Quotes & Sayings About Buying Books

In terms of the economics, yes obviously the rise of e-books and how people choose to read books has a big effect on the economics of the game. But whether people are buying them on paper or downloading them there's still some poor wretch in a room who is trying to write a poem, write a story, write a novel. And so my job doesn't change. It's just how people receive it and economic conditions on the ground change, but that doesn't affect what I write. — Colson Whitehead

I love to go the library to borrow books. But I also enjoyed buying books to create my sacred library. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Hilmar owns many books, even by Icelandic standards. The other day, when he came home with a wheelbarrowful, his five-year-old daughter looked him in the eye and implored, "Please, Daddy, please, no more books!" Hilmar has a stock answer to those who criticize his excessive book buying. "It is never a waste of time to study how other people wasted time. — Eric Weiner

Small children like to mimic their parents. Give them something good to mimic read a book.

Children learn what they live.


Morals are taught by parents from a young age. They are not learned from text books.

Buying a book for a child is a small price. A smile on a child's face is priceless.


Communication with children give better odds in knowing what they want.

Using imagination can inspire us all. Why not allow children to explore their imagination?

A happy child is a child reading a good book. — Cindy Roman

I'm always astonished when I go into Barnes & Noble at the number of people buying books, of course, but also at the variety of books they do buy and the extent to which they are not the big bestsellers. — Michael Korda

Comic books sort of follow with the move - if people see the movie and if they're interested in the character and want to see more of the character, they start buying the comic books. So a good movie helps the sale of the comic books and the comic books help the movie and one hand washes the other. So, I don't think there's any reason to think that comics will die out. — Stan Lee

I'm happy to work until I'm 70 if I'm able to. Actually, I'm happy to keep writing as long as people keep buying my books. — Nick Earls

Jack shook his head. 'Books. What is it with women and books? My sisters were the same. They were always buying books for boys they fancied.'
Ellie bent down and picked up the stone and put it on the table. 'It's like sending a love letter without having to write it yourself,' she said softly. — Hazel Osmond

Pretend you're not spending $3 to read one of my books but buying me a coffee and having a conversation about yourself. — Robin Sacredfire

I find Facebook absolutely fascinating because I don't think there's ever been any one source that had so much information about each of us - who we talk to, who our friends are, what books we read, what we're buying, what movies we saw, what our travel is. — Rick Smolan

He thought here you are Joe Bonham lying like a side of beef all the rest of your life and for what? Somebody tapped you on the shoulder and said come along son we're going to war. So you went. But why? In any other deal even like buying a car or running an errand you had the right to say what's there in it for me? Otherwise you'd be buying bad cars for too much money or running errands for fools and starving to death. It was a kind of duty you owed yourself that when anybody said come on son do this or do that you should stand up and say look mister why should I do this for who am I doing it and what am I going to get out of it in the end? But when a guy comes along and says here come with me and risk your life and maybe die or be crippled why then you've got no rights. You haven't even the right to say yes or no or I'll think it over. There are plenty of laws to protect guys' money even in war time but there's nothing on the books says a man's life's his own. Of — Dalton Trumbo

She thought, instead, with longing of more books - of buying books - of slipping into a narrative of other people's lives. That was release. — Peter Straub

Anyway, in the mid 80's I was spending a fortune buying old Golden Age books from the late 30's and 40's and I was making personal appearances at a lot of sci fi and comic book conventions all around the country here so that I could find books for my collection. — Bill Mumy

I am indebted to the following colleagues for their advice, assistance, or support: Dr. Alfred Lerner, Dori Vakis, Robin Heck, Dr. Todd Dray, Dr. Robert Tull, and Dr. Sandy Chun. Thanks also to Lynette Parker of East San Jose Community Law Center for her advice about adoption procedures, and to Mr. Daoud Wahab for sharing his experiences in Afghanistan with me. I am grateful to my dear friend Tamim Ansary for his guidance and support and to the gang at the San Francisco Writers Workshop for their feedback and encouragement. I want to thank my father, my oldest friend and the inspiration for all that is noble in Baba; my mother who prayed for me and did nazr at every stage of this book's writing; my aunt for buying me books when I was young. Thanks go out to Ali, Sandy, Daoud — Khaled Hosseini

