Favorite Books Quotes

Our favorite games were killing.
Our favorite books were death.
It had been beaten into us:
God is love.
Not the parched face and gnarled
capes across a stick body; jittering
in the nude sky, we couldn't see
trying to touch us
for the blood in our eyes. ~ Joseph Bathanti

One of my favorite books is 'The Swiss Family Robinson.' The reason is, I'm fascinated by the postapocalyptic recovery. What do we do in a disaster? How do we make do? ~ Vint Cerf

I don't hate humanity and I'm not interested in people who do. Although, it's funny, actually, some of my favorite writers really do. Like Martin Amis. My dirty secret. 'London Fields' is one of my favorite books ever. And it's indefensible! But he's so funny ... I forgive him everything. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

Some books mirror reality while others are entirely fantasy. My favorite are those that manage to weave both into a world. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

In design-speak, 'a library' means a room lined with books, floor-to ceiling, but it all depends on the space you have. You may have a free-standing bookshelf of your favorite books if that's all you have room for. ~ Nate Berkus

Naming my favorite books feels like naming a favorite child - impossible. ~ Libba Bray

Growing up, my two favorite books were Woody Allen's 'Side Effects' and Phyllis Diller's 'Housekeeping Hints.' I carried that Phyllis Diller book with me everywhere when I was in fifth or sixth grade. Eventually, it just fell apart. ~ Jill Davis

I like terrific writing, but I also like a terrific story. My favorite books have both, and they're by contemporary, commercial American writers. ~ Lisa Scottoline

To me, re-reading my favorite books is like spending time with my best friends.
I'd never be satisfied to limit myself to just one experience each with my favorite people. ~ C.S. Lewis

Because I fuckin' love you Mia ...
That didn't come out exactly as I'd planned, but it is the truth. I'm in love with you ... ~ Samantha Towle

I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN most interested in the question of what makes a house a home. What are the elements that move a house beyond its physical structure and provide the warmth that we all crave? In my fifteen years as a designer, I've come to understand that the answer is simple: It is about surrounding ourselves with things we love.

(...) And in this case, the beauty comes from the owners' love of books.

Books are beautiful objects in their own right - their bindings and covers - and the space they fill on shelves or stacked on coffee tables in colorful piles add balance and texture to any room. And just like any other part of a home, books require maintenance: They need to be dusted, categorized, rearranged, and maintained. Our relationship with them is dynamic and ever changing.

But our connection to them goes beyond the material. In each house we visited, the libraries were the heart of the home, meaningful to the collectors' lives. In this book, we tried to capture what they brought to the home - the life and spirit books added. Some subjects have working libraries they constantly reference; others fill their shelves with the potential pleasures of the unread. When we visited the homes, many people could find favorite books almost by osmosis, using systems known only to themselves.

(...) As we found repeatedly, surrounding yourself with books you love tells the story of your life, your interests, your passions, your values. Your ~ Nina Freudenberger

Robert Cialdini, author of one of my favorite books, Influence, the Psychology of Persuasion, writes: "A well-known principle of human behavior says that when we ask someone to do us a favor we will be more successful if we provide a reason. People simply like to have reasons for what they ~ Lior Suchard

How many kittens did she have?"
"Four, including Tod. We fed the kittens this special formula from the vet, since Juno didn't have enough milk." I sat beside Bailey on the rug, wishing I could trade places with my cat. "Tod almost died, so my sister named him after a grim reaper from one of her favorite books. I think she thought it would protect him. ~ Jeri Smith-Ready

You know how there's that one person who stumbles into your life and you instantly have a connection with them? Someone who's a genuinely good person. Someone you just know you can build a great bond with, and it doesn't have to be in a romantic way either. It can be with someone you have no attraction to whatsoever, you just instantly recognize something in them and they in you. Like in another realm, in another life, you were meant to be together in some way. Whether with a mother, daughter, sibling, best friend, or romantic partner, it's a strong, unexplainable connection between two individuals ~ E.L. Montes

I held up the book - Green Eggs and Ham - and began reading. I smiled; it was one of my favorite books from my childhood. ~ Angela Graham

