If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.
If the secret history of books could be written, and the author’s private thoughts and meanings noted down alongside of his story, how many insipid volumes would become interesting, and dull tales excite the reader!
If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?
If children are studying the 20th century, I’m in their text books.
I think of life as a good book. The further you get into it, the more it begins to make sense.
I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in.
I hate books. They only teach one to talk about what one does not know.[Je hais les livres; ils n’apprennent qu’à parler de ce qu’on ne sait pas.]
I had found my religion: nothing seemed to me more important than a book. I regarded the library as a temple.[J’avais trouvé ma religion : rien ne me parut plus important qu’un livre. La bibliothèque, j’y voyais un temple.]
I found it hard to think of leaving my books. They had been my elevators out of the midden, and to whom could I entrust such close friends?
I don’t think you can write a book that’s worth anything without extraordinary discipline.
I do not think I ever opened a book in my life which had not something to say upon woman’s inconstancy. Songs and proverbs, all talk of woman’s fickleness. But perhaps you will say, these were all written by men.
I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book! – When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.
