Quotations About Books
& Reading
"After all, one of the reasons there are lots of
books in bookstores is that you don't have to buy the books you
don't want."
 Salman Rushdie
(January Magazine
interview,
September 2002)
"And you ... you should all be home reading a good
book!"
(CatDog episode.
Line spoken by the
character of Cat)
"Anyhow, kids are very tough. What they find for
themselves they should be able to read for themselves."
Ursula K.
LeGuin
(Horn Book letter,
April 1973)
"'Are there not moments,' he asked William, 'when you
would also do shameful things to get your hands on a book you have
been seeking for years?'"
Umberto Eco
(The Name of the
Rose. HBJ, 1983, p. 138)
"Be careful of reading health books. You may die of
a misprint."
Mark Twain
(Submitted by Syntha
Green)
"Brain fever . . . it's something that 'brains' get . . . Usually, if you
just read a best-seller, it goes away."
(Daria
episode, 1999. Lines spoken by the character Jane Lane)
"Depending on whichever book you read
Sometimes it takes a lifetime to get what you need"
Aimee Mann
("Mr. Harris")
"Don't Judge a Book by Its Video Case."
Julie Larson
(The Dinette Set
comic strip, 23 September 2002)
"Don't you know that those old musty books, as you
call them, are the only things worth anything in all this library?
All the rest is trash."
Saxe Holm,
"Mrs. Millington and Her Librarian. A Love Story"
(Harper's New Monthly
Magazine, June 1881, p. 109)
"Each printed story is a hooker trying to be
noticed, trying to captivate the passerby and live at least a little
longer in the arc of your attention."
Roger-Pol Droit,
translated by Stephen Romer
(Astonish Yourself!
Penguin Compass, 2003 -- as quoted in LJ review)
"He bought you a used book? What kind of
boyfriend is he?"
(Daria episode.
Line spoken by the
character of Quinn)
"He liked books if they were books of information
and had pictures of grain elevators or of fat foreign children doing
exercises in model schools."
C.S. Lewis
(The Voyage of the
"Dawn Treader")
"I believe that today more than ever a book should
be sought after even if it has only one great page in it: we must
search for fragments, splinters, toenails, anything that has ore in
it, anything that is capable of resuscitating the body and soul."
Henry Miller
(Above quotation
submitted by Raymond Wheeldon)
"I did it! And it's all thanks to the books at my
local library."
(Futurama,
"The Day the Earth Stood Stupid" episode, 2001.
Line spoken by the
character of Fry.)
"I didn't lie! I was writing fiction with my mouth!"
(The Simpsons,
"Diatribe of a Mad Housewife" episode, 2004.
Line spoken by the
character of Homer.)
"I'm not reading this. This is bullshit."
Colin Powell
(As reported in U.S.
News & World Report, 9 June 2003)
"It doesn't cost any more to print something true
than it does to print crap."
Melvin Burgess
(Losing It.
Andersen Press, 2003, p. 254 -- as quoted in review by Anne Fine)
"I should have listened to the almanac
It said that I should stay in bed."
Off Broadway
("Full Moon Turn
My Head Around")
"I watch a lot of TV, I read books, I have cats. It's really
kind of sad and boring."
Charlie Sheen
(Late Night with Conan O'Brien interview, 16-17 May 2001)
"I would be most content if my children grew up to
be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of
building enough bookshelves."
(Anna Quindlen, "Enough
Bookshelves," New York Times, 7 August 1991
Submitted by D.F.
of New York)
"If this book be false in its facts, disprove them;
if false in its reasoning, refute it. But, for God's sake, let us
freely hear both sides, if we choose."
Thomas
Jefferson, 1814
"If we really believe that studying these old books
is of any use, then now is surely the time to test that proposition."
Classics scholar
quoted by Danielle Allen
(Chicago Tribune
Magazine article, 21 October 2001, p. 13)
"Is this where they keep the philostophers now, with
the rugs and the dust, where the books go to die?"
Frank Zappa
("The
Adventures of Greggery Peccary")
"It is far better to be silent than merely to increase the
quantity of bad books ."
Voltaire
(Submitted by C.M. of Ohio)
"It is this author's devout hope that in time he may
be able to produce acceptable books about cute furry animals and --
for the older reader -- stories about high schools in California
with really good athletic programs and uniformly attractive
students. In the meantime, while the sort of adumbrated and sinister
production which follows these remarks continues to issue forth (to
my considerable enrichment -- and the publisher's), the least I can
do is to entreat teachers and librarians of the better sort to keep
the book out of the hands of the young."
Daniel M. Pinkwater
(Young Adults.
Tor, 1985, p. 84)
"It's a good thing when children enjoy books, isn't it?"
Judy Blume
(New York Times
article, 22 October 1999)
"It's called freedom of choice, and it's one of the
principles this country was founded upon. Look it up in the library,
Reverend, if you have any of them left when you've finished burning
all the books."
George Carlin
(Submitted by Trey)
"Locking up, uniforming, book burning, blood letting
..."
REM
("It's the End
of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)")
"Maybe I'm not the star athlete, but with a ghost story I can
scare the fuck out of every kid. It's empowering."
Clive Barker
(Wired
News article, 12 March 2001)
"Nouns and books and show-and-tell."
The White
Stripes
("We're Going To
Be Friends")
"Once people finally stopped looking up the rude
words in the first ever dictionary, they actually used it for proper
reasons, like Scrabble and trying to spell difficult words like
Sequoia."
(Anonymous analyst
quoted in BBC News Article, 2 April 2002)
"'One can never have enough socks, said Dumbledore.
'Another Christmas has come and gone and I didn't get a single pair.
People will insist on giving me books.'"
J.K. Rowling
(Harry Potter and
the Sorcerer's Stone. Scholastic, 1997, p. 214)
"Other
shelves were full of books. They were the only things in the room
that looked as though they had never been touched."
J.K. Rowling
(Harry Potter and
the Sorcerer's Stone. Scholastic, 1997, pp. 37-38)
"So this is a bookstore ... smells boring."
(King of
the Hill episode.
Line spoken by the
character of Dale)
Jef Mallett
(Frazz comic
strip, 16 January 2004. Line spoken by the title character.) "That's the problem with reading. Ideas come from
books."
(According to
Jim episode. Line spoken by Jim Belushi. Submitted by Romy)
Anna Quindlen
(PLA keynote address,
25 February 2004)
"There is a magic in some books
That sucks a man into connections
With the spirits hard to touch
That join him to his kind."
Roger Waters
(Chicago Tribune
interview, 18 July 1999, sec. 7, p. 11)
"There you sit, sitting spare like a book on a
shelf, rusting."
Led Zeppelin
("Misty
Mountain Hop")
(
"Thirteen million volumes? I've read, like, what,
three hundred books in my entire life and I'm already sixteen? Do
you know how long it would take me to read thirteen million books?"
(Gilmore Girls
episode, "The Road Trip to Harvard."
Line spoken by Alexis
Bledel as Rory Gilmore)
"Until one has some kind of professional relationship with books, one does
not discover how bad the majority of them are."
George Orwell
(Submitted by M.J.B. of Brazil)
"We've taken care of everything
The words you read, the songs you sing,
The pictures that give pleasure to your eye."
Rush
("2112")
"With my eyes closed, I would touch a familiar book
and draw its fragrance deep inside me. This was enough to make me
happy."
Haruki Murakami
(Norwegian Wood.
Vintage, 2000, p. 30)
"Volumes have secrets. Take them on holiday.
Book them a room, save them a moment."
The Church
("Volumes" -- Submitted by
Marylaine Block)
"Yeah, they caught him in the library reading a book. Freak."
(Grounded for Life episode, 24 January 2001, line spoken by
Linsey Bartilson as Lily
Finnerty)
"You are the dumbest, maddest man I've met. That's
what I get for putting you on to books."
Luciano Vincenzoni
and Sergio Donati
(Orca, 1977. Line spoken by Charlotte
Rampling as Rachel Bedford)
"You knew I'd wanna read it. ... You're a book tease."
(Gilmore Girls episode, line spoken by
Milo Ventimiglio as
Jess)
"You teach a child to read, and he or her will be able to pass
a literacy test."
George W. Bush
(Speaking at Townsend Elementary School, near Knoxville TN, 21 February 2001)
"You're a torn-out page from a bestselling book."
Beck
("Peaches and Cream")
"You're right. No human being would stack books like
this."
Dan Aykroyd and Harold
Ramis
(Ghostbusters,
dir. Ivan Reitman , 1984. Line spoken by
Bill Murray as
Peter Venkman)
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