Bookseller Quotes & Sayings

Speak of the appetite for drink; or of a bon-vivant's relish for dinner! What are these mere animal throes and ragings compared with those fantasies of taste, of those yearning of the imagination, of those insatiable appetites of intellect, which bewilder a student in a great bookseller's temptation-hall. — Henry Ward Beecher

A remarkable number of the memoirs of booksellers are basically anecdote delivery devices. — Travis McDade

I am a writer (and one day I'll be an author). For a long time I was a bookseller (who wrote) or a TV producer (who wrote), but for the last decade or so, its been "writer." — Michael Scott

I feel like a lot has changed - ebooks are a much more valid format and bigger presses are taking less chances. As a bookseller, there are less real bookstores and more people buying on-line. As a writer, I think there are fewer paths to break through on a big press, but on the other hand there are more small presses doing awesome work now. Overall, artistically, I think it's a pretty exciting time in the literary world. — Kevin Sampsell

There's something kind of heroic about being a bookseller. — Gabrielle Zevin

You cannot invent an algorithm that is as good at recommending books as a good bookseller. — John Green

CUSTOMER: Do you have security cameras in here? BOOKSELLER: Yes. CUSTOMER: Oh. (customer slides a book out from inside his jacket and places it back on the shelf) — Jen Campbell

CUSTOMER: I'd like to buy this audiobook.
BOOKSELLER: Great.
CUSTOMER: Only, I don't really like this narrator.
BOOKSELLER: Oh.
CUSTOMER: Do you have a selection of narrators to choose from? Ideally, I'd like Benedict Cumberbatch — Jen Campbell

So, the moral of that story, other than never underestimate an independent bookseller, was that the Continental Army and its commander in chief had a soft spot for Chief Artillery Officer Henry Knox. — Sarah Vowell

Every child's taste is different. Don't worry if they're not reading 'War and Peace' at age 12. First, build a good foundation and a positive attitude about reading by letting them pick the stories they enjoy. Make friends with a bookseller or librarian. They are a wealth of information on finding books that kids enjoy. — Rick Riordan

The boarding school memoir or novel is an enduring literary subgenre, from 1950s classics such as The Catcher in the Rye to Curtis Sittenfeld's Prep. Doust's recognisably Australian contribution to the genre draws on his own experiences in a West Australian boarding school in this clever, polished, detail-rich debut novel. From the opening pages, the reader is wholly transported into the head of Jack Muir, a sensitive, sharp-eyed boy from small-town WA who is constantly measured (unfavourably) against his goldenboy brother. The distinctive, masterfully inhabited adolescent narrator recalls the narrator in darkly funny coming-of-age memoir Hoi Polloi (Craig Sherborne) - as does the juxtaposition of stark naivety and carefully mined knowingness.' - Bookseller+Publisher — Jon Doust

We have all sorts of conditions of booksellers: one is fanatic on the subject of libraries. He thinks that every public library should be dynamited. Another thinks that moving pictures will destroy the book trade. What rot! Surely everything that arouses people's minds, that makes them alert and questing, increases their appetite for books. - Roger Mifflin — Christopher Morley

The probability of finding a particular book increases in relation to the clarity of the store's focus, the diligence and shrewdness of the bookseller, and the size of the business. — Gabriel Zaid

Bezos ultimately concluded that if Amazon was to continue to thrive as a bookseller in a new digital age, it must own the e-book business in the same way that Apple controlled the music business. "It is far better to cannibalize yourself than have someone else do it," said Diego Piacentini — Brad Stone

It's the story of a bookseller who finds a handbag in the street one day, takes it home with him, empties out its contents and decides to look for the woman who owns it. He succeeds but when he finds her, he runs off like an idiot. — Antoine Laurain

It cannot fail to be admitted, that when protectionism raises the price of things, the consumer loses the difference. But, then, it is said, national labor is the gainer. No, it is not the gainer; for since the Act, it is no more encouraged than it was before, to the amount of fifteen francs. The only thing is that, since the Act, the fifteen francs of John Q. Citizen go to the metal trade, while before it was put in force, they were divided between the ironmonger and the bookseller. — Frederic Bastiat

Overall, I'd say I was an awesome bookseller, but probably not the best book shelver. I loved recommending books and helping people find books. — Julie Kagawa

