It’s the season of joy… and divine carnage.
Our favorite volhv has packed his staff, crated his nechists and traded Atlanta for the land of romance, cheese and perfect covers. He will reach French readers via Édition Bookmark, in e-book format on January 21st and in paperback on February 23rd 2026.
As usual, the French publishers have delivered the most Chernochic aesthetic possible. I see, I crave, I Nav.
Ah, sometimes it’s hard to hocus-focus with all the pretty stuff around here lately.
From the volhv I love to the books I love. I recently came across a quote by Edith Wharton (of The Age of Innocence fame) describing the moment she receives a love letter:
The first glance to see how many pages there are, the breathless first reading, the slow lingering over each phrase and each word, the taking possession, the absorbing of them one by one, and finally the choosing of the one that will be carried in one’s thoughts all day, making an exquisite accompaniment to the dull prose of life
It struck me so much in its familiarity and I realized this is exactly how I treat every new story from a beloved author. From greedily counting the pages to devouring and then keeping them with me, hopefully for a lifetime.
So now I’m curious, Horde:
Do you have favorite quotes about books, reading, or storytelling? Ones that make you nod, sigh, or want to frame them over your reading nook?
Please paste or paraphrase them in the comments, I can’t wait to see!
Love, love, love the cover!!!
First ?
malheureusement, non 😉
My favorite quote about reading (and writing) is from Andre Maurois:
In literature, as in love, we are astonished by the choices of others.
From Silver Shark:
“It was at once so much more than she thought she would achieve and so much less than she was capable of.”
I regularly think of this quote and potential in life.
This was memorable to me too!
Yeah, that line stuck with ne
I am so terrible at remembering great quotes outside of Terminators’ “I’ll be back”, so I will wait eagerly for the Horde to descend and leave many, many messages.
I’m the same!
There will be Ripper Cushions!
+1
I was saying this to myself the other day!
things will just pop out from my sub conscious like a gift (or curse when it is that thing I did or didn’t do/say years ago)
One of my all time favourites
This is not on topic- I read Sanctuary shortly after my daughter was born. I loved it. She just turned 1 and now I’m looking forward to reading it again when the frost comes and the decorations go up. Also, I agree, this cover is gorgeous. Well done French friends!
I always go back to “Everyone is the hero in their own story.”
I always think about this when I read a well-written supporting character. They must never know they’re secondary!
I wonder if Curran knows he’s support?
I think yes. In one of the books he comments to Kate that she is adding to her misfits/people, and when Curran gets a response he also replies, don’t worry I count myself in the group. Or words to that effect.
One of my favourite quotes is from Reaper Man by Terry Pratchett
‘No one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away, until the clock wound up winds down, until the wine she made has finished its ferment, until the crop they planted is harvested. The span of someone’s life is only the core of their actual existence ‘
❤️ 💙
For some reason, I always have quotes from Much Ado About Nothing running through my head. Beatrice has the best lines. If you haven’t read it, she had a bad breakup and is thrown into close proximity to the guy who broke her heart.
“He that hath a beard is more than a youth, and he that hath no beard is less than a man: and he that is more than a youth is not for me, and he that is less than a man, I am not for him.”
This one is my favorite. Better heard than read though, like all Shakespeare.
Loved the movie with Emma Thompson so I read that quote imagining her voice in my head!
Not from a book, but a TV show: “We are all stories in the end. Just make it a good one.”
It’s what it’s all about!
I like this quote!
Hello fellow Whovian 🙂
Dr Who!!!
Love it!!
A person with two hearts and a screwdriver will always be my first hero. Thank you for reminding of my favorite person!
Does tv count? Chidi’s speech in The Good Place about how death/life is a wave in the ocean makes me sob. “The wave was just a different way for the water to be.” I found it a beautiful and comforting way to describe losing someone but them not being lost.
+1000 to this. I loved that speech. Thanks for reminding me of it.
1. “Aren’t we blessed, we who love books”
2. “Page after page she read; She cried and laughed; She swore and cheered; She fell in love with simple characters; She loathed imaginary enemies; She read and read saying one more chapter; She fell asleep with the books in her grasp; She got lost in the words and escaped the world
3. “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one.”
Extra points for attention to detail 🙂 . I did in fact ask for quotes *about* books, reading and stories hehe.
Ooops….. sorry! (in my defence it’s been a long day and my brain had left the building)
Bummer. I failed the assignment. 🙁
“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
Frank Herbert, Dune.
YES. I read this in college 50 years ago and it continues in my head at all the exact right times. All of these quotes – simply wonderful. Thanks, ModR, for opening this topic.
These are fantastic quotes! The second one is my life.
beautifully said
♥️
This time around, I knew I was doing it right. I loved myself, and I loved him, and I loved us together. We were two individuals who were more together than the sum of our parts. It was the kind of love I’d always wanted. He wasn’t a perfect man, but he was perfect for me.”
— K.F. Breene
Is this Magical Midlife? I just read the new one!
+1
“So you’re saying that I could die at any moment!”
“Yes. And this is different from your life yesterday in what way?”
Words to live by from “The Curse of Chalion”
“The Curse of Chalion” is my favorite book. Excellent taste, Kate.
And what feels like a counterpoint to the first quote from the second book in the series, after The Curse of Chalion:
“You have more years ahead of you now than Pejar, half your age, whom we buried outside these walls these two days past. Stand before his grave and use your gift of breath to complain of your limited time. If you dare.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, Paladin of Souls
Paladin of Souls —- same author
Favorite quote, might apply more to editing than to reading or writing: “… like leading an all ferret marching band.”
I don’t know if it counts, but I always come back to the following phrase from a 1957, Greek Film.
“Woe to the moral who are moral because they cannot be immoral. And to the honest who are honest because they cannot be dishonest.” Pantelis Zervos in the film “The Aunt from Chicago” (1957).
Oh, I love all books of Lois McMaster!
She’s the only one who can compare to the authorlords – besides Sir Pratchett, of course.
These 3 are the only authors from which I’ve read every single book/shortstory/novella as soon as it came out.
Allende, Isabelle. “Now.” 13 June 2003.
“A great imagination is that you can remember what never happened”
Van Eekhout, Greg. Norse Code.
But some places look different, depending on the angle from which you encounter them.
That book exists at the intersection of the author’s subconscious and the reader’s thoughts. — William Gibson, BookExpo 27 May 2010
The Grimrose Path — Rob Thurman, 2010
Let’s face it, if you’re not challenged by your job, if it doesn’t get your adrenaline pumping, your brain cycling into overdrive, then your job isn’t worth doing.
1. There are wounds that never show on the body that are deeper and more hurtful than anything that bleeds.
2. I learned that you don’t stand up to the bad guys because you think you’ll win. You stand up because it’s the right thing to do. You stand up for those weaker than you, which at that time in my life meant younger than me. You put yourself between them and harm no because you’re sure you won’t get hurt but because you’ve decided that to sit and watch them come to harm is wrong, and you cannot merely sit and watch evil. There comes a time when you have to step up and be willing to take some damage, because it’s the right thing to do.
Both are from Laurell K. Hamilton.
That second quote really resonates right now
I’m finally listening to Andy Serkis’s audio of LOTR and love his reading of Bilbo’s poem for Aragorn, “All that is gold does not glitter/ Not all those who wander are lost/ The old that is strong does not wither/ Deep roots are not reached by the frost.”
Of course, when I first read this, 12 yr old me swooned over Aragorn. But at 55, methinks you can keep your kings – I’d rather have a pint with the hobbits.
While 12 year old me didn’t swoon over Aragorn, she did lose herself in a world that seemed more real than the four walls around her. Such a transformative book. My favorite Tolkien quote: “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies… The man who never reads lives only one”.
+1
I’d meet you & the hobbits in that pub, too!
sometimes i reread a book based on a phrase that passes pops in my head for no apparent reason. it gets me remembering which author wrote it, then i narrow it down to the book, then yeah! i read the book or series of books until i satisfy my craving.
In fiction, your imagination
Hasn’t any limitation.
Dogs can talk and kids can fly
And no one has to justify.
– Babs Bell Hajdusiewicz
It was on a bookmark my high school librarian gave out. I pinched soooo many copies to take home with me before graduation. I used to stick them up all over my room! It had a cute pic showing a talking dog and a flying kid. Reading this posts makes me want to post it above my reading nook once more! Wondering if I can find somebody who does custom
Embroidery to make this happen. Ty for the inspo, Mod R!
One of my favourite quotes; “I don’t have insomnia, what I have is a good book and a lack of respect for tomorrow” 😝
In my household, we call that coming down with neobiblioitis. I catch it every couple of months, usually on a Tuesday night. 🙃
Love the quote!
Love that one! Here’s another cheeky one to go with it 😀
People: “How do you read so fast?”
Me: “My dudes, I am avoiding reality at an Olympic level.”
🤣🤣
Love this one!
Outstanding! I certainly have much, much more respect for good books than mornings! 🙂
My life!!
Ha!! Good one.
I resemble that remark!
I so need this on a t-shirt
+1
+1000
Perfect
“The Tao Te Ching is partly in prose, partly in verse; but as we define poetry now, not by rhyme and meter but as a patterned intensity of language, the whole thing is poetry. I wanted to catch that poetry, its terse, strange beauty. Most translations have caught meanings in their net, but prosily, letting the beauty slip through. And in poetry, beauty is no ornament; it is the meaning. It is the truth. We have that on good authority.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, Tao Te Ching: A Book about the Way and the Power of the Way
“Libraries will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no libraries.” – Anne Herbert
“Beware of the person of one book.” – Thomas Aquinas
“These books gave Matilda a hopeful and comforting message: You are not alone.” – Roald Dahl
“Die Nacht vergeht, der Morgen graut, das Buch ist endlich durchgekaut…”
Great Quote, difficult to translate, though, with its connotations…
‚The Night is going, the morning greying. The book has finally been chewed through.‘
‚Morgengrauen‘ refers to. ‚Dawn‘ and carries subtexts of ‚dreading morning, dreading tomorrow, of greyish day versus not-grey-night. ‚Morgen graut‘ also rhymes with ‚durchgekaut‘ a term you would normally associate with vigorous eating habits. Here it could either mean the habits of the book-devouring-horde or an intense study-session, that‘s coming to an end.
This is from “The Phantom Tollbooth,” right after Milo has jumped to (the Island of) Conclusions and is trying to figure out how to get back to the mainland, across the Sea of Knowledge. He’s told “…you can swim all day in the Sea of Knowledge and still come out completely dry. Most people do.”
That has stuck with me from when I first read the book as a kid. It was particularly pertinent after I became a teacher….
Jorge Luis Borges — ‘I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.’
This quote and Cicero’s “A room without books is like a body without a soul” are the only quotes I have ever allowed up on my walls.
“Life is a fickle (w)itch who dotes on Irony.” – Glen Cook – The Black Company
This is a quote from a book that was made into a movie that is about all the worlds we find and create as we read…
“He went through everything you went through and now he has come here with you. He is very close, listening to every word we say…”
The Child-like Empress from The Never Ending Story
Michael Ende
The best books always allow us to make the journey with the characters.
Yes! Love this and the book!
A book about books💙💙💙
Ever so many good quotes about books/reading…
“It is likely I will die next to a pile of things I was meaning to read.”
― Lemony Snicket
“… a mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones
“No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting.”
― Mary Wortley Montagu
“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero
So this is a quote from Pawn of Prophecy by David Eddings (please don’t judge me, I still love these books, they filled a gaping hole in my pre-teen soul) and it’s about magic, but I always thought it could be about books, too:
“But there’s a world beyond what we can see and touch, and that world lives by its own laws. What may be impossible in this very ordinary world is very possible there, and sometimes the boundaries between the two worlds disappear, and then who can say what is possible and impossible?”
My favorite series as a teenager, thanks for the nostalgia.
How timely! I’m back on my Commonplace Book mode again, and so I am in fact continuing to collect quotes (a book made me do it, I swear).
But actually on reading? A favourite? Well I don’t have a favourite quote on reading, but I have a couple I saved recently, but this one seems good:
“Becoming a reader is a change for the better. Trust me. No one has ever lost by becoming addicted to stories– to the lessons learned by those who possess enough courage to put pen to paper.”
(Ellery Adams: The Secret, Book, & Scone Society)
“It’s not hoarding if it’s books, it’s collecting.”
(Veiled Justice by Heather G. Harris)
I also found a nice one mentioning the Author lords recently, though not necessarily a quote for framing 🤔
“I also had to laugh, noticing a special section that held only books whose stories included sentient houses. I saw more of my favorites here, from Howl’s Moving Castle to Matteson Wynn’s Housekeeper series to Ilona Andrews’ Innkeeper Chronicles.”
(A Home in Percival by Paula K. Berman)
Love the French cover! I want an 8×5 to frame. Also my partner just cleared out a room and told me to turn it into a library! No shelves or decorations yet but I will bookmark this page for when I’m ready to add quotes; whether as wall decals, framed paper, or needlepoint throw pillows.
“Embrace the power of And!”
From”Blood, Oil, and Love” Book 2 of CombinedOperations, by Dorothy Grant
Published 2021 by Sedgefield Press
Yes!
Love that quote. And author.
I adore the French version of Roman’s book, and the signs. Is there a way to get copies? I would post them like rock star music posters.
On an enamel pin: I am emotionally attached to fictional characters.
Wow, they really rocked it with that cover art. This artist knew the story!
I’ll preface this by saying I am no longer a child, but this quote is stuck in my head from Mulan. It is when Mulan upsets the matchmaker and her father comforts her instead of scolding her. “My, my, what beautiful blossoms we have this year. But look, this one is late. But I bet when it blooms, it will be the most beautiful blossom of all.”
When I try hard but fail or when I realize I simply do not fit the cookie cutter mold of a normal person, I always think of this quote. I realize it is ok to be different, even if it is at odds with society. I also remember to cherish my family, who loves me just the way I am, nothing more or nothing less.
for some reason the opening to a the Rbert Rankin book “it was the day after the day after tomorrow. and it was raining” has always stuck with me..
as well as to many Terry Pratchett quotes to list… “evil is when we treat people as things”
I was looking to see if someone would have this line from TP. It is one of my faves too.
I got the kid a t-shirt with the text “There’s no such thing as too many books” and I stand by that 😁
Not a quote, butt a thought about books….
Life without books would be as bleak and barren as sifting sands in the Sahara Life with books is like visiting the Amazon, it being filled with vibrant fauna and new adventures around every bend in the road.
“The most common of magics, an alchemy of people and place, transmuted into happiness.”
Roses and Rot by Kat Howard
It’s actually about a dinner, but I think it applies to your favorite books too.
My favorite one is by Terry Pratchett:
“Humans need fantasy to be human. To be the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape”
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will not pass away.
Sometimes, when I don’t have a book or internet but have my phone I keep opening and closing the Goodreads app so quotes show up, and many of them are about books. One of my favorites that I found this way is:
“Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.”
— Harper Lee
It reminds of my grandma when she had to slow down on books because of bad eyesight, so it’s kind bittersweet for me.
My mother inspired my love of reading. As she aged, her eyesight became so bad that even with a Kindle it was hard. My father, who probably only read 10 books in his life, would read to her so she could still enjoy reading. They were married 69 years before she passed.
That is lovely.
I have many quotes that I love dearly, but if (when) I make my own reading nook it will have this Robert Jordan Wheel of Time quote in it.
The Wheel of Time turns, and ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legends fade to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again. In one Age, called the third age by some, an Age yet to come, an age long pass, a wind rose in the Mountains of Mist. The wind was not the beginning. There are neither beginnings or endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time. But it was a beginning.
Hi,
sorry to be a pain, but where can I find Ilona’s book recommendations, please?
There is a shortcut to the reading recommendations articles from the blog main menu 🙂 https://ilona-andrews.com/category/blog/recommended-read/
Thank you very much, no idea how I missed it
2008 Kitty Takes a Holiday Carrie Vaughn
I started a new page and wrote a title at the top: “Ten Ways to Defeat Macho Dickheadism.” Then I realized most of the world’s problems stemmed from Macho Dickheadism and if I could defeat that I could save the world.
“ The older you get, the less you care about what others think of you. Your values in life change, and you understand that you cannot please everybody. What matters is pleasing yourself and ensuring you don’t become a petty scumbag, because to have a good life you must have a clear conscience. “. – The Healers Way
And this one (I cannot remember where I read it):
“Hey. What do you think ASAP means?” “After some additional procrastination.”
Jane Austen: “I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading”
I’ve reread P&P many times, but I admit that I have the classic BBC series view in my head of Miss Bingley posing as hard as she can and Elizabeth Bennet looking slyly mischievous
Same!!
A family favorite around here:
“You may have tangible wealth untold;
Caskets of jewels and coffers of gold.
Richer than I you can never be–
I had a Mother who read to me.“
That’s the last verse from a wonderful poem by Strickland Gillilan. In cross stitch done by my sister it hangs above my mom’s desk. 😍
Song lyric, from The Amazing Devil song Secret Worlds:
Write me well, my love. Write me weird, write me willing, write me well.
Just makes me think of the stories others may tell about us some day, and the reminder that we should try to live lives worth telling about.
I took French in high school and I was terrible at it. But for Roman, I would seriously like to try reading Sanctuary in French.
My mum bought me Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone in french to help with my GCSE french – it actually really helped, since I knew the story backwards 😉
“Knowledge is a product of labor.” From our favorite First Scholar 🙂
“All due respect was a wonderful expression because it didn’t specify how much respect was actually due. Could be none.” From The Case Files of Henri Davenforth by Honor Raconteur
“No matter what we do or where we go,” she said quietly, “pain is a part of living. I know no one who has gone untouched by heartache, disaster, or betrayal. But I do know those who have gone on living with open hearts, and they still find joy.”-Kenley Davidson
Genius has limitations, insanity not so much. Darynda Jones, First Grave On The Right. All of the Charley Davidson books have great chapter titles.
Found this several years back somewhere on the Internet: An Old English word for “library” was “bōchord”, which literally means “book hoard”, and honestly I really think we should go back to saying that because not only does it sound really cool, but it also sort of implies that librarians are dragons.
And then there’s Granny Weatherwax (speaking to Mightily Oats): “And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.”
❤️
Yes!
From a book read during my cancer fighting period, still applicable today,
“it’s okay to not be okay, as long as it doesn’t become all we know”
from Somewhere Beyond the Sea by T.J. Klune
And we cannot forget Ripper-cushion as one of the best ever 😍
Year 12 Modern Fiction (Australia 35 years ago)
Maxine Hong Kingston – The Woman Warrior
‘she made her mind large as the universe is large, so there is room for paradox’
Also loved the 13th Warrior – ‘Any fool can calculate strength, now they must calculate what do not know.” (what they cannot see)
“Tell me. And tell me the truth.”
Tenzin thought for a moment, then said, “I will tell you, and you will decide if it is the truth.”
Nima took another deep breath and said, “Tell me a story.”
Tenzin heard the sound of cold wind as it swept over Northern plains. The sound of the night breeze shaking the trees. The low bleating of goats and a child’s laugh.
“A long time ago,” she began, “there was a girl…”
lol. Sorry.
That was written by Elizabeth Hunter in “The Bronze Blade”.
Still gives me the chills.
From George RR Martin:
‘I have lived a thousand lives, and I’ve loved a thousand loves.
I’ve walked on distant worlds and seen the end of time.
Because I read.’
+1!
What a fascinating question! I had fun reading the responses and googling for a list so I could pick my own. Not really something I had thought about before. I like this one: “Books are a uniquely portable magic.” ― Stephen King
It’s so true and well said.
You can never get a cup of tea large enough or book long enough to suit me. Cs Lewis.
I want to get that in my reading nook. ❤️
I like this one, even though it’s cynical.
George Santayana: “History is a pack of lies about events that never happened told by people who weren’t there”.
But here are a couple more fun ones.
“Are you sure you want to be playing around with this thing? It’s just a book. No harm ever came from reading a book” -The Mummy
“You want weapons? We’re in a library! Books! The best weapons in the world!” – Doctor Who
Every time I read the fellowship of the ring, I cry at the part where Gandalf is fighting the Balrog, and as he is falling, he cries out “Fly, you fools!”
There will be ripper cushions asking this
Not a quote but I realized when I was 15 that if I look up from a book and it is NOT — a helicopter in a thunder storm (that time), a beach, the ocean, night time, the desert, etc — then this is a good book and I need to read more of what this author is writing.
The last time it happened was Elias with the cat creature in a cavern. “Damn it. “Samantha, stop sneaking up on me.””
Good books/stories make other realities real for me.
“We inhabit a less than ideal world.”
— Roger Zelazny
Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog is too dark to read. – Groucho Marx
🤣🤣🤣
“She is too fond of books and it has turned her brain.”
I felt so seen when I read this quote. 🙂
Bienvenue chez les francophones, Roman!
PS: c’est très attentionné de ta part d’arriver juste avant l’anniversaire de ma soeur 😉
My education was the liberty I had to read anything and all the time with my eyes hanging out.
I believe its Oscar Wilde.
This was painted on the wall of a library I visited once as a kid; unfortunately I don’t know the author:
There is no frigate like a book
To take us lands away,
Nor any coursers like a page
Of prancing poetry.
This traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of toll;
How frugal is the chariot
That bears the human soul.
Emily Dickinson.
+1
“A word after a word after a word is power” – Margaret Atwood
My favourite quote ever and one that the horde doesn’t need an intro to..
“The things you don’t know or realize are an ocean, and your mind is a tiny boat upon its waves”
I love “If the sky could dream it would dream of dragons”
pTerry Pratchett wrote “Humans need fantasy to be human, to be the place where the rising ape meets the falling angel” which I think is a beautiful phrase, and so true (the character has previously said that love, justice etc are all fantasy- in that if you grind the universe down you won’t find them, but that we have to believe in them to be human)
The french publishers really capturing the Chernoic aesthetic is so on brand for the french 😂 I love that so much for them 😁
One of my favorites is Grow thru what you go thru, from Hayley Edward’s books. Just kinda resonates with me.
Mine is “Make no apologies for surviving”
My favorite quotes are about books and libraries and are all by Terry Pratchett. Alas, I have no memory for quotes, but here is one I’ve written down (sadly, not by Sir Terry).
“The Fadiman family believed in carnal love. To us, a book’s words were holy, but the paper, cloth, cardboard, glue, thread, and ink that contained them were a mere vessel, and it was no sacrilege to treat them as wantonly as desire and pragmatism dictated. Hard use was a sign not of disrespect but of intimacy.”
–Ann Fadiman
A good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read.
Mine is from the great Bard Jimmy Buffett which I use to describe my love of growing up on the beach in Florida.
“I am umbilically connected to the temperate zone
It brought me life, it brought me love, I never have outgrown
Brought me one too many nights along that Biscayne shore
And one too many mornings in the Grove drugstore
And one way or the other we’re all refugees
Livin’ out this easy life below the banyan trees”
The first 2 lines of the Jimmy Buffett (plus others) song “Jolly Mon Sing” is the way I feel about all my favorite fantasy reads.
“There is a tale that the island people tell
Don’t care if it is true ’cause I love it so well”
If books are not good company, where shall I find it?
Mark Twain
I am horrible with remembering who said what, but I do remember Mark Twain said some things about the subject of writing. And I recently came back from a trip where they had a metal sculpture of Twain sitting on a bench with a book in one hand and a pipe in another.
A well-composed book is a magic carpet on which we are wafted to a world that we cannot enter in any other way.
Caroline Gordon
Good afternoon to House Andrews and the Mighty Horde
My second-favourite quotable author has to be Lois McMaster Bujold. Here is one of hers:
“—that the gods did not desire flawless souls, but great ones. I think that very darkness is where the greatness grows from, as flowers from the soil. I am not sure, in fact, if greatness can bloom without it.”
Bujold, Lois McMaster. Paladin of Souls (The Chalion Series Book 2) (p. 503)
Thank you for making my reading heart happy, HA! You are treasured
Lynda from South Africa
Ook, ook,I found one of the Pratchett quotes I was thinking of.
“The Library didn’t only contain magical books, the ones which are chained to their shelves and are very dangerous. It also contained perfectly ordinary books, printed on commonplace paper in mundane ink. It would be a mistake to think that they weren’t also dangerous, just because reading them didn’t make fireworks go off in the sky. Reading them sometimes did the more dangeous trick of making fireworks go off in the privacy of the reader’s brain.
Also wanted to mention that Molly Templeton has a thoughtful article on a related topic in the most recent reactormag.com post. “Form, Function, and the Sentences We Collect”
A Well Read Woman is a Dangerous Creature.
also
I am not a Book Worm,
I am a Book Dragon.
My favorite quote about books is this by George R. R. Martin:
“Fantasy is silver and scarlet, indigo and azure, obsidian veined with gold and lapis lazuli. Reality is plywood and plastic, done up in mud brown and olive drab. Fantasy tastes of habaneros and honey, cinnamon and cloves, rare red meat and wines as sweet as summer. Reality is beans and tofu, and ashes at the end. Reality is the strip malls of Burbank, the smokestacks of Cleveland, a parking garage in Newark. Fantasy is the towers of Minas Tirith, the ancient stones of Gormenghast, the halls of Camelot. Fantasy flies on the wings of Icarus, reality on Southwest Airlines. Why do our dreams become so much smaller when they finally come true?
We read fantasy to find the colors again, I think. To taste strong spices and hear the songs the sirens sang. There is something old and true in fantasy that speaks to something deep within us, to the child who dreamt that one day he would hunt the forests of the night, and feast beneath the hollow hills, and find a love to last forever somewhere south of Oz and north of Shangri-La.
They can keep their heaven. When I die, I’d sooner go to middle Earth.”
Movie quote “I am at one with the me, I am at one with the me, which is rooted in the me, which is on this adventure.”
So many thoughts, so many quotes, but here’s a couple:
“She came out of the snow like a white-furred shadow of death” David Weber, In Fury Born.
“Oh, look, mine’s bigger. Well hurry up, knifemasster, I don’t have all day.” Kate Daniels.
“I cannot live without books; but fewer will suffice where amusement, and not use, is the only future object.” – Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, June 10, 1815
I just returned home from a visit to Monticello, so Jefferson is fresh on my mind. I even had to buy a Christmas ornament with “I cannot live without books” to add to my book themed tree!
“Probably a good idea, let me know how it ends. ”
“I already know how it ends. ”
“You read the ending first?”
“I always read the ending before I commit to the whole book. ”
“If you know how it ends, why read the book?”
“I don’t read for the ending, I read for the story. ”
Jayne Ann Krentz, Running hot, pg 114
“So many books, so little time”
As someone who has studied literature for many years, and read books for both joy and comfort, a quote from Joyce’s Ulysses (one I did not read for joy) has amused and stuck with me for some reason:
…”he reflected on the pleasures derived from literature of instruction rather than of amusement as he himself had applied to the works of William Shakespeare more than once for the solution of difficult problems in imaginary or real life. Had he found their solution? In spite of careful and repeated reading of certain classical passages, aided by a glossary, he had derived imperfect conviction from the text, the answers not bearing on all points.”
Mod R, votre français est très bien!
Everything’s cooler in French. my husband and I were just discussing a favorite line from R. A. MacAvoy’s The Book of Kells. “I am riding my weapon.” This scene involves an Irish horsemistress and her dressage trained Irish Draft horse vs medieval viking invaders. R. A. MacAvoy is always magic.
“Not all those who wander are lost”…Bilbo Baggins; The Hobbit.
So many favorite quotes. Top of the list at present: Bujold (Paraphrase)…true evil is done in green silk lined rooms.
And: Jerome K Jerome I love work. I collect it. I have a room full of it. I dust it off every so often.
And Belloc’s Ode on the death of a politician “While those of his acquaintance slandered and slanged
I wept. For I had longed to see him hanged”
The last I keep meaning to embroider on a sampler.
This is my favourite bookish quote – it just sums up how I feel about books so beautifully :
“I suspect it may be like the difference between a drinker and an alcoholic; the one merely reads books, the other needs books to make it through the day.”
(Interview with The Booklovers blog, September 2010)”
― Gail Carriger
Love Miss Gail!
Favorite quote right now:
“Behind the cloud the sun is still shining.”
The Demon of Unrest – Erik Larson
“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.”
George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire, #5)
So true, there are other quotes along this thought and they’re all true.
Every book you read, you do live through even if a tiny bit but of another life.
So many emotions & experiences.
🖤
“Honor is dead…. But I’ll see what I can do.”
Kaladin, Words of Radiance (Brandon Sanderson)
Gives me goosebumps every time.
“One day you will be old enough to read fairytales again.” – C.S. Lewis
“Evil begins with seeing people as things. Rape and murder, they’re just bloody minded afterthoughts. It starts when you treat a person as a thing.” Esther Friesner
Harpy High
I read it in high school and it always stuck with me. And I know this was a theme with Terry Pratchett, I am a die hard fan, but Harpy High predates him by a few years. This would also be a clue as to how old I am.
Chicks in Chainmail, darling, chicks in chainmail.
I loved Roman’s book and I’m eagerly awaiting the sequel, just as I’m eagerly awaiting the sequel to Wilmington Years, because I love Kate’s world. Whenever I get an email with a new newsletter, I rush to see if it’s about Kate, but it never is…
I think my favorite quote runs along the line of ‘Our dog hides behind the scariest person in the room’ Which is me. She hates thunder, lightening, fireworks and boomies when the proving ground is out playing. So she comes running to me in my easy chair with my feet up and hides under my chair. At night, in my chair I have my blanket over my legs and feet and it makes her own little cave.
The ending quote from “A Tale of Two Cities” by Dickens:
“It is a far, far better thing I do than I have ever done. It is a far, far better place I go than I have ever gone”.
“When I get a little money, I buy books; if any is left, I buy food and clothes.” Desiderius Erasmus, 1466-1536. On a trip to Asheville, NC years ago, I found a set of cards with this quote in beautiful calligraphy. I absolutely love this quote!
Such a wonderful and challenging question! With so many quotes that have served as touchstones in my life it is difficult to decide but one keeps jumping up and down saying “pick me”.
From Spider Robinson’s Callahan’s Cross-time Saloon series “Anger is always fear in drag.”
“Words are our most inexhaustible source of magic.”
Albus Dumbledore
JK Rowling
“Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.” —Groucho Marx
So, I have three. Two are from two of my favorite books. The third is from books one and two of a series that I just started. The first is from A Ring of Endless Light by the great Madeline L’Engle – “Love isn’t how you feel. It’s what you do.” My second, and honestly, I’m not sucking up, is from The Princess Bride. This book and movie has given the world so many great lines, but the one that makes me melt is “As you wish.” Last is from A Court of Thorns and Roses which took on such a deeper, wonderful meaning when I read A Wind of Mist and Fury. “There you are. I’ve been looking for you.” After reading AWOMAF, I teared up when I realized what Rhysand was truly saying.
As a follow up…
“Let’s be reasonable and add an eighth day to the week that is devoted exclusively to reading.” – Lena Dunham
“You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.” – Ray Bradbury
I know it’s probably cliché, but the quote from George R R,
“I have lived a thousand lives and I have loved a thousand loves. I have walked on distant worlds and seen the end of time. Because I read.”
