Quotes & Sayings About Bibliophilia

I've never known any trouble that an hour's reading didn't assuage — Charles De Secondate

Things turn up in strange places all the time. For example library books, which possess a disconcerting ability to move from place to place, seemingly of their own volition. — Lauren Willig

He flicked through the yellowed rough-cut pages and breathed its musty smell. It filled him with a strange excitement, as if he'd caught a whiff of ancient, buried cities. — Joan London

We stopped to browse in the cases, and now that William - with his new glasses on his nose - could linger and read the books, at every title he discovered he let out exclamations of happiness, either because he knew the work, or because he had been seeking it for a long time, or finally because he had never heard it mentioned and was highly excited and titillated. In short, for him every book was like a fabulous animal that he was meeting in a strange land. — Umberto Eco

After you finish a book, the story still goes on in your mind. You can never change the beginning. But you can always change the end. — Sarah Addison Allen

By way of this unprecedented, unbridled literary promiscuity, I have made some pleasant discoveries. — Anna Lyndsey

Chantal is having a relationship with a sentence. Just one of those things. A chance meeting that grew into something important for the both of them. — Neil Gaiman

But what struck me was the book-madness of the place
books lay scattered across the unmade bed and the top of a battered-looking desk, books stood in knee-high piles on the floor, books were crammed sideways and right side up in a narrow bookcase that rose higher than my head and leaned dangerously from the wall, books sat in stacks on top of a dingy dresser. The closet door was propped open by a pile of books, and from beneath the bed a book stuck out beside the toe of a maroon slipper. — Steven Millhauser

But greater than all these delights would be the possession of this wondrous library for my own use and pleasure. What more could my bibliophile's soul ask for? Here were marvels without end, treasures beyond knowing. You have seen the worst of me in these confessions. Here, then, let me throw into the opposite side of the balance, what I truly believe is the best of me: my devotion to the mental life, to those divine faculties of intellect and imagination which, when exercised to the utmost, can make gods of us all. — Michael Cox

Should he give free reign to his desires, the bibliomaniac can ruin his life along with the lives of his loved ones. He'll often take better care of his books than of his own health; he'll spend more on fiction than he does on food; he'll be more interested in his library than in his relationships, and, since few people are prepared to live in a place where every available surface is covered with piles of books, he'll often find himself alone, perhaps in the company of a neglected and malnourished cat. When he dies, all but forgotten, his body might fester for days before a curious neighbor grows concerned about the smell. — Mikita Brottman

Our goal as adults is not to love all books alike, or as few as possible, but rather to love as widely and as well as our limited selves will allow. — Alan Jacobs

Until you opened it, the book was nothing that an untrained eye would look twice at. — Geraldine Brooks

Open the book. (The gilt rubs off the edges of the pages and pollinates the fingertips.) — Elizabeth Bishop

BERNARD. (To DONALD.) Donald, read any new libraries lately?

DONALD. One or three. I did the complete works of Doris Lessing this week. I've been depressed.

[. . .]

BERNARD. Some people eat, some people drink, and some take dope.

DONALD. I read.

MICHAEL. And read and read and read. It's a wonder your eyes don't turn back in your head at the sight of a book jacket.

HANK. Well, at least he's a constructive escapist. — Mart Crowley

The book is the precious material expression of a past emotion, or the chance of having one in years to come, and to get rid of it would bring the risk of a serious sense of loss. (p. 28) — Jacques Bonnet

I try to satisfy the desires that people have to have their books personalized. That's a value, or feature, of bibliophilia that may vanish. How do you get your e-book signed? The idea of people standing in line to get my signature in their book, it's hard to turn them away. — Chris Van Allsburg

Books exist for me not as physical entities with pages and binding, but in the province of my mind. — Sara Sheridan

There is no mistaking a real book when one meets it. It is like falling in love. — Christopher Morley

My ears become my conduit to the world. In the darkness I listen - to thrillers, to detective novels, to romances; to family sagas, potboilers and historical novels; to ghost stories and classic fiction and chick lit; to bonkbusters and history books. I listen to good books and bad books, great books and terrible books; I do not discriminate. Steadily, hour after hour, in the darkness I consume them all. — Anna Lyndsey

A good rule of thumb is: Pack twice as many books as changes of underwear. — Michael Dirda

This is incredible. This is quite amazing because who you're honoring tonight is not only myself but the ghost of a lot of your favorite writers. And I wouldn't be here except that they spoke to me in the library. The library's been the center of my life. I never made it to college. I started going to the library when I graduated from high school. I went to the library every day for three or four days a week for 10 years and I graduated from the library when I was 28. — Ray Bradbury

The memory of a tone, the rhythm of an author's sentences, the sorrow we felt on a novel's last page
perhaps that is all that we can expect to keep from books. — Michael Dirda