People read for a multiplicity of reasons. Nearly forty years in, I can tell you why I inhale books like oxygen: I'm grateful for my one life, but I'd prefer to live a thousand --and my favorite books allow me to experience more on the page than I ever could in my actual life. ~ Anne Bogel

Idgie smiled back at her and looked up into the clear blue sky that reflected in her eyes and she was as happy as anybody who is in love in the summertime can be. ~ Fannie Flagg

All of you favorite books wouldn't seem so well written if you were just a little bit more well read. ~ Craig Finn

Book five of Dork Diaries is one of my favorite books it brings my thoughts deep into the book and think if you haven't read it you should you will probably fell just as I fell. ~ Rachel Renee Russell

I couldn't think of anything I wanted to do or any place I wanted to be more than home. Where I can walk around the yard, sweeping leaves off the slate paths to my heart's content. Where I can spend all day in my pajamas puttering around the house, or curled up in my favorite chair in the family room next to the big stone fireplace. The walls are papered deep red, hung with Madison's paintings and lined with our favorite books. The furniture is comfortable and inviting. Our house is made to be lived in; we use every inch of it and don't mind the signs of wear and tear. There's a deep dent in the floor next to the hearth ... It's part of the story of this house, where a family has left its mark, and where it continues to grow and evolve. ~ Sissy Spacek

I love you Bonnie. So much that I hurt with it. And I hate it, and I love it, and I want it to go away, and i want it to stay forever ... ~ Amy Harmon

One of my first favorite books was 'The 12 Days of Christmas,' and I would just go up to people and say, 'I can sing 'The 12 Days of Christmas,' and I would make them sit through me reciting it, and I'd go all the way, each time. I've always hooked into lyrics. ~ Lin-Manuel Miranda

Where do you get your ideas?' people are always asking authors they admire, which I've always thought was another way of asking, 'How did you get my ideas, which I didn't know I had until you put words to them?' We are known, appreciated, even cherished by our favorite writers; every word of our favorite books seems to have been written for us. Within their sentences and paragraphs, those writers are forever available, forever patient, including us in their compassionate recognition of the impossible, exhausting complexity of being human (those "many thousand" selves), never ignoring us or abandoning us or finding us dull. It's you, they whisper, as we turn their pages, you are the one I've been waiting to tell everything to. ~ Suzanne Berne

Life, Jersey Girl, sometimes pauses. It stops. Sometimes we don't even realize how everything around us is moving so quickly while we're standing in the middle of it, allowing it to pass us by. Most of us, if not all, just lose the why. Some of us never figure it out to begin with. We lose sight of the purpose that wakes us up every morning and pushes our day forward. We lose a sense of hope and the feeling of life in general. We view life as more of a test, one that's trying to beat us down every day. ~ E.L. Montes

Romance novels are my favorite books to read. I write young adult romances, and am so happy to be promoting this wonderful genre. ~ Simone Elkeles

True friends are like our favorite books on a shelf in our home that we look at everyday and continue to read over and over till we learn all we can about them. We never get rid of them, we just keep them to share and cherish our whole life. Some we share with many people but there are those that become our exclusive favorites that we keep in a small group, separated from all the others to learn from and enjoy forever ! Original quote form Doug Prentice ~ Doug Prentice

I tried eHarmony, because I liked the white hair and glasses of that guy on the commercials, and his manner was gentle, but eHarmony told me that the system and it's twenty nine levels of compatibility couldn't find anyone for me.
That hurt my feelings. ~ Craig Lancaster

Maybe the best thing to do with favorite books is to leave them be: to achieve such exalted position means that they entered your life at exactly the right time, in precisely the right place, and those conditions can never be recreated. ~ Nick Hornby

We're all on our own, aren't we? That's what it boils down to.

We come into this world on our own- in Hawaii, as I did, or New York, or China, or Africa or Montana- and we leave it in the same way, on our own, wherever we happen to be at the time- in a plane, in our beds, in a car, in a space shuttle, or in a field of flowers.

And between those times, we try to connect along the way with others who are also on their own.

If we're lucky, we have a mother who reads to us.

We have a teacher or two along the way who make us feel special.

We have dogs who do the stupid dog tricks we teach them and who lie on our bed when we're not looking, because it smells like us, and so we pretend not to notice the paw prints on the bedspread.

We have friends who lend us their favorite books.

