Quotes

Some of us enjoying sharing quotes from the books we are reading, so here is the place to both quote and comment.

Here is one to start, from The Booklovers' Anthology edited by R.M. Leonard:

"Montaigne says, 'Books are a languid pleasure;' but I find certain books vital and spermatic, not leaving the reader what he was: he shuts the book a richer man. I would never willingly read any others than such." - Ralph Waldo Emerson, Books

From Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

"The king slips into his mouth an aniseed comfit, and snaps down on it. 'Already there are too many books in the world. There are more every day. One man cannot hope to read them all.'"

Spoken by character Henry VIII in 1533!

From the google quotes module on my internet home page. No book reference but it seemed fitting for this group:

"Books to the ceiling,
Books to the sky,
My pile of books is a mile high.
How I love them! How I need them!
I'll have a long beard by the time I read them."

Arnold Lobel

Apart from the beard bit it could definitely apply to me!

That's funny, Heather, because my husband pointed out that quote to me today and I thought the same thing--apart from the beard, it definitely applies to me!

Me too. Although I have a beard :)

#3 - We must have the same quote widget on our google home pages. I almost posted that one on here to.. I love it. Same for the beard part about me too.. LOL

Stasia, you made me give my PC a bath!

#7: Bathing your PC does not sound like a good idea, Carrie. I am not sure how my post lead to it :)

"For all his attention to my historical education, my father had neglected to tell me this: history's terrible moments were real. I understand now, decades later, that he could never have told me. Only history itself can convince you of such a truth. And once you've seen that truth - really seen it - you can't look away"

Chapter 5, The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova

#9: I like that one! Thanks for posting it!

"According to family lore, she was not the most conscientious housekeeper because she preferred reading to housework. A love of books ran in the family. Of all the possessions they were forced to sell or leave behind in Norway, what the Rollags remembered with deepest regret was the library they inherited from an eighteenth-century ancestor -- lovely old books sold to pay for their passage to America."

(from page 11, The Children's Blizzard by David Laskin)

11- Awww! Those poor, poor people...

>11 tymfos: - I think LibraryThing needs a "Like" button!

From The Delight of Great Books by John Erskine:

"The fact that a book is famous enough to scare off people who, if they had the courage to open the pages, would find there delight and profit. We make the mistake of fearing that the immortal things of art must be appreciated through special studies and disciplines, and we comfort ourselves on the principle of sour grapes, by deciding that ever if we were prepared to read the classics, we should find them dull."

From The Delight of Great Books by John Erskine:

"If we accept the idea that literature is a changing thing in the hands of the writers, there ought to be no difficulty in agreeing also to the idea, already implied, that it is a changing thing in the hands of the readers. Whenever we read a book we love, we change it, to some extent. We read into it our own interpretations, and the meanings which the words have taken on in our time."

“Catherine would be amazed and appalled to discover that today her ‘idol’ and ‘statesman’ is best known for a calumny and a film. He is remembered for the historical libel of the ‘Potemkin villages’, while he really built cities, and for the film Battleship Potemkin, the story of the mutinous sailors who heralded the revolutions that, long after his death, destroyed the Russia he loved.”

S. Sebag Montefiore, Potemkin, Catherine the Great’s Imperial Partner (New York, Vintage Books, 2000), p. 10.

I just acquired the memoirs of Saint-Simon. In the introduction, it says that his mother wanted her granddaughter (his daughter that is) to marry the Prince of Chimay, a union he and his wife opposed. But he bowed to her wishes and said...

"My mother wishes it and she is accustomed to make decisions"

#17: LOL, Manuel!

Quote from Books and Reading edited by Bill Bradfield:

"The world exists to be put into a book." - Stephane Mallarme

#19 I really like that one!

"Each spine was an encapsulated memory, each book represented hours, days of pleasure, of immersion in words." - Audrey Niffenegger, The Night Bookmobile

A quotation from my current fantasy, Devices and Desires ---
"Addled with too much concentration and too little sleep, he'd read it over three or four times before he finally got a toehold in a crevice between its slabs of verbiage, and hauled himself painfully into understanding."

