Bookish Quotes

Note

These quotes are organized in 

alphabetical order, by the author's last name.

Use your imagination. Reach out into the unknown and dream of how you can enlarge your experience and improve your mind and your soul and your world. -- Mary Balogh

Science fiction is the most important literature in the history of the world, because it's the history of ideas, the history of our civilization birthing itself.... Science fiction is central to everything we've ever done, and people who make fun of science fiction writers don't know what they're talking about. -- Ray Bradbury

Metaphors have a way of holding the most truth in the least space. -- Orson Scott Card, Alvin Journeyman

 A room without books is like a body without a soul.

-- Marcus Tullius Cicero

A piece of writing is like a piece of magic. You create something out of nothing. -- Susanna Clarke

All my life I've wanted to be the kid who gets to cross over into the magical kingdom. I devoured those books by C.S. Lewis and William Dunthorn, Ellen Wentworth, Susan Cooper, and Alan Garner. When I could get them from the library, I read them out of order as I found them, and then in order, and then reread them all again, many times over. -- Charles de Lint 

Without words, without writing and without books there would be no history, there could be no concept of humanity. -- Hermann Hesse

Gaze into the fire, into the clouds, and as soon as the inner voices begin to speak.....surrender to them. Don't ask first whether it's permitted, or would please your teachers or your father or some god. You will ruin yourself if you do that. -- Hermann Hesse, Demian

The book itself is a curious artifact, not showy in its technology but complex and extremely efficient: a really neat little device, compact, often very pleasant to look at and handle, that can last decades, even centuries. It doesn't have to be plugged in, activated, or performed by a machine; all it needs is light, a human eye, and a human mind. It is not one of a kind, and it is not ephemeral. It lasts. It is reliable. If a book told you something when you were fifteen, it will tell it to you again when you're fifty, though you may understand it so differently that it seems you're reading a whole new book. -- Ursula K. Le Guin, "Staying Awake: Notes on the alleged decline of reading", Harper's Magazine, February, 2008

The use of imaginative fiction is to deepen your understanding of your world, and your fellow men, and your own feelings, and your destiny. -- Ursula K. Le Guin, The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction

As you read a book word by word and page by page, you participate in its creation, just as a cellist playing a Bach suite participates, note by note, in the creation, the coming-to-be, the existence, of the music. And, as you read and re-read, the book of course participates in the creation of you, your thoughts and feelings, the size and temper of your soul. -- Ursula K. Le Guin 

You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me. -- C.S. Lewis

I find television very educating. Every time someone turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book. -- Groucho Marx 

Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read. -- Groucho Marx

Myths, whether in written or visual form, serve a vital role of asking unanswerable questions and providing unquestionable answers. Most of us, most of the time, have a low tolerance for ambiguity and uncertainty. We want to reduce the cognitive dissonance of not knowing by filling the gap with answers. Traditionally, religious myths have served that role, but today -- the age of science -- science fiction is our mythology. -- Michael Shermer

That I can read and be happy while I am reading, is a great blessing. -- Anthony Trollope 

The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read. -- Mark Twain

It is with the reading of books the same as with looking at pictures; one must, without doubts, without hesitations, with assurance, admire what is beautiful. -- Vincent Van Gogh

There is more treasure in books than in all the pirates' loot on "Treasure Island" and best of all, you can enjoy these riches every day of your life. -- Walt Disney Company

No two persons ever read the same book. - Edmund Wilson

Books are the mirrors of the soul. -- Virginia Woolf, Between the Acts

So many books, so little time. -- Frank Zappa