I collect new books the way my friends collect designer handbags. Sometimes, I just like to know I have them and actually reading them is beside the point. Not that I don't eventually end up reading them. I do. But the mere act of buying them makes me happy. — Jennifer Kaufman

I have this weird obsession about buying books and looking at them with a smile, even if I won't read them soon. At least they are mine now. — Anais Nin

They will be given as gifts; books that are especially pretty or visual will be bought as hard copies; books that are collectible will continue to be collected; people with lots of bookshelves will keep stocking them; and anyone who likes to make notes in books will keep buying books with margins to fill. — Susan Orlean

To some extent the shorter the writing assignment is, the harder it is to accomplish, and a blurb is 200 words max. Blurbs are meaningless, and actual people who are buying the books don't care about them at all. — Emily Gould

At the age of three I began to look around my grandfather's library. My first knowledge of astronomy came from reading and looking at pictures at that time. By the time I was six I remember him buying books for me ... I think I was eight, he bought me a three-inch telescope on a brass mounting ... So, as far back as I can remember, I had an early interest in science in general, astronomy in particular. — Jesse L. Greenstein

[D]on't ever apologise to an author for buying something in paperback, or taking it out from a library (that's what they're there for. Use your library). Don't apologise to this author for buying books second hand, or getting them from bookcrossing or borrowing a friend's copy. What's important to me is that people read the books and enjoy them, and that, at some point in there, the book was bought by someone. And that people who like things, tell other people. The most important thing is that people read ... — Neil Gaiman

Too many people are buying things they can't afford, with money that they don't have ... to impress people that they don't like!"
Nothing to do w/ "books"
Just like the quote! — Will Smith

I used to be very disciplined about only buying three books ahead of what I was reading, but my husband corrupted me, and now I'm dozens ahead of myself! — Gretchen Rubin

Although I was always a keen library user, buying books was a different order of bliss, because I would get to live with these ones.
(A Chat with Emma Donoghue) — Jen Campbell

I mean, my idea of exciting is getting an Amazon gift card and buying a whole bunch of books. — J. Daniels

When I have money, I invest in buying books. My personal development by reading these books is my greatest pleasure. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Sometimes, looking at the many books I have at home, I feel I shall die before I come to the end of them, yet I cannot resist the temptation of buying new books. Whenever I walk into a bookstore and find a book on one of my hobbies - for example, Old English or Old Norse poetry - I say to myself, What a pity I can't buy that book, for I already have a copy at home. — Jorge Luis Borges

What's encouraging is that the early new platforms - Kindle and iPad - are clearly leading to people buying more books. The data is in on that. — Steven Johnson

We buy books because we believe we are buying the time to read them. — Warren Zevon

Some day, as soon as a book is printed it will be simultaneously put into digital form. That will be a wonderful research tool, but it will never substitute for holding the book. I feel certain that at least within my lifetime, everyone will still be going to the bookstore and buying printed books. Thank God I'll die before I have to worry about whether the printed book itself will disappear. That's something I don't want to live to see. — Anne Fadiman

I don't get how people want to read books on computers because it must be really bad for your eyes, for starters. I love the smell of books and I just like the whole experience of it. Maybe I'm just old-fashioned, but I like that whole experience - it's the same as I like putting on a record or a CD and waiting for it to arrive or buying it and waiting to listen to it in full. — Kate Nash

I'm floating between multiple media. I really wish you could buy the hardcover book and it would come with the digital download and audible version. I spend stupid amounts of money because I'm usually buying my books in at least two formats. — Atul Gawande

Our library isn't very extensive," said Anne, "but every book in it is a friend. We've picked our books up through the years, here and there, never buying one until we had first read it and knew that it belonged to the race of Joseph. — L.M. Montgomery

I have gone to [this bookshop] for years, always finding the one book I wanted - and then three more I hadn't known I wanted. — Mary Ann Shaffer

When I was with him, I felt like a book worth reading all the way through again and again and again. Sure, he liked my cover. I wanted him to, but I wanted him to like everything else too. I imagined him buying the book, studying it, quoting it, memorizing his favorite parts. He'd keep it with him always, like a Bible, hold it sacred even when the cover fell off and the book became bent with age and use. Maybe, he'd be buried with it. That's all I wanted. — Candice Raquel Lee

Throughout my life, even when times were tough, I never stopped buying books. Or, come to think of it, booze. My library is dusty and well stocked. My liver is well worn. — Shehan Karunatilaka

I mention the library only as a last resort. I recommend buying your own books... They can be spiced with underlines, question marks, and exclamation points; they can be thumbed and dog-eared, plucked to their essential core, and annotated so that they become a mirror of yourself. — Kato Lomb

I buy books and tell myself that I am buying wisdom and at the end of my life, I own a house full of books. — Ken Chen

Even when reading is impossible, the presence of books acquired (by passionate devotion to them) produces such an ecstasy that the buying of more books than one can peradventure read is nothing less than the soul reaching towards infinity ... we cherish books even if unread, their mere presence exudes comfort, their ready access, reassurance. — A. Edward Newton

Americans purchased about 25 percent more books in 1943 than they did in 1942. The new paperback format was a hit, as Americans craved simple pleasures in times of peril. This increase in book buying was indicative of an expanded market of book buyers. As Time magazine observed, by 1943, "book-reading and book-buying reached outside the narrow quarters of the intellectuals and became the business of the whole vast literate population of the U.S." No longer were books linked to wealth and status: they had become a universal pastime and a fitting symbol of democracy. — Molly Guptill Manning

Who was it who said, "I hold the buying of more books than one can peradventure read, as nothing less than the soul's reaching towards infinity; which is the only thing that raises us above the beasts that perish?" Whoever it was, I agree with him. — A. Edward Newton

Long ago, I stopped buying- let alone reading, books that talk about organizational success but fail to emphasize the importance of TRUST — Assegid Habtewold

My parents were willing to let me follow my nose, do what I wanted to do, and they supported my interest by buying the books that I wanted for birthdays and Christmas, almost always poetry books. — Donald Hall

At the heart of all photography is an urge to express our deepest personal feelings - to reveal our inner, hidden selves, to unlock the artist. Those of us who become photographers are never satisfied with just looking at someone else's expression of something that is dear to us. We must produce our own images, instead of buying postcards and photo books. We seek to make our own statements of individuality. — Galen Rowell

But in the name of all that is holy, Mosca, of all the people you could have taken up with, why Eponymous Clent?" murmured Kohlrabi.
Because I'd been hording words for years, buying them from peddlers and carving them secretly on bits of bark so I wouldn't forget them, and then he turned up using words like "epiphany" and "amaranth." Because I heard him talking in the marketplace, laying out sentences like a merchant rolling out rich silks. Because he made words and ideas dance like flames and something that was damp and dying came alive in my mind, the way it hadn't since they burned my father's books. Because he walked into Chough with stories from exciting places tangled around him like maypole streamers ... "
Mosca shrugged.
"He's got a way with words. — Frances Hardinge

I love buying and collecting good books: I am passionate reader. This is my sacred life. — Lailah Gifty Akita

[T]he only luxury he allows himself is buying books, paperback books, mostly novels, American novels, British novels, foreign novels in translation, but in the end books are not luxuries so much as necessities, and reading is an addiction he has no wish to be cured of. — Paul Auster

I never thought I was writing for kids at all. It really shocked and unsettled me to hear kids were buying the books. If I'd known I was writing for kids, I might actually have spelt things out a bit more, and that would probably have killed the appeal. — Jeff Kinney

Instead of reading a paper, we now read the news online. Instead of buying books at a store, we buy them on-line. What's so revolutionary? The Internet has mainly affected our leisure life. — Ha-Joon Chang

The revolution of ideas that will save us is a revolution of goodwill, of compassion, and of higher thinking. I believe that they outnumber the people who would choose fear. But they are not a particularly politicized force. If you look at the numbers of people buying books about revolutions from within and personal transformation as the key to global change, the numbers add up to a much greater audience than most people realize. — Marianne Williamson

I love real books, paper books, but I also love buying online, and I think that people are more willing to take a chance to read something if it's cheaper - sometimes books on the Kindle are $6. A hardback book is $25. For $25, it better be a really great book. Or you're going to be mad. — Caroline Leavitt

But the last forty years had witnessed the professionalization of property management. Since 1970, the number of people primarily employed as property managers had more than quadrupled.8 As more landlords began buying more property and thinking of themselves primarily as landlords (instead of people who happened to own the unit downstairs), professional associations proliferated, and with them support services, accreditations, training materials, and financial instruments. According to the Library of Congress, only three books offering apartment-management advice were published between 1951 and 1975. Between 1976 and 2014, the number rose to 215.9 Even if most landlords in a given city did not consider themselves "professionals," housing had become a business. — Matthew Desmond

My depth of purse is not so great
Nor yet my bibliophilic greed,
That merely buying doth elate:
The books I buy I like to read:
Still e'en when dawdling in a mead,
Beneath a cloudless summer sky,
By bank of Thames, or Tyne, or Tweed,
The books I read - I like to buy. — A. Edward Newton

I love my Kindle, but there are many books that I need to physically own. I think having the choice makes all the difference. Instant gratification - buying a book digitally and owning it sixty seconds later - really is a revolutionary act. — Chuck Hogan

I spent all the money I had, to get the sacred books of my life. — Lailah Gifty Akita

We buy books because we believe we're buying the time to read them. — Warren Zevon

Papa thought that any book worth reading twice was worth owning. So instead of buying desserts, we bought books. — Natalie S. Bober

I have seen books made of things neither studied nor ever understood ... the author contenting himself for his own part, to have cast the plot and projected the design of it, and by his industry to have bound up the fagot of unknown provisions; at least the ink and paper his own. This may be said to be a buying or borrowing, and not a making or compiling of a book. — Michel De Montaigne

Chinese readers are buying books in translation, particularly non-fiction about China, in large numbers. — Evan Osnos

I don't have any hobbies because my working job is my hobby. What I do is I spend my whole time looking through telescopes and having brain scans and buying books about various different ideas and I just sit around, that's my life. — Robin Ince

The more freely a librarian mingles with readers, and the greater the amount of assistance he renders them, the more intense does the conviction of citizens become, that the library is a useful institution, and the more willing do they grow to grant money in larger and larger sums to be used in buying books and employing additional assistants. — Samuel Green

It is better to buy than burrow books. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Well, there are lot of people who make a lot of money off the fifth- and sixth-life crises. All of a sudden they have a ton of consumers scared out of their minds and willing to buy facial cream, designer jeans, SAT test prep courses, condoms, cars, scooters, self-help books, watches, wallets, stocks, whatever ... all the crap that the twenty-somethings used to buy, they now have the ten-somethings buying. They doubled their market! — Ned Vizzini

Buying a book is not enough ... You must absorb the knowledge it contains. Your personalized knowledge is not what's on your shelf, but how much you put into yourself! — Israelmore Ayivor

I have many creative outlets. I sing, I like music, I like art, I paint, I draw. I like buying art. I read a lot, too. I love books. And I'm working on a clothing line, too. — Evan Ross

It always seems to me that one of the saddest things about the death of a literary man is the fact that the breaking-up of his collection of books almost invariably follows; the building up of a good library, the work of a lifetime, has been so much labour lost, so far as future generations are concerned. Talent, yes, and genius too, are displayed not only in writing books but also in buying them, and it is a pity that the ruthless hammer of the auctioneer should render so much energy and skill fruitless. — Stuart Dodgson Collingwood

With my adult books, for the first six weeks or so, it's about 60 percent ebooks in terms of sales. The kids' books, it's like 5 percent. Which means that the parents, the ones that aren't going into stores now, they're no longer buying books for their kids, which is not great. — James Patterson

that my father should have left so small a collection of books. What a delightful library you have at Pemberley, Mr. Darcy!" "It ought to be good," he replied, "it has been the work of many generations." "And then you have added so much to it yourself, you are always buying books." "I cannot comprehend the neglect of a family library in such days as these." "Neglect! I am sure you neglect nothing that can add to the beauties of that noble place. Charles, when you build your house, I wish it may be half as delightful as Pemberley." "I wish it may. — Jane Austen