I am glad to see people joining in and sharing quotes! Thanks!

#22: Peggy, all to often I know how that feels :)

I am really enjoying Cleopatra. Apparently Cicero came to really hate her because she wouldn't lend him one of her books.

Cicero liked to believe himself wealthy. He prided himself on his books. He needed no further reason to dislike Cleopatra: intelligent women who had better libraries than he did offended him on three counts.

#24 Wonderful!

From Joe Orton's The Erpingham Camp:

"If majorities allow themselves to be swayed by minorities, irresponsible or not, they must take the consequences."

From my Quotes of the Day on my Google Home page today:

Inspiration is wonderful when it happens, but the writer must develop an approach for the rest of the time... The wait is simply too long.
- Leonard Bernstein

Quote by Charles Darwin found in Charles and Emma:

They borrowed some novels from the library, starting a lifelong tradition of reading together - usually Emma read to Charles while he rested from his work. Charles like novels with happy endings, and he once wrote, "I often bless all novelists. A surprising number have been read aloud to me...and I like all if moderately good, and if they do not end unhappily - against which a law ought to be passed. A novel, according to my taste, does not come into the first class unless it contains some person whom one can thoroughly love, and if it be a pretty woman all the better."

Here's a few of my favourite bits from Beowulf:

"In off the moors, down through the mist-bands
God-cursed Grendel came greedily loping."
(pg24: 710-11)

"The hell-dam was in panic, desperate to get out,
in mortal terror the moment she was found."
(pg43: 1294-5)

"I have never seen mead enjoyed more
in any hall on earth..."
(pg64: 2015-6)

"He rippled down the rock, writhing with anger..."
(pg73: 2288)

Great quotes - they bring back how much I loved this when I read it.

From Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell:

"A half-read book is a half-finished love affair."

"I saw the ravishing maid as much inflamed as I; she burnt with equal fire, with equal languishment: not all her care could keep the sparks concealed, but it broke out in every word and look; her trembling tongue, her feeble fainting voice betrayed it all; signs interrupting every syllable; a languishment I never saw till then dwelt in her charming eyes, that conradicted all her little vows; her short and double breathings heaved her breast, her swelling snowy breast, her hands that grasped me trembling as they closed, while she permitted mine unknown, unheeded to traverse all her beauties, till quite forgetting all I had faintly promised, and wholly abandoning my soul to joy, I rushed upon her, who, all fainting, lay beneath my useless weight, for on a sudden all my power was fled, swifter than lightning hurried through my enfeebled veins, and vanished all..."

"This never happened to me before!", circa 1684, courtesy of Aphra Behn, Love Letters Between A Nobleman And His Sister.

(My apologies for the length of the quote, but without the proper lead-in, you don't really feel the force of the anti-climax, so to speak.)

I laughed aloud when I read this part of The Red Pyramid and thought all the LT cat lovers would like it. Bast is an Egyptian cat goddess who is helping Carter and his sister, Sadie, find their father.

She peeped over the top of the crates, every muscle in her body trembling. I tried to see what she was looking at, but there was nothing except the old wrecking-ball crane.
Bast's mouth twitched with excitement. Her eyes were fixed on the huge metal ball. I'd seen kittens look like that when they stalked catnip toy mice, or pieces of string, or rubber balls ...Balls? No. Bast was an ancient goddess. Surely she wouldn't -
"This could be it." She shifted her weight. "Stay very very still."
"There's no one there," Sadie hissed.
I started to say, "Um..."
Bast lunged over the crates. She flew thirty feet through the air, knives flashing, and landed on the wrecking ball with such force that she broke the chain. The cat goddess and the huge metal sphere smashed into the dirt and went rolling across the yard.
"Rowww!" Bast wailed. The wrecking ball rolled straight over her, but she didn't appear hurt. She leaped off and pounced again. Her knives sliced through the metal like wet clay. Within seconds, the wrecking ball was reduced to a mound of scraps.
Bast sheathed her blades. "Safe now!"
Sadie and I looked at each other.
"You saved us from a metal ball," Sadie said.
"You never know," Bast said. "It could've been hostile."

