Rare Books Quotes

Every advance in information technology involves choosing what you want to preserve and what you want to ditch. Scanning rare books on to microfilm is a costly business. The library won't let you do it yourself - they decide first which books should be scanned and which should just rot away in the basement.
Against that eventuality, people should start hoarding the kind of books committees of rational people will decide against scanning into a database. ~ Robert Twigger

My interest in society - at times so pronounced that the word 'snob' comes a little to mind - derives from the fact that I like an immense number of things which society, money, and position bring in their train: painting, tapestries, rare books, smart dresses, dances, gardens, country houses, correct cuisine, and pretty women. ~ Frank Crowninshield

For DeHaven it was well worth the extra money to a federal budget that had always allocated more to war than it ever did to peaceful purposes. For a fraction of the cost of one missile he could purchase on the open market every work the library needed to round out its rare books collection. Yet politicians believed that missiles kept you safe, whereas actually books did, and for a simple reason. Ignorance caused wars, and people who read widely were seldom ignorant. ~ David Baldacci

The world was a glorious place this morning. The birds were particularly noisy in their greeting to the day. The sky was a cloudless blue, the color of delphiniums.
He'd never before equated the color of the sky to a flower.
This morning he would show Ellice some of the rare volumes in the Forster collection. He hoped she would be impressed at the illuminated scrolls or the Bible he suspected was one of the first Gutenberg volumes. Would she be interested in the Latin poetry he'd found? One of his ancestors had evidently collected erotic poetry. ~ Karen Ranney

The door opened to reveal a room with walls consisting mostly of inset mahogany bookcases covered by leaded glass doors. Intricate plasterwork adorned the ceiling in a flowered medallion style that matched the thick Aubusson carpet on the floor.
"Are all of these books for sale?" Amanda asked in a hushed voice, feeling as if she had entered a king's treasure room.
Fretwell nodded. "You'll find everything from antiques to zoology. We have a wide selection of antique maps and celestial charts, original folios and manuscripts..." He gestured around them, as if the extensive rows of books were self-explanatory.
"I would love to lock myself in here for a week," she said impulsively. ~ Lisa Kleypas

William Stoner entered the University of Missouri as a freshman in the year 1910, at the age of nineteen. Eight years later, during the height of World War I, he received his Doctor of Philosophy degree and accepted an instructorship at the same University, where he taught until his death in 1956. He did not rise above the rank of assistant professor, and few students remembered him with any sharpness after they had taken his courses. When he died his colleagues made a memorial contribution of a medieval manuscript to the University library. This manuscript may still be found in the Rare Books Collection, bearing the inscription: 'Presented to the Library of the University of Missouri, in memory of William Stoner, Department of English. By his colleagues.'

An occasional student who comes upon the name may wonder idly who William Stoner was, but he seldom pursues his curiosity beyond a casual questions. Stoner's colleagues, who held him in no particular esteem when he was alive, speak of him rarely now; to the older ones, his name is a reminder of the end that awaits them all, and to the younger ones it is merely a sound which evokes no sense of the past and no identity with which they can associate themselves or their careers. ~ John Williams

Students huddled against the wall and under their chairs, probably thinking they were all about to die.
"Nothing to worry about, everyone!" Jesper called. "Just a little target practice in the courtyard."
"This way," said Wylan, ushering them through a door covered in elaborate scrollwork.
"Oh, you mustn't," said the scholar rushing after them, robes flapping. "Not the rare books room!"
"Do you want to shake hands again? ~ Leigh Bardugo

I want to keep my life as unfettered as possible. So maybe I'll just pretend to get rare books from my catalogue, and not really get them. ~ Patti Smith

All my scripts have artistic backgrounds
ballet, concert hall, opera
and all the suspects and corpses are cultured, maybe I'll do one about the rare book business in your honor, do you want to be the murderer or the corpse? ~ Helene Hanff

Instead of flowers gifted her rare books. ~ Nitya Prakash

My collection of rare books concerns only books that don't tell the truth. ~ Umberto Eco

One of those rare books that demands you either defend the way you live or change it. Because ~ Michael Pollan

You've spent most of your life in hiding.' said Dr. Strayer. 'Your secret lair is the only place you feel truly safe. When you were a child it was your room where you'd hide so you didn't have to interact with your parents. In college it was the rare-books room; once you married Amanda, it was your basement book room. You bury yourself in these places, Peter. You avoid life there. ~ Charlie Lovett

I'm the sort of person who would be perfectly happy spending an entire day in a rare books room. ~ Marie Rutkoski

And of course I'm in the press all the time. So many books have been written about me; Into thin air, up in the air,Gone with the wind- ~ Rick Riordan

Many writers tend to write summing-up books at the end of their lives. ~ V.S. Naipaul

What a joy this book is! I love recipe books, but it's short-lived; I enjoy the pictures for several minutes, read a few pages, and then my eyes glaze over. They are basically books to be used in the kitchen for one recipe at a time.
This book, however, is in a different class altogether and designed to be read in its entirety. It's in its own sui generis category; it has recipes at the end of most of the twenty-one chapters, but it's a book to be read from cover to cover, yet it could easily be read chapter by chapter, in any order, as they are all self-contained. Every bite-sized chapter is a flowing narrative from a well-stocked brain encompassing Balinese culture, geography and history, while not losing its main focus: food.
As you would expect from a scholar with a PhD in history from Columbia University, the subject matter has been meticulously researched, not from books and articles and other people's work, but from actually being on the ground and in the markets and in the kitchens of Balinese families, where the Balinese themselves learn their culinary skills, hands on, passed down orally, manually and practically from generation to generation.
Vivienne Kruger has lived in Bali long enough to get it right. That's no mean feat, as the subject has not been fully studied before.
Yes, there are so-called Balinese recipe books, most, if I'm not mistaken, written by foreigners, and heavily adapted. The dishes have not, until now, been systematically pla ~ Vivienne Kruger

The question 'Why poetry?' isn't asking what makes poetry unique among art forms; poetry may indeed share its origins with other forms of privileged utterance. A somewhat more interesting question would be: "What is the nature of experience, and especially the experience of using language, that calls poetic utterance into existence? What is there about experience that's unutterable?" You can't generalize very usefully about poetry; you can't reduce its nature down to a kernel that underlies all its various incarnations. I guess my internal conversation suggests that if you can't successfully answer the question of "Why poetry?," can't reduce it in the way I think you can't, then maybe that's the strongest evidence that poetry's doing its job; it's creating an essential need and then satisfying it. ~ Richard Ford

I'm only fifteen. I'm not sure I ever want to get married. I'm neither messing around while waiting nor looking for some "real thing". What I want is much more complicated. I want somebody to talk about books, who would be my friend, and why couldn't we have sex as well if we wanted to? (And used contraception.) I'm not looking for romance. Lord Peter and Harriet would seem a pretty good model to me. I wonder if Wim has read Sayers? ~ Jo Walton

Ursula K. Le Guin urges authors to remember why they do what they do. Her argument is that writing is an form of art rather than a commodity. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

Dear and most respected bookcase! I welcome your existence, which has for over one hundred years been devoted to the radiant ideals of goodness and justice. ~ Anton Chekhov

I want people to laugh with me and Paraguay and Newfoundland, but I don't want to laugh at them. I hope in my books at the end of the day you come across with the impression that I really admire both of these places. ~ John Gimlette

Clearly one must read every good book at least once every ten years. ~ C.S. Lewis

Do you have any idea how rare love is? In a thousand years, I have found it but twice, and when I have, I have honored it. ~ Elijah Mikaelson

Knowledge equals power ...
The string was important. After a while the Librarian stopped. He concentrated all his powers of librarianship.
Power equals energy ...
People were stupid, sometimes. They thought the Library was a dangerous place because of all the magical books, which was true enough, but what made it really one of the most dangerous places there could ever be was the simple fact that it was a library.
Energy equals matter ...
He swung into an avenue of shelving that was apparently a few feet long and walked along it briskly for half an hour.
Matter equals mass.
And mass distorts space. It distorts it into polyfractal L-space.
So, while the Dewey system has its fine points, when you're setting out to look something up in the multidimensional folds of L-space what you really need is a ball of string. ~ Terry Pratchett

When I was little I used to wish I could talk to the illustrators because I wanted to discuss something about the books. With so many of the other art forms that children experience, such as movies and television, they don't get to control the pace. ~ Jan Brett

How do I read so many books?
Let's keep it as a secret!
How do I know so much?
Okay, this I will reveal, I have curiosity most people say that cats die from curiosity, but I like that fact... I'm curious and from it I know a lot of! ~ Deyth Banger

I am never much interested in the effects of what I write ... I seldom read with any attention the reviews of my ... books. Two times out of three I know something about the reviewer, and in very few cases have I any respect for his judgments. Thus his praise, if he praises me, leaves me unmoved. I can't recall any review that has even influenced me in the slightest. I live in sort of a vacuum, and I suspect that most other writers do, too. It is hard to imagine one of the great ones paying any serious attention to contemporary opinion. ~ H.L. Mencken

Such frankness, even over good tidings, was a further offense to Mr. Fremlin. He felt that it was casual and indecent. Like most countrymen, he had a great respect for traditional mysteries. A little skill decently wrapped up impressed him far more than twice the amount flung nakedly at his feet. Old Dr. Milsom had satisfied his sense of propriety. Never, never would he have told a patient whether or not she was going to live or die; the temperature was his secret, even the name of the complain transpired only in dark hints. Standing by the bedside he would shake his head and purse his lips and consult his gold turnip-watch, so that you felt you were getting the benefit of a rare and esoteric wisdom. ~ Dennis Parry

Contrary to what people think, I slave over my books. ~ James A. Michener

The violinist is that peculiarly human phenomenon distilled to a rare potency - half tiger, half poet. ~ Yehudi Menuhin

All my books have been titled based on a piece of the prose from inside the book. ~ Donald Miller

People need books for a better life. Books are a way of self-nurturing. ~ Love The Stacks Bookstore

It reminds me of a friend of mine who was very interested in a French philosophy called deconstruction. He advertised to me as one of deconstruction's selling points that deconstruction deconstructs itself. I couldn't help responding, if deconstruction deconstructs itself, why bother reading its long, boring books? Why not go for a jog instead, or reread one of Patrick O'Brian's tremendous tales of the sea? ~ Eric Kaplan

Our brain is a circuit board with neurons and terminals ready to be wired. We are born free, then programmed to obey our parents, to tell the truth, pass exams, pursue and achieve, love and propagate, age and fade unfulfilled and uncertain what it has all been for. We swallow the operating system with our mother's milk and sleepwalk into the forest of consumer illusion craving shoes, houses, cars, magazines, experiences that endorse our preconceived dreams and opinions. We grow into our parents. We becomes clones, robots, matchstick men thinking and saying the same, feeling the same, behaving the same, appreciating in books and films and art shows those things we already recognize and understand. ~ Chloe Thurlow

My white knight. My beautiful, strong, brave husband who loves me more than I ever knew it was possible to be loved.

This man would give me the stars, the moon, the sun. He has slain monsters for me and alongside me. He's battled through dark, tangled woods with me because he has never once wavered in his belief that we are meant to be forever. He would do anything for me. For us.

He's a rare gift, my husband, perfect and flawed and completely, unreservedly mine. ~ Nina Lane

I think there are probably just as many adults who would miss the humor of my books, if not more, as there are children. ~ Daniel Handler

the quality of men who are selected by these modern democratic methods of adult franchise gradually deteriorates because of lack of thinking and the noise of propaganda . . . He [the voter] reacts to sound and to the din, he reacts to repetition and he produces either adictator or a dumb politician who is insensitive. Such a politician can stand all the din in the world and still remain standing on his two feet and, therefore, he gets selected in the end because the others have collapsed because of the din.

Guha, Ramachandra (2011-02-10). India After Gandhi (Kindle Locations 3272-3276). Pan Books. Kindle Edition. ~ Ramachandra Guha

He had appointed her not only guardian angel, but a member of his ideals. ~ Anais Nin

Love, how often that word came up in books over and over again. If you had wealth and health, and beauty and talent ... you had nothing if you didn't have love. Love changed all that was ordinary into something giddy, powerful, drunken, enchanted. ~ V.C. Andrews

Just as abruptly, he'd become a father. While preparing the book for publication, he'd been dating a woman named Sarah Coowe, an infectious-disease specialist at MGH. They were evenly matched in many ways: sharp-dressed, sharp-tongued, and devoted to their careers and personal freedoms to the exclusion of any serious interest in so-called romance. They spent ten months together. A few weeks after they broke up -- Sarah initiated the split -- she called to say that she was pregnant. "It's mine?" asked Affenlight. "He or she," replied Sarah, "is mostly mine."

They named the child Pella -- that was Affenlight's idea, though Sarah certainly had the final say. For those first couple of years, Affenlight conspired as often as he could to show up at Sarah and Pella's Kendall Square townhouse with expensive takeout and a new toy. He was fascinated with his daughter, with the sheer reality of her, a beautiful something where before there'd been nothing. He hated kissing her good-bye; and yet he relished, couldn't keep himself from relishing, the total quiet of his townhouse when he walked in, the scattered books and papers and lack of baby-proofing. ~ Chad Harbach

If every kid who said he was going to the library, when he was really off doing something else, actually went to the library, they'd have to send out for more books. ~ Ron Koertge

I use my awards as doorstops. Others are in the office or in little cubbyholes in our library - they go between the books, because they actually look like arty pieces. ~ Helen McCrory

I know that for every reader who has lost the habit or can't find the time, there are people who've never enjoyed reading and question the value of literature, either as entertainment or education, or believe that a love of books, and of fiction in particular, is sentimental or frivolous. ~ David Nicholls

Why is this important for school success? To get along in kindergarten, your child should know information like colors, shapes, seasons, holidays, farm animals, types of transportation, fruits, and vegetables - all the basics that children are exposed to through picture books, preschool, and life itself. He will be expected to demonstrate age-appropriate social standards and behavior. If he knocks over someone's art project, he should know to apologize and help pick it up. ~ Karen Quinn

I've always wanted to be taller. I feel like a shrimp, but that's the way it goes. I'm five-foot four-and-a-half-inches - that's actually average. Everything about me is average. Everything's normal, in the books. It's the things inside me that make me not average. ~ Madonna Ciccone

Japan is the first nation in the world to accord 'comic books'
originally a 'humorous' form of entertainment mainly for young people
nearly the same social status as novels and films. ~ Frederik L. Schodt

On to the library. And all through his time at the card catalog, combing the shelves, filling out the request cards, he danced a silent, flirtatious minuet of the eyes with a rosy-cheeked redhead in the biology section, pages of notes spread before her. All his life, he had had a yen for women in libraries. In a cerebral setting, the physical becomes irresistible. Also, he figured he was really more likely to meet a better or at least more compatible woman in a library than in a saloon. Ought to have singles libraries, with soups and salads, Bach and Mozart, Montaignes bound in morocco; place to sip, smoke, and seduce in a classical setting, noon to midnight. Chaucer's Salons, call them, franchise chain. ~ Stephen Minkin