"When the book comes out it may hurt you -- but in order for me to do it, it had to hurt me first. I can only tell you about yourself as much as I can face about myself."

Baldwin, James on books - reading
7 fans of this quote   

"Books are men of higher stature; the only men that speak aloud for future times to hear."

Barrett, E.S. on books - reading
5 fans of this quote   

"He that loves a book will never want a faithful friend, a wholesome counselor, a cheerful companion, an effectual comforter. By study, by reading, by thinking, one may innocently divert and pleasantly entertain himself, as in all weathers, as in all fortunes."

Barrow on books - reading
9 fans of this quote   

"A book is a garden, an orchard, a storehouse, a party, a company by the way, a counselor, a multitude of counselors."

Beecher, Henry Ward on books - reading
6 fans of this quote   

"Books are not made for furniture, but there is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house."

Beecher, Henry Ward on books - reading
11 fans of this quote   

"When I am dead, I hope it may be said: His sins were scarlet, but his books were read."

Belloc, Hilaire on books - reading
7 fans of this quote   

"Of all the ways of acquiring books, writing them oneself is regarded as the most praiseworthy method. Writers are really people who write books not because they are poor, but because they are dissatisfied with the books which they could buy but do not like."

Benjamin, Walter on books - reading
6 fans of this quote   

"The power of a text is different when it is read from when it is copied out. Only the copied text thus commands the soul of him who is occupied with it, whereas the mere reader never discovers the new aspects of his inner self that are opened by the text, that road cut through the interior jungle forever closing behind it: because the reader follows the movement of his mind in the free flight of day-dreaming, whereas the copier submits it to command."

Benjamin, Walter on books - reading   

"Does there, I wonder, exist a being who has read all, or approximately all, that the person of average culture is supposed to have read, and that not to have read is a social sin? If such a being does exist, surely he is an old, a very old man."

Bennett, Arnold on books - reading   

"All the best stories in the world are but one story in reality -- the story of escape. It is the only thing which interests us all and at all times, how to escape."

Benson, Arthur Christopher on books - reading
5 fans of this quote   

"When we read a story, we inhabit it. The covers of the book are like a roof and four walls. What is to happen next will take place within the four walls of the story. And this is possible because the story's voice makes everything its own."

Berger, John on books - reading
3 fans of this quote   

"Read nothing that you do not care to remember, and remember nothing you do not mean to use."

Blackie, Professor on books - reading
8 fans of this quote   

"The failure to read good books both enfeebles the vision and strengthens our most fatal tendency --the belief that the here and now is all there is."

Bloom, Allan on books - reading
6 fans of this quote   

"A conventional good read is usually a bad read, a relaxing bath in what we know already. A true good read is surely an act of innovative creation in which we, the readers, become conspirators."

Bradbury, Malcolm on books - reading
6 fans of this quote   

"You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them."

Bradbury, Ray on books - reading
6 fans of this quote   

"A book may be compared to your neighbor: if it be good, it cannot last too long; if bad, you cannot get rid of it too early."

Brooke, Rupert on books - reading
3 fans of this quote   

"It is well to read everything of something, and something of everything."

Brougham, Lord Henry P. on books - reading
4 fans of this quote   

This quotation can be viewed in the context of a book

"Books, books, books had found the secret of a garret-room piled high with cases in my father's name; Piled high, packed large, --where, creeping in and out among the giant fossils of my past, like some small nimble mouse between the ribs of a mastodon, I nibbled here and there at this or that box, pulling through the gap, in heats of terror, haste, victorious joy, the first book first. And how I felt it beat under my pillow, in the morning's dark. An hour before the sun would let me read! My books!"

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett on books - reading
4 fans of this quote   

"When a book raises your spirit, and inspires you with noble and manly thoughts, seek for no other test of its excellence. It is good, and made by a good workman."

Bruyere, Jean De La on books - reading   

"Books succeed, and lives fail."

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett on books - reading
7 fans of this quote   

"Reading without purpose is sauntering not exercise."

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G. on books - reading   

"In science read the newest works, in literature read the oldest."

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G. on books - reading   

"The worst sorrows in life are not in its losses and misfortune, but its fears."

Benson, Arthur Christopher on fear
8 fans of this quote   

"Research is usually a policeman stopping a novel from progressing."

Moore, Brian on research   

"Americans will listen, but they do not care to read. War and Peace must wait for the leisure of retirement, which never really comes: meanwhile it helps to furnish the living room. Blockbusting fiction is bought as furniture. Unread, it maintains its value. Read, it looks like money wasted. Cunningly, Americans know that books contain a person, and they want the person, not the book."

Burgess, Anthony on books - reading
3 fans of this quote   

"Books are masters who instruct us without rods or ferules, without words or anger, without bread or money. If you approach them, they are not asleep; if you seek them, they do not hide; if you blunder, they do not scold; if you are ignorant, they do not laugh at you."

Bury, Richard De on books - reading
5 fans of this quote   

"A novel is never anything, but a philosophy put into images."

Camus, Albert on books - reading   

"A novel points out that the world consists entirely of exceptions."

Carey, Joyce on books - reading   

"What we become depends on what we read after all the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is the collection of books."

Carlyle, Thomas on books - reading
5 fans of this quote   

"If a book comes from the heart it will contrive to reach other hearts. All art and author craft are of small account to that."

Carlyle, Thomas on books - reading   

"A bibliophile of little means is likely to suffer often. Books don't slip from his hands but fly past him through the air, high as birds, high as prices."

Neruda, Pablo on books - reading
3 fans of this quote   

"I do not love you

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

that this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep."

Neruda, Pablo on love
39 fans of this quote   

"Saddest Poem

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.

Write, for instance: "The night is full of stars,
and the stars, blue, shiver in the distance."

The night wind whirls in the sky and sings.

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

On nights like this, I held her in my arms. I kissed her so many times under the infinite sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her.
How could I not have loved her large, still eyes?

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
To think I don't have her. To feel that I've lost her.

To hear the immense night, more immense without her.
And the poem falls to the soul as dew to grass.

What does it matter that my love couldn't keep her.
The night is full of stars and she is not with me.

That's all. Far away, someone sings. Far away.
My soul is lost without her.

As if to bring her near, my eyes search for her.
My heart searches for her and she is not with me.

The same night that whitens the same trees.
We, we who were, we are the same no longer.

I no longer love her, true, but how much I loved her.
My voice searched the wind to touch her ear.

Someone else's. She will be someone else's. As she once
belonged to my kisses.
Her voice, her light body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, true, but perhaps I love her.
Love is so short and oblivion so long.

Because on nights like this I held her in my arms,
my soul is lost without her.

Although this may be the last pain she causes me,
and this may be the last poem I write for her."

Neruda, Pablo on love
14 fans of this quote   

"Clenched Soul

We have lost even this twilight.
No one saw us this evening hand in hand
while the blue night dropped on the world.

I have seen from my window
the fiesta of sunset in the distant mountain tops.
Sometimes a piece of sun
burned like a coin in my hand.

I remembered you with my soul clenched
in that sadness of mine that you know.

Where were you then?
Who else was there?
Saying what?
Why will the whole of love come on me suddenly
when I am sad and feel you are far away?

The book fell that always closed at twilight
and my blue sweater rolled like a hurt dog at my feet.

Always, always you recede through the evenings
toward the twilight erasing statues."

Neruda, Pablo on love
15 fans of this quote   

"It takes a wise man to handle a lie, a fool had better remain honest."

Douglas, Norman on lies and lying
6 fans of this quote   

"Among my most prized possessions are words that I have never spoken."

Card, Orson Scott on words
71 fans of this quote   

"Love Sonnet XI

I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day
I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.

I hunger for your sleek laugh,
your hands the color of a savage harvest,
hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.

I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,
the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,
I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,

and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,
hunting for you, for your hot heart,
like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue."

Neruda, Pablo on want
11 fans of this quote   

"The Eighth of September

This day, Today, was a brimming glass.
This day, Today, was an immense wave.
This day was all the Earth.

This day, the storm-driven ocean
lifted us up in a kiss
so exalted we trembled
at the lightning flash
and bound as one, fell,
and drowned, without being unbound.

This day our bodies grew
stretched out to Earth's limits,
orbited there, melded there
to one globe of wax, or a meteor's flame.

A strange door opened, between us,
and someone, with no face as yet,
waited for us there."

Neruda, Pablo on wonder
3 fans of this quote   

"Reading a book is like re-writing it for yourself. You bring to a novel, anything you read, all your experience of the world. You bring your history and you read it in your own terms."

Carter, Angela on books - reading
5 fans of this quote   

"A good book, in the language of the book-sellers, is a salable one; in that of the curious, a scarce one; in that of men of sense, a useful and instructive one."

Chambers, Oswald on books - reading
3 fans of this quote