Oh yeah, I love Bast. It's definately every cat lovers dream Bast is.

Edited because I misspelled "yeah".

From March by Geraldine Brooks:

"To know a man's library is, in some measure, to know his mind."

From The White Family by Maggie Gee:

"She always like to have a book in her bag. In case she got stuck. In case she got lost. Or did she feel lost without her books? There wasn't any point, but she liked to have one with her, a gentle weight nudging her shoulder, keeping her company through the wind, making her solid, more substantial, less like to be blown away, less alone. More - a person."

That's a great quote, Stasia.

Glad you like it, Carrie!

#36 I think that quote could be a description of me. :D Thanks for sharing!

#36 I love that one!

I guess that quote strikes a chord with several 75ers :)

I don't even know if I can post since I'm not in this group but I'm assuming no one will sue. :)

The Princess Bride by william goldman has the most humorous quotes I've ever seen, so everything that follows is from that.

"Life is pain. Anyone who says differently is selling something."

"To the pain means this: if we duel and you win, death for me. If we duel and I win, life for you. But life on my terms."

"Meaning?"

"The first thing you lose will be your feet. The left, then the right. Below the ankle. You will have stumps available to use within six months. Then your hands, at the wrist. They heal somewhat quicker. Five months is a fair average. Next your nose. No smell of dawn for you. Followed by your tongue. Deeply cut away. Not even a stump left. And then your left eye-"

"And then my right eye and then my ears, and shall we get on with it?"

"WRONG! Your ears you keep, so that every shriek of every child at seeing your hideousness will be yours to cherish-every babe that weeps at fear at your approach, every woman that cries 'Dean God, what is that thing?' will reverberate forever with your perfect ears. That is what 'to the pain' means. It means that I leave youto live in anguish, in humiliation, in freakish misery until you can stand it no more; so there you have it, pig, there you now, you miserable vomitous mass, and I say this now, and live or die, it's up to you: DROP YOUR SWORD!"

The sword crashed to the floor.

"It's because you came two weeks too soon," they explained to Fezzik's mother. "That explains it." Actually, of course, it didn't explain anything, but whenever doctors are confused about something, which is really more frequently than any of us would do well to think about, they always snatch at something in the vicinity of the case and add, "That explains it." If Fezzik's mother had come late, they would have said, "Well, you came late, that explains it." Or "Well, it was raining during delivery, this added weight is simply moisture, that explains it."

(The story's hero (the man in black) is climbing the Cliffs of Insanity and his assasin (Inigo) up top is waiting impatiently to duel him)

"I don't suppose you could speed things up," Inigo said.

"If you want to speed things up so much," the man in black said, clearly quite angry now, "you could lower a rope or a tree brach or find some other helpful thing to do."

"I could do that," Inigo agreed. "But I don't think you would accept my help, since I'm only waiting up here so that I can kill you."

"That does put a damper on our relationship."

"You seem a decent fellow. I hate to kill you."

"You seem a decent fellow. I hate to die."

I love to quote The Princess Bride!

36- Stasia, I think you've found my long lost sister! ;)

I think I just figured why people will not read when I read this quote.

"The nobility rarely read. It might make them think."
-Kerbouchard form The Walking Drum by Louis L'Amour

If the word "nobility" was changed into "anybody", then I get why people does not like to read.

From Joe Orton's Funeral Games:

"Unless you kill your wife she'll accuse you of not being her murderer."

From Steve Branias in Smoking in Antarctica

"Rereading a genius is one of literature's greatest pleasures. You think you'll know what to expect - you went this way before, you can retrace your steps. It's the same words. Your hands held the same pages. But genius always takes you somewhere else. You don't know where you are. You're completely lost. You've gone somewhere even better than you first imagined."

#51: That fits perfectly with my recent re-read of Cloud Atlas! Thanks for sharing the quote, Kerry.

I love how people are sharing quotes from their reading here! It is terrific! Thanks so much everyone.

#42 No sueing! Princess Bride quotes brought a smile to my face :-)

"Borrowers of books-those mutilators of collections, spoilers of the symmetry of shelves, and creators of odd volumes."--Charles Lamb

From Musashi by Eiji Yoshakawa:

"When Takuan had sentenced him to confinement, he had said, 'You may read as much as you want. A famous priest of ancient times once said, 'I become immersed in the sacred scriptures and read thousands of volumes. When I come away, I find that my heart sees more than before.' "

I am really enjoying all of these quotes.
--BJ

Funny, I don't remember JD Salinger visiting my house...

"The rest, with very little exaggeration, was books. Meant-to-be-picked-up books. Permanently-left-behind-books. Uncertain-what-to-do-with books. But books, books. Tall cases lined three walls of the room, filled to and beyond capacity. The overflow had been piled in stacks on the floor. There was little space left for walking, and none whatever for pacing"

From Franny and Zooey

#57: Sounds like my place too.

#57: It would sound like my place too, but I do not have any bookcases.

From Harlem is Nowhere by Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts:

"I could invent for you the street scene of a decade past, some loud summer noise or curious encounter, but they would be just that, inventions, because I don't remember a thing. I don't remember a thrill that was specific to being in Harlem. The thrill was in the library. Harlem was the place I rushed past to meet it. The library was my true destination."

From Harlem is Nowhere by Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts:

"One book held the key to another, though it solved a riddle I had not been trying to answer and provided information I did not know how to use. What other mysteries might be unraveled the more often I came (to the library) and the longer I stayed?"

I think this may be suitable.

If you were foolish enough to cast your eye around the Heap's room hoping to find a space in which to sit, the chances were a book would have found if first. Everywhere you looked there were books. On sagging shelfves, in boxes, hanging in bags from the ceiling, propping up the table and stacked up in such precariously high piles that they threatened to collapse at any moment. There were storybooks, herb books, cookery books, boat books, {and also} fishing books...

- Magyk by Angie Sage

#62: Thanks for sharing the quote, Nathan!

Your welcome!

From The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon:

"Two fugitives riding on the spine of a book, eager to escape into worlds of fiction and secondhand dreams"

From Agatha Christie: An Autobiography by Agatha Christie:

"There is no greater mistake in life than seeing things or hearing them at the wrong time. Shakespeare is ruined for most people by having been made to learn it as school; you should see Shakespeare as it was written to be seen, played on the stage. There you can appreciate it quite young, long before you take in the beauty of the words and of the poetry."

#66 She's definitely right about that!

>#66 &67: She sure is. We werre very fortunate in that our local high school arranged trips to view the plays we studied each year. What a difference seeing even a mediocre acting company can make in understanding what's going on.

From As Always, Julia edited by Joan Reardon:

"How could any people have so much stuff. How do we have so many books when we had not even one book case in Paris, not even one. But we had 6 cases of books. I don't understand that at all." - Letter from Julia Child to Avis DeVoto, November 23, 1953

I can certainly relate!

– Prologue from Logan in Overtime by Paul Quarrington

Logan’s professional hockey career didn’t exactly go the way he’d hoped. He was never a household name… even in his own household. This time even his goalie pads couldn’t protect him when he hit rock bottom — as goaltender for the hapless Falconbridge Falcons. How much lower can you go than the cellar of a Northern Ontario industrial hockey league? But things begin to change when a game against the Hope Blazers goes into overtime — and stays there. Soon everyone is interested, including Hockey Night in Canada, who fly in to check out the game.
“Let’s pretend,” a voice suggested, “that we’re one of those Frank Capra movies.”
“How do we do that?”
...“You know. Here we are, up in the heavens, looking down.”
“Right. And all you see on the screen is a bunch of nebulae and assorted twinklies.”
“Exactly.”
“With violins,” another voice suggested.
“Do they like this sort of stuff?”
“Some do, some don’t.”
“Okay. Here we go. Look down. Look away down there. Look at the town of Falconbridge, Ontario, population, thirteen thousand.”
“Thirteen thousand and one if we count him.”
“There he is. Staring right back at us, coincidentally.”
“Is it he with whom was are going to fuck around?”
“Well,” came a voice, considering, “he’s doing a pretty crackerjack job of fucking around with himself. We’re going to help him.”
“What’s he got? Marital problems? Financial difficulties? Mental anguishes? Emotional instability? Physical abnormalities and/or diseases?”
“He’s got all sorts of general problems. We’re here for something specific.”
“Like what, for instance?”
“You guys ever hear of a game called hockey?”