John had said McKindless would be revealed through his library, but John was a bookseller; he formed his opinion of everyone through their books. — Louise Welsh

That's your truck parked up by the factory isn't it?" Magnus pointed. "It's awfully butch for a bookseller. — Cassandra Clare

Some of you ... have never read a Patrick O'Brian novel. I beseech you to start now. Start with Master and Commander, which should be available in paperback from your nearest bookseller. And if he-or she-does not have a copy, then beat the wretched fellow. — Kevin Myers

CUSTOMER:Will you be open so I can buy the new Harry Potter book?
BOOKSELLER: Yep, we're having a midnight opening.
CUSTOMER: Great! What time? — Jen Campbell

A man's bookseller should keep his confidence, like his physician. What can become of a world where every man knows what another man reads? Why, sir, books would become like quacks' potions, with every mountebank in the newspapers claiming one volume's superiority over another. — Philip Kerr

Hwang Jung-eun is one of the brightest stars of the new South Korean generation - she's Han Kang's favourite, and the novel we're publishing scooped the prestigious Bookseller's Award, for critically-acclaimed fiction that also has a wide popular appeal. She stands out for her focus on social minorities - her protagonists are slum inhabitants, trans women, orphans - and for the way she melds this hard-edged social critique with obliquely fantastical elements and offbeat dialogue. — Deborah Smith

A bookseller," said Grandfather, "is the link between mind and mind, the feeder of the hungry, very often the binder up of wounds. There he sits, your bookseller, surrounded by a thousand minds all done up neatly in cardboard cases; beautiful minds, courageous minds, strong minds, wise minds, all sorts and conditions. There come into him other minds, hungry for beauty, for knowledge, for truth, for love, and to the best of his ability he satisfies them all ... Yes ... It's a great vocation ... Moreover his life is one of wide horizons. He deals in the stuff of eternity and there's no death in a bookseller's shop. Plato and Jane Austen and Keats sit side by side behind his back, Shakespeare is on his right hand and Shelley on his left. — Elizabeth Goudge

If the bookseller happens to desire a privilege for his merchandise, whether he is selling Rabelais or the Fathers of the Church, the magistrate grants the privilege without answering for the contents of the book. - Voltaire (Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire — Voltaire

Often it's not we who shape words, but the words we use that shape us." "You're a funny bookseller, you — Nina George

What was it that ailed me? Was the hand of the Lord turned against me? But why just against me? Why, for that matter, not just as well against a man in South America? When I considered the matter over, it grew more and more incomprehensible to me that I of all others should be selected as an experiment for a Creator's whims. It was, to say the least of it, a peculiar mode of procedure to pass over a whole world of other humans in order to reach me. Why not select just as well Bookseller Pascha, or Hennechen the steam agent? — Knut Hamsun

CUSTOMER: I'm looking for a biography to read that's really interesting. Could you recommend one?
BOOKSELLER: Sure. What books have you read and liked?
CUSTOMER: Well, I really loved Mein Kampf.
BOOKSELLER: ...
CUSTOMER: Loved is probably not the right word.
BOOKSELLER: No. Probably not.
CUSTOMER: Liked, is probably better. Yes. Liked. I liked it a lot.
BOOKSELLER: ... — Jen Campbell

I used to think I should like to be a bookbinder or bookseller it seemed to me a most delightful trade and I wished or thought of nothing better. More lately I thought I should be a minister, it seemed so serious and useful a profession, and I entered but little into the merits of religion and the duties of a minister. Every one dissuaded me from the notion, and before I arrived at any age to require a real decision, science had claimed me. — William Stanley Jevons

CUSTOMER: Hi.
BOOKSELLER: Hi there, how can I help?
CUSTOMER: Could you please explain Kindle to me.
BOOKSELLER: Sure. It's an e-reader, which means you download books and read them on a small hand-held computer.
CUSTOMER: Oh OK, I see. So ... this Kindle. Are the books on that paperback or hardback? — Jen Campbell

The Actor, noticing a closed bookshop, dismounted from the horse which he tied to a street lamp. He woke up the bookseller and bought a Spanish grammar and dictionary. He set out again across town marveling at the way that the words of the foreign language were freshly gathered fruits and not old and dry. They touched the senses marvelously, new like young beggars who accost you, not yet words but the every things they designate, happily running naked before being clothed again in abstraction. — Georges Limbour

The chambermaid believed in courtly love. A book's physical self was sacrosanct to her, its form inseparable from its content; her duty as a lover was Platonic adoration, a noble but doomed attempt to conserve forever the state of perfect chastity in which it had left the bookseller. — Anne Fadiman

Misinformation and disinformation about ritual abuse and mind control trauma and psychotherapy to treat such trauma appear in both paper and electronic media, but are particularly abundant on the Internet on websites of individuals and organizations, bookseller reviews, blogs, newsletters, online encyclopedias, social networking sites, and e-group listservs. — Ellen P. Lacter

When I first encountered the 'Sigma Force' novels - long before I became friends with Jim Rollins - a bookseller told me that these stories were about 'geeks with guns.' While not entirely accurate, that's pretty close to the mark, and that really speaks to me. — Jonathan Maberry

The bookseller read Catherine like a novel. She let him leaf through her and look through her story. — Nina George

It is now high time that I should explain to your Excellencies the object of my perilous voyage. Your Excellencies will bear in mind that distressed circumstances in Rotterdam had at length driven me to the resolution of committing suicide. It was not, however, that to life itself I had any, positive disgust, but that I was harassed beyond endurance by the adventitious miseries attending my situation. In this state of mind, wishing to live, yet wearied with life, the treatise at the stall of the bookseller opened a resource to my imagination. I then finally made up my mind. I determined to depart, yet live - to leave the world, yet continue to exist - in short, to drop enigmas, I resolved, let what would ensue, to force a passage, if I could, to the moon. Now, — Edgar Allan Poe

CUSTOMER: Is your mother around ?
BOOKSELLER: ... I run this bookshop.
CUSTOMER: Oh. Sorry. — Jen Campbell

CUSTOMER: These books are really stupid, aren't they?
BOOKSELLER: Which ones?
CUSTOMER: You know, the ones where animals like cats and mice are best friends.
BOOKSELLER: I suppose they're not very realistic, but then that's fiction.
CUSTOMER: They're more than unrealistic; they're really stupid.
BOOKSELLER: Well, writers use that kind of thing to teach kids about accepting people different to themselves, you know?
CUSTOMER: Yeah, well, books shouldn't pretend that different people get on like that and that everything is 'la de da' and wonderful, should they? Kids should learn that life's a bitch, and the sooner the better. — Jen Campbell

MAN: Do you have black and white film posters?
BOOKSELLER: Yes, we do. They're over here.
MAN: Do you have any posters of Adolf Hitler?
BOOKSELLER: Pardon?
MAN: Adolf Hitler.
BOOKSELLER: Well, he wasn't a film star, was he.
MAN: Yes, he was. He was American. Jewish, I think ... — Jen Campbell

CUSTOMER (holding up a copy of a Harry Potter book): This doesn't have anything weird in it ... does it? BOOKSELLER: You mean, like, werewolves? CUSTOMER: No (whispers) - gays. BOOKSELLER: ... right. — Jen Campbell

It's a good idea to wait a few months before joining anything when you arrive at a village. A bookseller friend who retired to nearby Oxfordshire, and was worried he might be bored, got himself on to every village committee in the first six months, and spent the next ten years extricating himself. — Jilly Cooper

We each take up one virtual space per title ... Virtual shelf life is forever. In a bookstore, you have anywhere from a few weeks to a few months to sell your title, and then it gets returned. This is a big waste of money, and no incentive at all for the bookseller to move the book. — J.A. Konrath

It's a romantic novel," Jaenelle said in a small voice as he called in his half-moon glasses and started idly flipping the pages. "A couple of women in a bookseller's shop kept talking about it." Romance. Passion. Sex. He suppressed - barely - the urge to leap to his feet and twirl her around the room. A sign of emotional healing? Please, sweet Darkness, please let it be a sign of healing. — Anne Bishop

The bookseller could not imagine what might be more practical than a book, — Nina George

CUSTOMER: What kind of bookshop is this?
BOOKSELLER: We're an antiquarian bookshop.
CUSTOMER: Oh, so you sell books about fish. — Jen Campbell

"Out of Print" is bookseller speak for "We can't be hedgehogged". — Terry Pratchett

Your second-hand bookseller is second to none in the worth of the treasures he dispenses. — Leigh Hunt

I love Stephen King as much as any red rum drinking American, but I resent the fact that I, the bookseller, am his bitch. — Caroline Kepnes

The real reason why I should not like to be in the book trade for life is that while I was in it I lost my love of books. A bookseller has to tell lies about books, and that gives him a distaste for them. — George Orwell

I had decided to become a bookseller because I loved good books. I assumed there must be many others who shared a love for reading and that I could minister to their needs. I thought of this as a calling. — Stuart Brent

To say nothing means to give one's consent. — Asne Seierstad

CUSTOMER: You know that film, Coraline?
BOOKSELLER: Yes, indeed.
CUSTOMER: My daughter loves it. Are they going to make it into a book? — Jen Campbell

The surprised bookseller, whose name (inexplicably) was Mendelssohn. He was no relation to the German composer, and this Mendelssohn either overliked his last name or disliked his first so much that he never revealed it. (When Ted had once asked him his first name, Mendelssohn had said only: "Not Felix.") — John Irving

CUSTOMER: I'm always on night shift at work.
BOOKSELLER (jokingly): Is that why you're buying so many vampire novels?
CUSTOMER (seriously): You can never be too prepared. — Jen Campbell

I was walking up and down the rows of books at the antiquarian bookseller's in Karlova Street. Now and then I would take a look out the shop window. It started to snow heavily; holding a book in my hand I watched the snowflakes swirling in front of the wall of St Savior's Church. I returned to my book, savoring its aroma and allowing my eyes to flit over its pages, reading here and there the fragment of a sentence that suddenly sparkled mysteriously because it was taken out of context. I was in no hurry; I was happy to be in a room that smelled pleasantly of old books, where it was warm and quiet, where the pages rustled as they were turned, as if the books were sighing in their sleep. I was glad I didn't have to go out into the darkness and the snowstorm. — Wieslaw Mysliwski

The bookseller said it's in two parts, and this is the first. I thought that next year, if we keep saving, we can get the second - — Anthony Doerr

Customer: Do you have any medical textbooks?
Bookseller: Sorry, no. They go out of date so quickly we don't stock them, but I can order one in for you.
Customer: I'm not worried about it being in date.
Bookseller: Does your university not request you have a specific edition?
Customer: Oh, I'm not a medical student. I just want to learn how to do stitches.
Bookseller: ... Right.
Customer: Do you have a book on sewing instead? — Jen Campbell

Cabinet is a conscious, explicit attempt to portray the Doctor himself as myth. "He's a mischief, a leprechaun, a boojum," says one character, bookseller and collector of incunabula, Syme. "The Doctor is a myth. He's straight out of Old English folklore, typical trickster figure really."29 Neither part of an ongoing narrative, nor specifically located within the series' past, Cabinet is in a position to challenge the portrayal of the Doctor. — Anthony Burdge, Jessica Burke, Kristine Larsen

On the phone
Bookseller: Hello Ripping Yarns.
Customer: Do you have any mohair wool?
Bookseller: Sorry, we're not a yarns shop, we're a bookshop.
Customer: You're called Ripping Yarns.
Bookseller: Yes, that's 'yarns' as in stories.
Customer: Well it's a stupid name.
Bookseller: It's a Monty Python reference.
Customer: So you don't sell wool?
Bookseller: No.
Customer: Hmf. Ridiculous.
Bookseller: ... but we do sell dead parrots.
Customer: What?
Bookseller: Parrots. Dead. Extinct. Expired. Would you like one?
Customer: Erm, no.
Bookseller: Ok, well if you change your mind, do call back. — Jen Campbell

I would browse for half an hour or so in the secondhand bookstores in the neighborhood. Owning my own 'library' was my only materialistic ambition; in fact, trying to decide which two of these thousands of books to buy that week, I would frequently get so excited that by the time the purchase was accomplished I had to make use of the bookseller's toilet facilities. I don't believe that either microbe or laxative has ever affected me so strongly as the discovery that I was all at once the owner of a slightly soiled copy of Empson's Seven Types of Ambiguity in the original English edition. — Philip Roth

I turned to discover the faint smile of the bookseller's
niece. Her voice was pure crystal, transparent and so fragile I feared that her words would break if I interrupted them. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