Maybe we have children, and grandchildren, and funny mailmen and eccentric great-aunts, and uncles who can pull pennies out of their ears.

All of them teach us stuff. They teach us about combustion engines and the major products of Bolivia, and what poems are not boring, and how to be kind to each other, and how to laugh, and when the vigil is in our hands, and when we have to make the best of things even though it's hard sometimes.

Looking back together, telling our stories to one another, we learn how to be on our own. ~ Lois Lowry

Also "Catcher in the Rye", which happens to be one of my favorite books, I just found that kind of useful. It helps you get into the American accent. ~ Freddie Highmore

...his favorite books, those he'd read over and over so he knew just the lurch his heart would make when he turned the page and encountered the illustration of the despondent dragon under a half-moon or the fervor with which he flipped the final pages of another, the story so vivid he felt his relationship with that book was less an act of reading than a visit, a place he went to. ~ Keith Miller

Picking five favorite books is like picking the five body parts you'd most like not to lose. ~ Neil Gaiman

You're beautiful, Jenna. i'm a man and I'm afraid to admit when I'm lucky enough to look at someone as beautiful as you. ~ E.L. Montes

My favorite books are the ones that make me smile for hours after reading them. I want that for my readers, for the sweetness to linger. Sort of like chocolate, but without the calories. ~ Sarah Addison Allen

Whenever we could steal a few minutes alone, that's when we became the "other", the charged-up thing that kept me up at night, afraid of falling so fast, afraid of losing, afraid it wouldn't last once everyone found out. We stole too-short kisses in the front hallway, shared knowing and devious looks across the table when we weren't being watched. We snuck out every night behind the house to watch for shooting stars and whisper about life, our favorite books, about the meaning of songs. It wasn't the topics themselves that changed, we had talked about all of those things befores. But now, there was a new intensity, an urgency to know as much as we could, to fit as much as possible into our final nights, before somebody found out. ~ Sarah Ockler

I get really excited if I think I'm going to introduce somebody to a writer they haven't found before and I think they'll love. My favorite books to get as gifts are any that the giver is messianic about. ~ Monica Ali

Initially [my favorite books] seem to immerse me in another life, but ultimately they immerse me in me; I am looking through the window into another person's home, but it is my face that I see in the reflection. ~ Derek Thompson

'Jitterbug Perfume' is one of my favorite books. ~ Kristin Gore

Buy books, then, that you have read with profit and pleasure and hope to read and reread. Buy books that you may underscore passages and write upon the margins, thus assuring yourself that the book is your own. Keep the books that mean the most to you close at hand, one or two, if possible, on a table at your bedside. Do not hide away your favorite books or keep them locked in enclosed shelves. Do not keep them under glass. ~ Burton Rascoe

I had a serious library at my disposal, because my Popo believed that culture entered by osmosis and it was better to start early, but my favorite books were fairy tales. ~ Isabel Allende

I remember my favorite books when I was a kid: 'The Redwall Adventure' series, 'Ender's Game,' things like that. ~ Marie Lu

One of my all-time favorite books is Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice - I know, a bit girly, but great is great. I hated the book when I was forced to read it and write a book report at fourteen. I only realized that I loved it - and a lot of literature - when I reread it for fun on a whim when I was twenty-three. The same is true for Huckleberry Finn, A Tale of Two Cities, and Brave New World. Not only was I more mature and had more perspective on life, but I had the time and motivation to appreciate it. I believe that motivation, the culture of a community, and outlets for exploration drive the appreciation of the arts, not grades and credit-unit requirements. ~ Salman Khan

From "Six Degrees of Scandal".
My favorite quotes from this book are by Joan and Abigail speaking to Penelope. If you read, you will understand their comments.
J-"Don't tell me you don't feel a true connection to the characters in your favorite books". A-"That is true, Pen. Just because they aren't real people doesn't make characters less ... real". ~ Caroline Linden

The elevator doors opened, and I squeezed myself out before pulling out the Wardrober. It was heavy. "What do you have in there?" I said. "Your whole house?"

