda