Bookish quotes

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Bookish quotes

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1bookwoman247
Ago 29, 2010, 10:08 am

I'm new here, and I hope that my topic is in keeping with the group. I thought it would be nice for the group to have a place to share quotes about books.

Sometimes, as I'm reading along in a book, I come across a nice quote about books or reading, even though the subject of the book isn't about books at all.

For instance, I'm now reading The Orientalist bu Tom Reiss, and came across the following quote:

"Lev's education began with a vast home library left behind by his mother. 'Not a single person touched the books until I learned to read.', he would recall. 'From then on I had the keys and read whatever I wanted. No one was allowed to disturb me. My father said it was my inheritence and I could do with it what I pleased.' Lev remembered the world of 'books, books books', which was all he had left of his mother. 'For days and days I sat motionless in my armchair, and read books about Arab bards, Persian wisemen, and Turkish knights and horsemen.'"

2janemarieprice
Ago 29, 2010, 11:32 am

Two of my favorite quotes are bookish:

“He turned the pages in steady progression, though now and then he would seem to linger upon one page, one line, perhaps one word. He would not look up then. He would not move, apparently arrested and held immobile by a single word which had perhaps not yet impacted, his whole being suspended by the single trivial combination of letters in quiet and sunny space, so that hanging motionless and without physical weight he seemed to watch the slow flowing of time beneath him…”

- from Light in August by William Faulkner

“I felt that a story was over, that what had been begun a long time back had been played out, that the lemon had been squeezed dry. But if anything is certain it is that no story is ever over, for the story which we think is over is only a chapter in a story which will not be over, and it isn’t the game that is over, it is just an inning, and that game has a lot more than nine innings. When the game stops it will be called on account of darkness. But it is a long day.”

- from All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren

3vpfluke
Ago 29, 2010, 4:16 pm

I recently read a book, The House of Paper by Carlos María Domínguez with this statement:

"To tell the truth, I've given up counting. But I think there must be around eighteen thousand. I've been buying books here and there ever since I can remember. To build up a library is to create a life. It's never just a random collection of books."

This Uruguayan novel describes something of my own situation with books.

42wonderY
Ago 29, 2010, 5:47 pm

Spot on! bookwoman!

I'll add the ones I've been saving tomorrow when they are where I am.

5WholeHouseLibrary
Ago 29, 2010, 6:38 pm

Rather than do all that here (although it's a worthwhile activity), there was a Group that was created this past February, dedicated to that single purpose.

It's called Book Quotations.

62wonderY
Ago 30, 2010, 10:24 am

This is from Eudora Welty's memoir A Sweet Devouring:

"My mother took me to the Public Library and introduced me: 'Let her have any book she wants, except Elsie Dinsmore.' I looked for the book I couldn't have and it was a row. That was how I learned about the Series Books. The Five Little Peppers belonged, so did The Wizard of Oz, so did The Little Colonel, so did The Green Fairy Book. There were many of everything, instead of one. I wasn't coming to the end of reading, after all -- I was saved."