“Dreams, books, are each a world; and books, we know,Are a substantial world, both pure and good:Round these, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood,Our pastime and our happiness will grow.”

“A fine gentleman like that, they said, had no need of books. Let him leave books, they said, to the palsied or the dying. But worse was to come. For once the disease of reading has laid hold upon the system it weakens it so that it falls an easy prey to that other scourge which dwells in the ink pot and festers in the quill. The wretch takes to writing.”

“This is no book. Whoever touches this touches a man.”

“La lectura, asegura, ampliaría mi experiencia del mundo. Las ideas que se encuentran en los libros serios darían profundidad a mis pensamientos sobre cada decisión que tomo.”

“…to her all books were the same and, as with her subjects, she felt a duty to approach them without prejudice…Lauren Bacall, Winifred Holtby, Sylvia Plath – who were they? Only be reading could she find out.”

“I read anything that’s going to be interesting. But you don’t know what it is until you’ve read it. Somewhere in a book on the history of false teeth there’ll be the making of a novel.”

“Whenever we talk about darkness and light, the terms seem so abstract that many consider the answers to be found in meditation and yoga, but I’m here to tell you that the answers are in the books you will never read, waiting all your life in the libraries you ignored and the bookstores you didn’t visit. I’m here to tell you as well that you are your own Satan and evil can’t possibly interfere more in your life than what you’re already doing to yourself by remaining ignorant. Until you choose the light, darkness is your personal choice, and there’s no reason to feel any empathy for you.”

“You have what I can afford to give. You are a panhandler, begging for anything, and I am the man walking briskly by, tossing a quarter or so into your paper cup. I can afford to give you this. This does not break me.”

“Reading, for me, is like this: consumptive, pleasing, calming, as much as edifying. It’s how I feel after a good dinner. That’s why I do it so often: It feels wonderful. The book is mind and I insert myself into it, cover it entire, ear my way through every last slash and dot. That’s something you can do with a book, unlike television or movies or the Internet. You can eat it, or mark it, like a dog does on a hydrant. ”

“A love affair with knowledge will never end in heartbreak.”

“If it is not strong upon your heart to practice what you read, to what end do you read? To increase your own condemnation? If your light and knowledge be not turned into practice, the more knowing a man you are, the more miserable a man you will be in the day of recompense; your light and knowledge will more torment you than all the devils in hell. Your knowledge will be that rod that will eternally lash you, and that scorpion that will forever bite you, and that worm that will everlastingly gnaw you; therefore read, and labor to know that you may do–or else you are undone forever.”

“من ظن أنه بقراءة كتاب أو أكثر صار مفكراً .. أو أديباً.. فهو واهم، ومن أمسك بتلابيب الفتوى في أمور الدين أو الدنيا لمجرد حفظه لعشر أحاديث وبعض قصار السور فهو مفتون”