"Almost," Simone laughed. "My favorite books. ~ Kailin Gow

Blake has always been a favorite, the lyrics, not so much the prophetic books, but I suppose Yeats influenced me more as a young poet, and the American, Robert Frost. ~ Anne Stevenson

can listen and counsel. You can lend ideas and hard work and home-cooked meals. You can be a friend and a fan. You can share your favorite books and fix a flat tire. You can inspire people and encourage them. You can sweat beside them and support them. But you cannot make their choices for them. You cannot take their excuses from them. You cannot make them resilient. ~ Eric Greitens

I have not read most of the big 19th - century novels that people consider "essential," nor most of the 20th-century ones for that matter. But this does not embarrass me. There are many films to see, many friends to visit, many walks to take, many playlists to assemble and many favorite books to reread. Life's too short for anxious score-keeping. Also, my grandmother is illiterate, and she's one of the best people I know. Reading is a deep personal consolation for me, but other things console, too. ~ Teju Cole

SHUT UP. Both of you. You're coming with me." To me he said, "Put some pants on."
"Fuck you. This is my house. I make the rules. You take your clothes off. John, get the Twister mat. ~ David Wong

What's your favorite book?' is a question that is usually only asked by children and banking identity-verification services
and favorite isn't, anyway, the right word to describe the relationship a reader has with a particularly cherished book. Most serious readers can point to one book that has a place in their life like the one that 'Middlemarch' has in mine. ~ Rebecca Mead

I don't have a favorite author; I have favorite books. 'Moby Dick' is a favorite book, but Melville was a drunk who beat his wife. 'Moveable Feast' by Hemingway, but I would not like him personally. He was a stupid macho person who believed in shooting animals for fun, but that book was incredible! ~ Gary Paulsen

With a slow wink, he set the book in Tamaqua's hands. "One of my favorites. ~ C.J. Milbrandt

The novel form is about the protagonist's struggle to transform his arbitrary, fragmented, given experience into a narrative as meaningful as his favorite books. ~ Elif Batuman

Some people won't dog-ear the pages. Others won't place the book facedown, pages splayed. Some won't dare make a mark in the margin. Get over it. Books exist to impart their worlds to you, not to be beautiful objects to save for some other day. We implore you to fold, crack, and scribble on your books whenever the desire takes you. Underline the good bits, exclaim "YES!" and "NO!" in the margins. Invite others to inscribe and date the frontispiece. Draw pictures, jot down phone numbers and Web addresses, make journal entries, draft letters to friends or world leaders. Scribble down ideas for a novel of your own, sketch bridges you want to build, dresses you want to design. Stick postcards and pressed flowers between the pages.

When next you open the book, you'll be able to find the bits that made you think, laugh, and cry the first time around. And you'll remember that you picked up that coffee stain in the cafe where you also picked up that handsome waiter. Favorite books should be naked, faded, torn, their pages spilling out. Love them like a friend, or at least a favorite toy. Let them wrinkle and age along with you. ~ Ella Berthoud & Susan Elderkin

Well, Bradbury's a genius. Fahrenheit 451 is one of my favorite books of all time, and The Illustrated Man as a collection of short stories ranks up there. When you read it you realize how influential it is on so many other stories and people. ~ Zack Snyder

What I would most like to think they would take away, is what I take away when I read my favorite books. Which is the knowledge that there is always somewhere you can go, that you love, and where you're safe. And that's how I feel about my favorite books, wherever I am, if I've got that book with me, I've got a place where I can go and be happy. So if that place is Hogwarts for anyone, then I couldn't be more honored or humbled. ~ J.K. Rowling

When I was a kid, one of my favorite books was George Gamow's 'One Two Three ... Infinity: Facts and Speculations of Science.' ~ Mark Frauenfelder

This is one of my favorite books Lisa has ever written. You couldn't ask for a better story. ~ Lisa Renee Jones

A haunting, harrowing punch to the heart, Among the Missing is flat-out brilliant. About the secrets we keep, the lives we are desperate to live, and the chances we miss, it's a psychological dazzler. Truly, one of my favorite books of this year-or any year. ~ Caroline Leavitt

My favorite books are actually very complicated - 'One Hundred Years of Solitude', 'Ulysses'. ~ James Patterson

who are you
really?

