November 20th, 2017 | Updated on February 16th, 2022
1. So, this is my life. And I want you to know that I am both happy and sad and I’m still trying to figure out how that could be.-Stephen Chbosky
2. It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it.-Oscar Wilde
3. The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.-Oscar Wilde
4. Books are uniquely portable magic.-Stephen King
5. I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in my life. And I am horribly limited.-Sylvia Plath
6. You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.-Ray Bradbury
7. Books are the perfect entertainment: no commercials, no batteries, hours of enjoyment for each dollar spent. What I wonder is why everybody doesn’t carry a book around for those inevitable dead spots in life.-Stephen King
8. You get a little moody sometimes but I think that’s because you like to read. People that like to read are always a little fucked up.-Pat Conroy
9. So please, oh please, we beg, we pray, Go throw your TV set away, And in its place, you can install. A lovely bookshelf on the wall. Then fill the shelves with lots of books.-Roald Dahl
10. Good books don’t give up all their secrets at once.-Stephen King
11. Reading was my escape and my comfort, my consolation, my stimulant of choice: reading for the pure pleasure of it, for the beautiful stillness that surrounds you when you hear an author’s words reverberating in your head.-Paul Auster
12. Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty. There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. That is all.-Oscar Wilde
13. I spent my life folded between the pages of books. In the absence of human relationships, I formed bonds with paper characters. I lived love and loss through stories threaded in history; I experienced adolescence by association. My world is one interwoven web of words, stringing limb to limb, bone to sinew, thoughts, and images all together. I am a being comprised of letters, a character created by sentences, a figment of imagination formed through fiction.-Tahereh Mafi
14. It’s strange because sometimes, I read a book, and I think I am the people in the book.-Stephen Chbosky
15. After nourishment, shelter, and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.-Philip Pullman
16. I cannot remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.-Ralph Waldo Emerson
17. In a way, it’s nice to know that there are Greek gods out there because you have somebody to blame when things go wrong. For instance, when you’re walking away from a bus that’s just been attacked by monster hags and blown up by lightning, and it’s raining on top of everything else, most people might think that’s just really bad luck; when you’re a half-blood, you understand that some divine force is really trying to mess up your day.-Rick Riordan
18. A good book is an event in my life.-Stendhal
19. Good books tell the truth, even when they’re about things that never have been and never will be. They’re truthful in a different way.-Stanilaw Lem
20. My library is an archive of longings.-Susan Sontag
21. And all the books you’ve read have been read by other people. And all the songs you’ve loved have been heard by other people. And that girl that’s pretty to you is pretty to other people. and that if you looked at these facts when you were happy, you would feel great because you are describing ‘unity.-Stephen Chbosky
22. I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in.-Robert Louis Stevenson
23. Books are easily destroyed. But words will live as long as people can remember them.-Tahereh Mafi
24. If you have enough book space, I don’t want to talk to you.-Terry Pratchett
25. We don’t need a list of rights and wrongs, tables of dos and don’t: we need books, time, and silence. Thou shalt not is soon forgotten, but Once upon a time lasts forever.-Philip Pullman
26. Reading is like thinking, like praying, like talking to a friend, like expressing your ideas, like listening to other people’s ideas, like listening to music, like looking at the view, like taking a walk on the beach.-Roberto Bolano
27. Books are no more threatened by Kindle than stairs by elevators.-Stephen Fry
28. Whenever my environment had failed to support or nourish me, I had clutched at books…-Richard Wright
29. The Voice, There is a voice inside of you, That whispers all day long, “I feel this is right for me, I know that this is wrong.”No teacher, preacher, parent, friend, Or wise man can decide What’s right for you–just listen to The voice that speaks inside.-Shel Silverstein
30. Everything in the world exists in order to end up as a book. -Stephane Mallarm