CUSTOMER: I don't know why she wants it, but my wife asked for a copy of The Dinosaur Cookbook.
BOOKSELLER: The Dinah Shore Cookbook? — Jen Campbell

The old bookseller had learnt at the seminary that when it comes to conceiving transcendent things, minds vary enormously in their capacity, and the trained mind is a very different matter to the untrained; and the mind that is conditioned by music and incense and dim lights has very different capacities to the mind that goes at the job in cold blood. — Dion Fortune

Writing blurbs for books means you have to read the book, and it cuts into the business of bookselling. So every time I get a blurb from a bookseller, I try to write a thank you note. — Gabrielle Zevin

Bookseller: Can I help at all?
customer: Yes, where's your fiction section?
bookseller: It starts over on the far wall. Are you looking for anything in particular?
customer: Yes, any books by Stefan Browning.
bookseller: I'm not familiar with him, what kind of books has he written?
customer: I don't know if he's written any. You see, my name's Stefan Browning, and I always like to go into
bookshops to see if anyone with my name has written a book.
bookseller: ... right.
customer: Because then I can buy it, you see, and carry it around with me and tell everyone that I've had a novel published.Then everyone will think I'm really cool, don't you think? — Jen Campbell

CUSTOMER: You know how they say that if you gave a thousand monkeys typewriters, then they'd eventually churn out really good writing? BOOKSELLER: ... yes. CUSTOMER: Well, do you have any books by those monkeys? BOOKSELLER: ... — Jen Campbell

Lily exited the dark chamber of the bookseller's store clutching a small book in her grubby hands, content with her purchase. Her voice was hoarse from selling trinkets all — Patty Apostolides

Some are born to greatness; some achieve greatness; some have greatness thrust upon them.' It is in this way that the librarian has become a censor of literature... books that distinctly commend what is wrong, that teach how to sin and how pleasant sin is, sometimes with and sometimes without the added sauce of impropriety, are increasingly popular, tempting to the author to imitate them, the publishers to produce, the bookseller to exploit. Thank heaven they do not tempt the librarian. — Arthur E. Bostwick

There is something shameful about the death of a play. It does not die with pity, but contempt. A book may fail, but who is there to know it? It dies and is buried, and is decently interred on the bookseller's shelf; but the play dies to laughter, to scorn and disdain. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

I wanted to be a librarian from a very young age. Some of my earliest memories are being taken to the local library. I ended up working as a bookseller. Becoming a writer was the logical offshoot of being a reader. — Michael Scott

Take heart, Maya. As a bookseller, I assure you that prizewinning can be somewhat important for sales but rarely matters much in terms of quality. — Gabrielle Zevin

Sometimes the truth is so bizarre and mind bending that it must be presented as fiction to be accepted.
George Saunders
The Bookseller — C. Robert Cales

CUSTOMER: I'd love to write a book.
BOOKSELLER: Then you should write one.
CUSTOMER: I really don't have the time.
BOOKSELLER: I'm sure you could make time.
CUSTOMER: No, you don't get it; I really don't have the time. I had my fortune read on Monday, and the fortune teller lady said that I'm going to get knocked down by a bus next week. She said that it'll probably kill me
BOOKSELLER: ... Oh. Well, er, that doesn't sound very nice.
CUSTOMER: No, it doesn't, does it? It's really annoying, too, 'cause I'd booked a holiday for next month, and I was really looking forward to it. — Jen Campbell

I have been told by an eminent bookseller, that in no branch of his business , after tracts of popular devotion, were so many books as those on the law exported to the Plantations . — Edmund Burke

Customer: I'm looking for a book for my son. He's six.
Bookseller: How about this one - it's about-
Customer: Yeah, whatever, I'll take it. — Jen Campbell

Borders had lousy management and made bad corporate decisions, so its fate is less like a terrible accident than a slow-motion slide into a ditch, but it's hard to be happy about a bookseller's demise. — Susan Orlean

I studied writing at university, and I actually majored in screenwriting. Then I went to work as a bookseller and then as a sales rep and publicist and then various editorial jobs until I ended up with HarperCollins in Australia. — Garth Nix

The beauty of being a bookseller is that you don't have to be a literary critic: all you have to do to books is enjoy them. — Christopher Morley

Bookseller Praise for Die For Me: 'A blend of hard-edged police — Karen Rose