you are not a name
or a height, or a weight
or a gender
you are not an age
and you are not where you are from

you are your favorite books
and the songs stuck in your head
you are your thoughts
and what you eat for breakfast
on Saturday mornings

you are a thousand things
but everyone chooses
to see the million things
you are not

you are not
where you are from
you are
where you are going
and i'd like
to go there
too ~ M.k

A WRINKLE IN TIME is one of my favorite books of all time. I've read it so often, I know it by heart. Meg Murry was my hero growing up. I wanted glasses and braces and my parents to stick me in an attic bedroom. And I so wanted to save Charles Wallace from IT. ~ Meg Cabot

It was impossible to feel alone in a room full of favorite books. I had the sense that they knew me personally, that they'd read me cover to cover as I'd read them. ~ Riley Redgate

I also wanted you to realize that even though the pain will always be there, I'm living proof you can get past this. Right now I know it feels impossible, but one day you'll look back and see how far you've come. ~ E.L. Montes

A couple of months ago, I became depressed by the realization that I'd forgotten pretty much everything I've ever read. I have, however, bounced back: I am now cheered by the realization that if I've forgotten everything I've ever read then I can read some of my favorite books again as if for the first time. ~ Nick Hornby

My favorite books have a personality and complexion as distinctly drawn as if the author's portrait were framed into the paragraphs and smiled upon me as I read his illustrated pages. ~ Amos Bronson Alcott

My favorite books are the ones I've never finished reading. Many of them I hated the first time ~ Anonymous

Richard Rohr states in one of my favorite books The Naked Now: Wisdom is not the gathering of more facts and information, as if that would eventually coalesce into truth. Wisdom is precisely a different way of seeing and knowing those ten thousand things. I suggest that wisdom is precisely the freedom to be present. Wise people always know how to be present, but it is much more then that. Presence is wisdom! People who are fully present know how to see fully, rightfully, and truthfully. Presence is the one thing necessary, and in many ways, the hardest thing of all. Just try to keep your heart open, your mind without division or resistance, and your body not somewhere else. Presence is the practical, daily task of all mature religion and all spiritual disciplines.47 ~ Mark Votava

If books were girls and reading was s-ss-ssss-fucking, this would be the biggest whorehouse in the county and I'd be the most ruthless pimp you ever met. Whap the girls on the butts and send them off to their tricks as fast and often as I can. ~ Joe Hill

I wish I had had my books when I was a kid, I do. ~ Paula Danziger

He wanted to say that he'd learned to read in gaol [jail], to really read. He wanted to tell her that the library had been his favorite place inside, that when he read 'As I Lay Dying' he'd found a voice that made sense of time and space as he was experiencing it in gaol, that it had spoken to him more clearly and more profoundly than any voice he'd ever encountered before: of how the past could not be separated from memory, of how it was not only time that changed people, but memory as well. ~ Christos Tsiolkas

I know nothing about her. Just some books, and some stories she tried to tell me, and things I didn't understand, and I remember big red soft hands and that smell. I never knew who she really was. I mean, she must have been nine too, once. ~ Terry Pratchett

Friends should be like books, few, but hand-selected. ~ C.J. Langenhoven

Live theater is my favorite of all the mediums that I have worked in, so I have every intention on coming back to Broadway. ~ Taye Diggs

Stories shape the world. ~ Lance Conrad

No I try and set my books in lots of different locales. Variety is the spice of life! ~ Cathy Williams

I know the names of the books - their old covers bleached to palest greens or pinks by the endless cycle of summers - lined up on the shelf. ~ Harriet Lane

I think it's cool when Scorsese will pop up in a movie or something like that. I never want to make a career out of that or anything. I like directing. That's my favorite thing. ~ Jody Hill

We had a few non-fiction books at home, but my dad was of the opinion that fiction was a complete and utter waste of time because it wasn't real - so what was the point of reading it? ~ Malorie Blackman

A picture book is a motorcycle: small, loud, fun, and zippy.
An easy reader is a chartered bus: obliged to carry a rather dull passenger roster of sanctioned curriculum, plus the baggage of an approved, limited vocabulary. The trick is to design your chartered bus to be as cool and sexy as a motorcycle. ~ Mo Willems

This is so my favorite time of day to make house calls," Mendoza announced from the backseat of Wyatt's SUV as they cruised the Soyopango gangland territory. "Nothing says sneak attack like waltzing in under the cover of the noon-fucking-sun. ~ Cindy Gerard

I write books, bitch! ~ Junnita Jackson

The books I have read were composed by generations of fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, teachers and disciples. I am the sum total of their experiences, and so are you. ~ Elie Wiesel

I was dropped by my publisher after my first two books. But I always believed in myself. ~ John Boyne

Books aren't interested in who is reading them... A book will welcome any reader; any age, any background, any point of view. Books don't care if you can't understand every word in them, or if you want to skip bits or reread bits. Books welcome everyone who wants to explore them, and thankfully no one has ever worked out a way to stop that. ~ Anna James

And yes, I confess, when I looked at him, I thought of Heathcliff and Mr Rochester and Maxim de Winter ... and how could I not, when I had been waiting for them to step out of the pages of the books I loved; when I knew them so well, read them inside out and into myself? ~ Justine Picardie

I never really thought I'd be successful. I never though I'd get books published, but this was something completely beyond me. The fact that it happened is wonderful, but it is not something that I was aiming for. ~ Walter Mosley

Every Intelligent person was once a fool. ~ Michael Bassey Johnson

Be warned. Beware. Enter this kingdom only if you dare. ~ Diana S. Zimmerman

Libraries should be open to all - except the censor.
[Response to questionnaire in Saturday Review, October 29 1960] ~ John F. Kennedy

We are absurdly accustomed to the miracle of a few written signs being able to contain immortal imagery, involutions of thought, new worlds with live people, speaking, weeping, laughing. We take it for granted so simply that in a sense, by the very act of brutish routine acceptance, we undo the work of the ages, the history of the gradual elaboration of poetical description and construction, from the treeman to Browning, from the caveman to Keats. What if we awake one day, all of us, and find ourselves utterly unable to read? I wish you to gasp not only at what you read but at the miracle of its being readable. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

My favorite thing to pass the time in the makeup chair is YouTube videos of talking cats. I don't know why, but they make me laugh. ~ Doug Jones

The study of tools as well as of books should have a place in the public schools. Tools, machinery, and the implements of the farmshould be made familiar to every boy, and suitable industrial education should be furnished for every girl. ~ Rutherford B. Hayes

I couldn't wait to get out of the car. The first thing I did was smell the air. I closed my eyes and took a breath, the biggest breath of my life, knowing I was taking the biggest breath of my life. I was taking a breath to smell Shepelevo. Breathing in Shepelevo was like hitting the right note on the piano. There was only one right note. When I was young, Shepelevo was the smell of nettles, of salted smoked fish, of fresh water from the Gulf of Finland, and of burning firewood, all wrapped up in one Shepelevo. As it had been, so it was. Across two continents, a dozen countries, twenty cities, three colleges, two marriages, three children, three books, and twenty-five years of another life, I breathed it and smelled the air. Nowhere else in the world had it. "Papa," I said, my voice breaking. "Do you think we could photograph the smell?" He gave me a look and then laughed. ~ Paullina Simons

He sat at his desk – last seat, last row – and looked at the chart on the wall next to him. Of course there was no gold star next to his name. He had already done three things wrong: First, he had knocked over a girl and made her cry. Second, he was late getting back to class. And third and worst of all, his name was Bradley Chalkers. As long as his name was Bradley Chalker's, he'd never get a gold star. They don't give gold stars to monsters. ~ Louis Sachar

The contents of someone's bookcase are part of his history, like an ancestral portrait.
(About Books; Recoiling, Rereading, Retelling, New York Times, February 22, 1987) ~ Anatole Broyard

Great is bookishness and the charm of books. ~ Augustine Birrell

Books are no more threatened by Kindle than stairs by elevators. ~ Stephen Fry

I love books . I adore everything about them. I love the feel of the pages on my fingertips. They are light enough to carry, yet so heavy with worlds and ideas . I love the sound of the pages flicking against my fingers. Print against fingerprints. Books make people quiet, yet they are so loud ~ Nnedi Okorafor

I had written children's books for 14 years before I published 'Wicked.' And none of them were poorly reviewed, and none of them sold enough for me to be able to buy a bed. ~ Gregory Maguire

Out of everything the depression stole from me ... I miss my books the most. ~ Frank Warren