Bibliophiles Quotes

Give me a man or woman who has read a thousand books and you give me an interesting companion. Give me a man or woman who has read perhaps three and you give me a very dangerous enemy indeed. ~ Anne Rice

Nevertheless we cherish all books, especially the unread ones, for who knows what secrets they might yield one day?
- p.397, as by Larry Zagorski, in his short story "The City of the Sun ~ Jake Arnott

Should he give free reign to his desires, the bibliomaniac can ruin his life along with the lives of his loved ones. He'll often take better care of his books than of his own health; he'll spend more on fiction than he does on food; he'll be more interested in his library than in his relationships, and, since few people are prepared to live in a place where every available surface is covered with piles of books, he'll often find himself alone, perhaps in the company of a neglected and malnourished cat. When he dies, all but forgotten, his body might fester for days before a curious neighbor grows concerned about the smell. ~ Mikita Brottman

In the way of bookish children, she carried her books into trees and along the banks of chuckling creeks, weaving her way along their slippery shores with the sort of grace that belongs only to bibliophiles protecting their treasures. ~ Seanan McGuire

That must be something to discover a book that nobody's ever heard of or everybody thought was lost."
"It's every bibliophile's dream," said Francis, and Peter knew in a second that it was his own. ~ Charlie Lovett

I perceived quite early that I was a reader, and most of the people I came into contact with were not. It made a barrier. What they wanted to talk about were things they had eaten, touched, or done. What I wanted to talk about was what I had read. ~ Frederik Pohl

My husband and I are huge bibliophiles. He's always reading 'The New York Times Book Review' and then ordering 20 books online. ~ Carrie Coon

Sometimes I fantasize about getting my hands on my library records. . . my recurring bookworm dream is to peruse my personal library history like it's a historical document.

My bookshelves show me the books I've bought or been given. . . But my library books come into my house and go out again, leaving behind only memories and a jotted line in a journal (if I'm lucky). I long for a list that captures these ephemeral reads - all the books I've borrowed in a lifetime of reading, from last week's armful spanning back to when I was a seven-year-old kid with my first library card. I don't need many details - just the titles and dates would be fine - but oh, how I'd love to see them.

Those records preserve what my memory has not. I remember the highlights of my grade-school checkouts, but much is lost to time. How I'd love to see the complete list of what I chose to read in second grade, or sixth, or tenth. ~ Anne Bogel

The house I grew up in is one of a kind. It's a bibliophile's fantasy, and if the Library of Congress had a little brother who was a midget, you could find him residing in my parents' house. ~ Jarod Kintz

Visiting Specialty Books was like living in an episode of Extreme Hoarders: Bibliophiles. ~ Molly Harper

you are a lover of the words
a soul mate to the story
everything becomes a part of you
from my fingertips to your eyes
from my heart to yours ~ Amanda Linsmeier

Bookish people, who are often maladroit people, persist in thinking they can master any subtlety so long as it's been shaped into acceptable expository prose. ~ Carol Shields

I do not just buy books; I collect them with the idea that they fit into a pattern of knowledge. ~ Omar Saif Ghobash

I know some who are constantly drunk on books as other men are drunk on whiskey. ~ H.L. Mencken

You're the only person I've ever met who can stand a bookstore as long as I can. ~ Junot Diaz

I said. "But there are bibliophiles the world over it would reduce to tears of joy." No exaggeration. Harley's [book] collection's worth a million-six ... ~ Glen Duncan

We lusty bibliophiles know that reading, unlike just about anything else, is both good for you and loads of fun. ~ Kevin Smokler

To a bibliophile, there is but one thing better than a box of new books, and that is a box of old ones. ~ Will Thomas

But as it turned out, the two had a great deal in common, for both Bailey and Thackeray (named for the famous novelist William Makepeace Thackeray, author of Vanity Fair) were devoted bibliophiles who believed that "a book a day kept the world at bay," as Thackeray was fond of saying. Bailey was the offspring of a generation of badgers who insisted that "Reader" was the most rewarding vocation to which a virtuous badger might be called and who gauged their week's anticipated pleasure by the height of their to-be-read pile. (Perhaps you know people like this. I do.) ~ Susan Wittig Albert

If you truly love a book, you should sleep with it, write in it, read aloud from it, and fill its pages with muffin crumbs. ~ Anne Fadiman

Earlier that day, a typewriter bomb had exploded at a black market skin house over on Eel Street, sending words raining through the cardboard walls of the boudoirs and tattooing copies of the Machinist's 'Twelve Terms' on the bodies of whores and patrons alike. Forty pieces of merch ruined. Their bodies had been obliterated by language, all traces of their sexuality buried beneath a storm of words. There was something horrific about the sight of those who had survived a typewriter attack. Their faces scarred with text, as if they had become hostages to some awful advertisement. A few of the victims took to working the streets around the library where bibliophiles sometimes paid them to satisfy their fantasies amid the desolate hush of the reading rooms and the deserted stacks where the only witnesses to this erotic pantomime of the blank body and its printed partner were other words. ~ Craig Padawer

The odd thing about people who had many books was how they always wanted more. ~ Patricia A. McKillip

Mom and Dad were bibliophiles. Dad shared his father's love of westerns, Mom favored the likes of Zelazny and Heinlein, Howard and Burroughs. We owned several hundred books stored in trunks that comprised our portable library. ~ Laird Barron

This was, I thought, the language of shy men, men too much alone with their reading and their ideas - politics, war, distant countries, tyrants. Men who would bury their heads in such stuff just to avert their eyes from a woman's simple heartache. ~ Alice McDermott

It's the loneliest people who love books the most...it was the opposite of loneliness, too, like there were too many people around me, forced connections, that I needed a little isolation to think on my own, to be my own person. ~ Etaf Rum

But greater than all these delights would be the possession of this wondrous library for my own use and pleasure. What more could my bibliophile's soul ask for? Here were marvels without end, treasures beyond knowing. You have seen the worst of me in these confessions. Here, then, let me throw into the opposite side of the balance, what I truly believe is the best of me: my devotion to the mental life, to those divine faculties of intellect and imagination which, when exercised to the utmost, can make gods of us all. ~ Michael Cox