Now, I’m not a huge fan of his books (no shade to those who may love them! They just werent my thing), but this quote of his always stuck with me. I’ve read to escape the world since I was really young, first because the kinda cult I grew up in wasn’t the best environment for kids, and then later I became disabled and physically just can’t do as much as I’d like. So books have always been the thing I turn to in order to visit other places, greet old and new friends, and learn new ways to see the world.
The French editions are so gorgeous.
“No apologies for surviving” from author Hailey Edwards
“He doesn’t say what he is thinking, which is that his church is held-breath story listening and late-night-concert ear-ringing rapture and perfect-boss fight-button pressing. That his religion is buried in the silence of freshly fallen snow, in a carefully crafted cocktail, in between the pages of a book somewhere after the beginning but before the ending.”
— Erin Morgenstern, “The Starless Sea”
A Charlie Brown Cartoon where Linus says “LOOK! A Library card! I’ve taken out a Library Card! I have been given my citizenship in the Land of Knowledge! Books have made my life so much better.
I know it’s a poem by Dylan Thomas, not a book quote but for some reason it keeps popping up in my mind.
“ Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.”
It’s very nice when read by Anthony Hopkins. Not sure but I think it was quoted in the Interstellar film a few years ago.
Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside a dog, it’s too dark to read.
I see someone else posted this, too. P.S. It’s not by Groucho Marx.
It sounds like James Thurber but I can’t remember for sure. It’s one of my faves as well.
This quote by John Irving from A Prayer for Owen Meany about loss states, “When someone you love dies, and you’re not expecting it, you don’t lose them all at once. You lose them in pieces over time. You gradually accumulate the parts of them that are gone”.
My favorite quotes are from Strange the Dreamer- I felt exactly what the author was saying.
“He read while he walked. He read while he ate. The other librarians suspected he somehow read while he slept, or perhaps didn’t sleep at all.”
“Without his books, his room felt like a body with its hearts cut out.”
Oh my gosh! As a librarian it’s literally torture to only choose one, but I love the following by Annie Dillard “ She read books as one would breathe air, to fill up and live.”
My favorite quote about books is from John Waters, “If you go home with somebody and they don’t have books, don’t f*** ’em! “
Favorite quotes:
“…the stony expression of a man who was either about to charge the enemy line for the fifth time in a single day, or do his taxes.” (Sweep of the Blade)
And
“Did these people realize how rich they were? All the air they could breathe.” (Barrayar by Lois McMaster Bujold)
*Glances down at “Congratulations, you’re evil enough!” tshirt*
Use your words.
Here Kitty Kitty!
It took me awhile to remember the book it was from but I always remembered the quote because I felt so seen.
“True readers are rapacious that way; it doesn’t matter if we’re holding Jane Eyre or the folded up instructions to a bottle of Tylenol, we just need the alphabetic fix.” -Denise Hamilton “The Jasmine Trade”
I’m traveling in France right now and for a second I thought my email had been geo localized! 😂
Hehehehe 😂
“A room without books is like a body without a soul.” -attributed to Cicero
-AND this doesn’t quite fit the quote part of the assignment, but a few lines from the movie Out of Africa (not sure if it’s in the Isak Denisen (Karen Blixen) memoir or not):
Karen: He has got lovely books. Does he lend them?
Berkeley: We had a friend… Hopworth, he’d got a book from Denys and didn’t return it. Denys was furious. I said to Denys… “You wouldn’t lose a friend for the sake of a book.” He said, “No, but he has, hasn’t he?”
I cannot live without books… Thomas Jefferson
there’s more, but that’s the part I remember….
I have a tattoo of ‘I am no bird and no net ensnares me’ from Jane Eyre. I have some artwork with that quote as well. I plan to get a tattoo of ‘Love as though wilt’ from Kushiel’s Dart by Jacqueline Carey.
Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.
(Neil Gaiman)
” Here, Kitty,kitty…”
I have a tough time remembering quotes but my husband brought up this one recently
There is only one god, and His name is Death. And there is only one thing we say to Death: ‘not today’.” Famous words from Syrio Forel in “A Golden Crown.”
I cannot live without books.
Thomas Jefferson
I can’t beat that…
I will never cease to be amazed by books
Seriously, just think about it:
Thousands of people read the same book, but in each one’s mind, the characters look different and the setting changes and we’re all reading the same thing but it’s so unique to each of us. That is insanely cool.
As a great lover of Jane Austen, this quote has stuck with me ever since this first time I read Pride and Prejudice:
“There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me.”
― Elizabeth Bennett, Pride and Prejudice
“I was just wondering whose silver tongue or golden pen is telling the tale we find ourselves in” Once Upon a Winter’s Night by Dennis McKiernan.
As any Pratchett lover can confirm, the absolute tastiest morsels are always to be found in the footnotes. And among the countless snippets of wisdom disguised as wit, this one from Guards! Guards! is possibly (and only possibly) my absolute favorite.
“The truth is that even big collections of ordinary books distort space, as can readily be proved by anyone who has been around a really old-fashioned secondhand bookshop, one that looks as though they were designed by M. Escher on a bad day and has more stairways than storeys and those rows of shelves which end in little doors that are surely too small for a full-sized human to enter. The relevant equation is: Knowledge = power = energy = matter = mass; a good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read.”
No one else has ever come close to describing the way a good bookshop or library makes me feel.
Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 where he answers WHY-just my favorite bits-
“The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us. . . Do you know why books such as this are so important? Because they have quality. And what does the word quality mean? To me it means texture. This book has pores. It has features. This book can go under the microscope. You’d find life under the glass, streaming past in infinite profusion. The more pores the more truthfully recorded details of life per square inch you can get on a sheet of paper, the more ‘literary’ you are. That’s my definition, anyway. Telling detail. Fresh detail. The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her to the flies.
So now do you know why books are hated and feared? They show people the pore in the face of life. The comfortable people want only wax moon faces, poreless, hairless, expressionless. We are living in a time when flowers are trying to live on flowers, instead of growing on good rain and black loam. Even fireworks, for all their prettiness, came from the chemistry of the earth. Yet somehow we think we can grow, feeding on flowers and fireworks, without completing the cycle back to reality.”
Two quotes finally came to mind, but I kept drawing a blank at first:
“We live as we dream–alone ” (Joseph Conrad, “Heart of Darkness”)
“Life is but a walking shadow,
A poor player that struts and frets
his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more.
It is a tale told by an idiot,
full of sound and fury–signifying nothing.”
(Shakespeare, “Macbeth”)
Wow, those are depressing.
Some quotes:
“A house without books is like a room without windows.” – Horace Mann
“Books invite all; they constrain none.” – Inscribed on the Los Angeles Public Library Goodhue Building – Hartley Burr Alexander
Gordon Lightfoot – If you could read my mind (song lyric)
You won’t read that book again, because the ending’s just too hard to take.
Seriously considering having it added to tattoo.
I keep a journal of my favorite quotes and read a page or two a day. One of my favorites is from My Journey to Lhasa by Alexandra David-Neel.
“…luck has a cause, like anything else and I believe that there exists a mental attitude capable of shaping circumstances more or less according to one’s own wishes.”
I think it’s a proverb rather than a quote:
“A book is like a garden you carry in your pocket.”
I also really love gardens. When you combine the two on a lovely day…it’s like actual MAGIC.
I love this translation of Baudelaire’s Les Chats:
Cats
Fevered lovers and austere thinkers
Love equally, in their ripe season
Cats powerful and gentle, pride of the house
Like them they feel the cold, like them are sedentary
Friends of science and sensuality
They seek the silence and the horror of the shadows
Erebus had taken them for its funeral coursers
Could they to servitude incline their pride.
Dreaming, they take on noble postures
Great sphinxes stretched out in the depths of emptiness
Seeming to fall asleep into an endless dream.
Their fertile loins are full of magic sparks
And nuggets of gold like fine sand
Vaguely bestar their mystic pupils.
I have entire journals of quotes covering 30 years of voracious reading. Every so often I pull them out to see what still resounds.
“Your reward for doing something good,
is to do something else good.” – Terry Pratchett
Hi fellow BDH’ers. I don’t usually post, as I am a very private person. I read this about memorable quotes and it struck something in me. I remember a shopping trip to Costco many years ago while perusing my favorite part of the store, movies, books, and audio books. I happened to overhear a couple discussing the movie Sleepless in Seattle. One of my favorite movies. She was expounding on the movie and he was disparaging it, obviously not enamored of it. I caught the eye of the woman and said it’s a chick flick, and we both laughed.
“There is no frigate like a book to take us lands away,
Nor any coursers like a page of prancing poetry.
This traverse may the poorest take without oppress of toll;
How frugal is the chariot that bears a human soul!
Emily Dickinson
One of my favorites on books. I read her for comfort when dealing with loss –
“The sweeping up the heart and putting love away, we will not need again until eternity.”
“Marshall my mental parliament” from The Fencer trilogy by K J Parker
I try to always quote Jurassic Park. not in the book but the film: Dr. ian Malcolm: “you read what they did and you took the next step” or something like that
“What’s loved, lives.”
“…the true dark angel, the unfallen Destroyer, the Pale Slayer who never really dies…”
both from Deep Wizardy by Diane Duane at the end.
“I’ve dreamt in my life dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas; they’ve gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the colour of my mind.” – Emily Brontë
Forever my favourite.
Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read. Groucho Marx
from Suzanne Wright: comment from Lucifer having OCD:
What brothers me is that health professionals give fancy names to conditions or learning difficulties that will irritate the patients; like
OCD is not in alphabetical order
putting an’S’ in lisp
and making dyslexia a word that no one can spell.
It’s just mean
I smile every time I read it; it is so true!
From Carl Sagan: What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.”
a book a read when I was a child had a phrase that has stuck with me all my life. I think of this phrase everytime I try something new, from joining the Army to walking down the isle at my wedding and the 1st day of every new job; “facing the sheer terror of doing exactly what you want and taking the leap into the void”
I am re-reading the English version whilst Ulveham by Gåte plays in the background. Chills.
I kept reading a book I couldn’t get into, but the world building was good. I didn’t complete the series but got this line
“From world to world he rides, from the gates of story to the shores of dream, until the world is changed and the horse is freed.”
Change is inevitable, they say. Struggle is optional.
Your life’s path deviates from what you intend.
Whether you like it or not.
Whether you fight it or not.
Whether your heart breaks or not.
Bailey Cates
Brownies and Broomsticks: A Magical Bakery Mystery
#kindlequotes
This quote is about learning, but since learning is so often done through reading for me, it definitely counts.
“The best thing for being sad,” replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, “is to learn something. That’s the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.”
T.H. White, The Once and Future King