From 'A Great and Terrible Beauty' by Libba Bray

It's knowing that I'll never have... a beauty so powerful it brings things to you. I fear I will always have to chase the things I want. I'll always wonder whether I'm truly wanted or whether I've just been settled for.

This quote from Tender Morsels touched my heart.

"But," Branza went on, "as Urdda said, though I did not really understand it at the time, comfort is not what we are here for or not necessarily."
Hearing her daughter say so, so bravely, and seeing Branza's face so full of thought and the effort to understand and make things right, and feeling the weight of the jewels in her hands, the jewels that had bought them so many peaceable, comfortable years away from here, Liga felt like a piece of shot silk, shining proudly one way, regretful when a different light struck her. "That only makes me want to comfort you," she said rather desolately, stepping into the hallway and taking Branza in her arms.
"Of course it does," said Branza, laughing softly at her ear. "You're my mam. That is what mams are for, to comfort us when other things disappoint us."
"Oh, no," said Liga, eyes tightly shut, holding Branza close. "That is what daughters are for, angel child."

I loved this quote from Hygiène de l'assassin (Hygiene and the Assassin) by Amélie Nothomb, in which the dying Nobel Prize winning author (and world class pompous ass) Prétextat Tach describes the profession of writing to an interviewer:

"How can a writer possibly be modest? It is the most immodest profession on earth: whether it's the style, the ideas, the story, the research, writers never talk about anything but themselves and, what's more, with words. Painters and musicians also talk about themselves, but with a language that is substantially less crude than our own. No, Monsieur, writers are obscene; if they were not, they would be accountants, or train conductors, or telephone operators; they would be respectable."

From A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray:

You can never really know anyone completely. That's why it's the most terrifying thing in the world, really - taking someone on faith, hoping they'll take you on faith too. It's such a precarious balance, it's a wonder we do it at all. And yet...

From The Ghost of Thomas Kempe, this loving description of a small town library caught my eye:

A valiant effort had been made to cater for the many and varied tastes of Ledsham readers. Cookery books and books on How to Grow Better Chrysanthemums jostled for space with The Cathedrals of England and The Origins of the Second World War. Love and crime were rampant on the fiction shelves. In the children's section every book had the appearance of having been well and truly read, or even, in the case of the books for very young children, partially eaten. It was a satisfactory place: familiar, yet inexhaustibly surprising, homely but exotic in its offerings. To plunge into its gloomy entrance was like opening a grocery box and finding it full of Christmas presents.

74- Wow, that is so true.

75- I like the line about 'partially eaten' books!

75, 76 The 'partially eaten' books line made me laugh, too. That whole quote is just great! 'Love and crime were rampant on the fiction shelves.' Love it!

From The Whistling Season by Ivan Doig:

My books already threatened to take over my part of the room and keep on going. Mother's old ones, subscription sets Father had not been able to resist, coverless winnowings from the schoolhouse shelf – whatever cargoes of words I could lay my hands on I gave safe harbor.

#76, 77 - glad you liked the quote - I think good quotes about reading and libraries are a sure bet for favourites on LT!

#78 And I love the image of 'cargoes of words'.

Best book i have ever read-so poetic and beautifully written. thanks for sharing this brilliant quote!

message 80-This is for Shadow of the wind see- message 65

>80 jonnyhoyle: and 81: I am a shameless advocate for Shadow of the Wind. Another passage I loved from it:

Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs his eyes down its pages, its spirit grows and strengthens.

How true that is; sharing books with others makes the books mean so much more to the reader.

And then there's this from E.F. Benson's Mrs. Ames...
"---and to take round to her after lunch to-morrow the book she said she wanted to see last July. I am sure I have forgotten what it was, but any book will do, since she only wants it to be thought that she reads."

It's been a while since anyone posted anything here!

I recently rediscovered this quote I loved Gilead:

. . .I've developed a great reputation for wisdom by ordering more books than I ever had time to read, and reading more books, by far, than I learned anything useful from, except, of course, that some very tedious gentlemen have written books. This is not a new insight, but the truth of it is something you have to experience to fully grasp.

Thank God for them all, of course, and for that strange interval, which was most of my life, when I read out of loneliness, and when bad company was much better than no company. You can love a bad book for its haplessness or pomposity or gall, if you have that starveling appetite for things human . . .

I remembered this from a recent read... A Kestrel for a Knave pg 35.

.. 'What's tha want that for when tha can't read?'
Jud reached over Billy's shoulder and snatched the book out of his hands. Billy jumped up from the kitchen step and ran after him into the living-room.
'Giz it back! Come here!'
Jud held him off, tilting his head and trying to read the title at arm's length as the book flapped open and shut.
'Falconry! What's thar know about falconry?'
'Giz it back.'
Jud pushed him back on to the settee, then started to examine the book at leisure.
'A Falconer's Handbook. Where's that got this from?'
'I've lent it.'
'Nicked it, more like. Where's tha got it from?'
'A shop in town.'
'Tha must be crackers.'
'How's tha mean?'
'Nicking books.'
He looked at a picture, then slapped it shut.
'I could understand if if it wa' money, but chuff me, not a book.'

Not that I advocate stealing books, but I love the sentiment that he (Billy) would take a book just to improve his knowledge about caring for and training a Kestrel.

From Tolstoy and the Purple Chair by Nina Sankovitch:

"I took on a year of reading books for a reason. Because words are witness to life: they record what has happened, and they make it all real. Words create the stories that become history and become unforgettable. Even fiction portrays truth: good fiction is truth."

"What vile creatures her parsons are!"

---John Henry Newman on Jane Austen (from his letters, quoted in The Novel And The Oxford Movement).

From Joy for Beginners by Erica Bauermeister (June 2011)

Caroline favored an alphabetical approach to shelving her books; she said it made it easier for other people to find them, which it did, but in reality she loved the process of finding a book through a rational process, only to open the pages and be caught in the memories of the person she had been when she first read it.

The character, Caroline, is a used book buyer at her local book shop, where she assessed the value of their reading habits.

From Dragonsinger by Anne McCaffrey

The tears I feel today
I’ll wait to shed tomorrow.
Though I’ll not sleep this night
Nor find surcease from sorrow.
My eyes must keep their sight;
I dare not be tear-blinded.
I must be free to talk
No choked with grief, clear-minded.
My mouth cannot betray
The anguish that I know.
Yes, I’ll keep my tears till later;
But my grief will never go

-Menolly’s “Song for Petiron”

From Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac by Gabrielle Zevin:

Above all, mine is a love story.
And like most love stories, this one involves chance, gravity, a dash of head trauma.

>90 MickyFine: LOL...so true, but probably not exactly how the narrator meant it.

From The Age of Faith by Will Durant:

"He (Julian the Apostate) loved books, carried a library with him on campaigns, vastly enlarged the library that Constantine had founded, and established others. 'Some men,' he wrote, 'have a passion for horses, others for birds, others for wild beasts; but I from childhood have been possessed by a passionate longing to acquire books.' "

I can relate, Julian, I can relate!

From An Abundance of Katherines by John Green:

"Books are the ultimate Dumpees: put them down and they'll wait for you forever; pay attention to them and they always love you back."

#93: I like that one a lot. Thanks for sharing it, Micky!

From Too Loud a Solitude by Bohumil Hrabal:

"I huddle in the lee of my paper mountain like Adam in the bushes and pick up a book, and my eyes open panic-stricken on a world other than my own, because when I start reading I'm somewhere completely different, I'm in the text, it's amazing, I have to admit I've been dreaming, dreaming in a land of great beauty, I've been in the very heart of truth."

"...Dr Bickleigh was accustomed to spend his evenings in the drawing-room with his wife, he over a book from the library in Merchester and she with a piece of embroidery or crochet work; Julia was not a reader... Now, as she spoke from time to time of this and that, and he looked up from his book to answer her (not being a reader herself, Julia always seemed to make a point of letting anyone else do so for no more than five minutes without interruption)..."

From Malice Aforethought by Francis Iles (Anthony Berkeley). It is not a spoiler to reveal that Dr Bickleigh decides to murder Julia not long after this sequence of events. Not for that, exactly, but...

From James Hilton's And Now Good-Bye, a very bookish book:

"There was always something queer about that girl. I put it all down to not being made to go to chapel---Garland seemed to have no control over her at all. And then having that job at the library, too." She paused and continued impressively: "There are books in that library, Mr Freemantle, whether you believe me or not, which ought not to exist anywhere---let alone where young people can get hold of them. I don't hold with public libraries."

By this point in the story, we are not very surprised to learn that Mr Freemantle - the Nonconformist minister - spends quite a lot of time at this "wicked" library:

"One of the ways he could help besides visiting was this changing of library books; he knew the kind of stuff Trevis liked and took a keen pleasure in making selections he thought would please. This morning he chose Somerset Maugham's The Moon And Sixpence, Edith Wharton's Ethan Frome, and a book by a youth named Michael Terry detailing his adventures whilst driving a Ford car across the Northern Territory of Australia from Queensland to the Indian Ocean..."

From The Twenty-One Balloons by William Pene du Bois:

" 'I would hate to predict what will become of this younger, mechanically minded generation.'

I agreed that the electrical age we were entering was indeed frightening."

This book won the Newbery Medal in 1948. The quote makes me wonder what du Bois would have made of today's generation and all its gadgets!

From How Green Was My Valley by Richard Llewellyn:

O, there is lovely to feel a book, a good book, firm in the hand, for its fatness holds rich promise, and you are hot inside to think of good hours to come.

From Murder at Midnight by Avi (Renaissance Italy):

”There can never be enough books,” said Mangus. “The pity is it takes years to create each one.”

“Is that true?” said the surprised boy.

“Fabrizio, a book must first be written. To do so, the writer exchanges days for words, months for paragraphs, and years for chapters – time turned into books. There's your magic.”

A friend loaned me a book, and a bookmark which had this quote from P.J. O'Rourke:

Always read stuff that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.

LOL!

"Books are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind. Books are humanity in print."

Barbara Tuchman

From The Likeness by Tana French:

"I figured I could handle a few weeks curled up in the library reading about hard-boiled PIs and dames who were nothing but trouble."

I figure I could handle a few weeks curled up in the library reading period!

From Okay for Now by Gary D. Schmidt:

"I sipped at my coffee until I was finished with it. I got up and walked around the table in her study. It was still piled high with books. It will probably always be piled high with books. But the difference was, I could read them now. Not that I'd want to read those particular books, but I could have if I wanted to, and that makes all the difference. I'm not lying."

Some bookish quotes I have come across recently.

From Everyday Tao, by Mind Dao Deng.

"Beginning poets often write long pieces filled with dramatic allusions and metaphors. It takes a master poet to hold an entire world in just a few lines." pg 237

"The First Emporer understood how important books were. He burned books and buried scholars in order to dominate the country. Every despot since then has known that control of knowledge is control of a nation. But it didn't work for the First Emporer, and it will never work for any despot. There will always be books-which can be hidden, which need no technology to open, which are not virtual but real objects. Those who use them will not give them up easily.
That is why, even today, books are so revered. Books allow people to think for themselves, allow access to knowledge forgotten or even out of favour with the times. Books allow knowledge to travel over time and distances greater than the author could ever accomplish in person. Most important, books encourage allegiance not to kings, but to the learning of the individual. And that is crucial to Tao." pg 38

From A Dance With Dragons, by George R.R. Martin.

"A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies... " pg 452

#105 - Great quotes! I especially love the one from A Dance With Dragons.

Quote from That Deadman Dance, by Kim Scott.

"When Bobby Wahalangingy told the story, perhaps more than his own lifetime later, nearly all his listeners knew of books and of the language in them. But not, as we do, that you can dive deep into a book and not know just how deep until you return gasping to the surface, and are surprised at yourself, your new and so very sensitive skin. As if you're someone else altogether, some new self trying on the words." pg 85-6

From The Girls in the Velvet Frame by Adele Geras:

There's nothing in there but books. A bed, a table and two chairs, and books, books, books, piled wherever you can think of. No cushions, no food, no pictures, nothing comfortable and soft, only old books with tiny letters. Is it any wonder the old man can hardly see?”

“The soft and comfortable things for him are probably in the books,” said Naomi, “so he doesn't need them in the furniture.”

In Hugh Walpole's historical novel Judith Paris, several of the characters become acquainted with Robert Southey and his wife. During a visit to their house, as Southey shows off his library, we learn that the poet suffers from an affliction common amongst LibraryThing-ers:

He was quivering now like a boy. His hands shook, his face was all smiles. Then ruefully laughing at himself: "Ah, I am for ever making collections. It is foolish, is it not, for who will read them if I do not, and they arrive more swiftly than even I can peruse them. Time! Time! Why are the days not twice as long and the nights four times!"...

While we find another kindred spirit in a boy called John Herries, who:

...could read tales and poetry to himself by the hour. He would sit curled up in a corner somewhere and pray he would not be noticed.

From Brian Selznick's beautiful new book, Wonderstruck:

He wished that he was with his mom in her library, where everything was safe and numbered and organized by the Dewey decimal system. Ben wished the world was organized by the Dewey decimal system. That way you'd be able to find whatever you were looking for, like the meaning of your dream, or your dad.

Great quote mamzel, and the book sounds great, have just ordered it, thanks !

I hope you don't mind if I add a qoute seeing as I'm not a member! :)

"Hello, old chap, you got to work, hey?"
Tom wheeled suddenly and said:
"Why, it's you, Ben! I warn't noticing."
"Say-I'm going in a-swimming, I am. Don't you wish you could? But of course you'd druther WORK - wouldn't you? Course you would!"
Tom contemplated the boy a bit, and said:
"What do you call work?"
"Why, and THAT work?"
Tom resumed his whitewashing, and answered carelssly:
"Well, maybe it is, and maybe it ain't. All I know, is, it suits Tom Sawyer."
"Oh come, now, you don't mean to let on you LIKE it?"
The brush continued to move.
"Like it? Well, I don't see why I oughtn't to like it. Does a boy get a chance to whitewash a fence every day?"
That put the thing in a new light. ~ The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

Are you going to have a reading challenge for 2012? I'd love to join if you are. It's too late now. There's no way I could read 75 books in one month.

You can join and chat to us now and then start fresh for 2012.

Oh, we'll definitely have a 2012 challenge. I'm planning to start it up sometime in the second half of December. Not telling when, though... :)

Thank you! :)

I think you should change it to 175 Books Challenge for 2012! I read at least a 100 a year... :) I don't know why, but I always need to read at least three a week...

Heh. That would be a real challenge for me. I've not cracked 115 in recent memory. Too many hours spent working...

#114 - I have been watching very closely and waiting for next years challenge to be up.. I haven't met my goal this year, but I love this group so much that I am sure hoping you will let me stay and hopefully one of these years I will meet the 75 in a year :) It isn't for lack of trying on my part. Real life gets in the way.. Darn it. :)

I don't think anyone gives a fig whether other members are at twenty or two hundred books at the end of the year - please join again!

From William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying:

"She prayed for me because she believed I was blind to sin, wanting me to kneel and pray too, because people to whom sin is just a matter of words, to them salvation is just words too."

#119 - Thanks... I don't really give a fig how far others get either. I just love reading and I love this group, I hate to no reach a goal but on the same token I don't wanna leave this group everyone is so wonderful.

Silverin, I hope you caught the Google page yesterday. They had a very cute logo that commemorated Twain's birthday and featured the white washing scene.