I am obsessed with good buying books — Lailah Gifty Akita

I hate lending, or borrowing - if you want me to read a book, tell me about it, or buy me a copy outright. Your loaned edition sits in my house like a real grievance. And in lieu of lending books, I buy extra copies of those I want to give away, which gives me the added pleasure of buying books I love again and again.
Jonathan Lethem — Leah Price

My mother has always encouraged me to do what I love. When I started being interested in fashion, she was very supportive, bringing me to see exhibits and buying me books. And when I started my company, she was right there to help me! — Joseph Altuzarra

This idea that the buying, or even the reading, of books is an expensive hobby and beyond the reach of the average person is so widespread that it deserves some detailed examination. — George Orwell

Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them; but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents. — Arthur Schopenhauer

The buying of more books than one can read is nothing less than the soul reaching toward infinity ... — A. Edward Newton

I haven't been very enthusiastic about the commercialization of children's literature. Kids should borrow books from the library and not necessarily be buying them. — Beverly Cleary

We love to buy books because we believe we're buying the time to read them.
[Inside Out (VH1)] — Warren Zevon

Buying books was a way anyone could acquire a work of art for very little. — Sol LeWitt

We amass material things for the same reason that we eat - to satisfy a craving. Buying on impulse and eating and drinking to excess are attempts to alleviate stress. From observing my clients, I have noticed that when they discard excess clothing, their tummies tend to slim down, when they discard books and documents, their minds become clearer, when they reduce the number of cosmetics and tidy up the area around the sink and bath, their complexion tends to become clear and their skin smooth. -p226 — Marie Kondo

[M]y mother read a horror novel every night. She had read every one in the library. When birthdays and Christmas would come, I would consider buying her a new one, the latest Dean R. Koontz or Stephen King or whatever, but I couldn't. I didn't want to encourage her. I couldn't touch my father's cigarettes, couldn't look at the Pall Mall cartons in the pantry. I was the sort of child who couldn't even watch commercials for horror movies - the ad for Magic, the movie where marionette kills people. sent me into a six-month nightmare frenzy. So I couldn't look at her books, would turn them over so their covers wouldn't show, the raised lettering and splotches of blood - especially the V.C. Andrews oeuvre, those turgid pictures of those terrible kids, standing so still, all lit in blue. — Dave Eggers

That when you're buying books, you're optimistically thinking you're buying the time to read them.
(Paraphrase of Schopenhauer) — Arthur Schopenhauer

I think we did a great job of putting together a program that would have made good e-books available had people been buying e-books in any real numbers. — Thomas Perry

A library of mostly unread books is far more inspiring than a library of books already read. There's nothing more exciting than finishing a book, and walking over to your shelves to figure out what you're going to read next.
[The Wonderful and Terrible Habit of Buying Too Many Books, PWxyz (news blog of Publishers Weekly), February 16th, 2012] — Gabe Habash

Supporting a creative artist can mean buying their books, music, art, movie, and photographs or just shouting out their name. — Chris Mentillo

I myself don't know what makes my books work. I enter a bookstore and I'm frankly overwhelmed by the number of books in most of them, and I know people are buying mine. — Chetan Bhagat

I have been interested in the 12th century since my 20s when it was very fashionable to say of anybody with whom you disagreed, which was basically anybody over the age of 30, "One of the great minds of the 12th century", and one day I thought, "I don't know anything about the 12 century." So I started buying books, reading about it, and I discovered it was a period of great flowering, it was a Renaissance before what we think is the Renaissance, the Italian Renaissance of the 16th century. — Yitzhak Rabin

For me to be a billion-dollar author, I need to have people buying my books at Wal-Mart. — Amanda Hocking

I still think that going in on that Friday afternoon and spending that money was one of the happiest experiences of my life. — Jen Campbell

Buying a book is not about obtaining a possession, but about securing a portal. — Laura Miller

She asked her parents to buy him the books she'd been read by her first teachers, Peter Rabbit and Frog and Toad. "What's the point of buying books for someone who can't read?" her parents asked, legitimately enough, and so she checked them out of her school library and read them to Rahul herself. — Jhumpa Lahiri

Vlad looked around. Are we providing shelter, or are the humans actually buying books? — Anne Bishop

The size of a book never matter as the size of wisdom in the book — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah