Booking Through Thursday: Quotable

A weekly meme about (mostly) books and reading. Hosted at Booking Through Thursday. A while ago BTT interviewed their readers for a change, and their final question was, “What question have they NOT asked at BTT that you’d love them to ask?” Ever so often they will pose those questions to their BTT followers. Like now.

 

Valentina asks: Do you have a favorite quote from a book? 

Um. No. I have hundreds of quotes from all sorts of books that I've collected over the years.  And they're all my favorite.  There's no way I could possibly narrow it down to just one.  So, let me give you a few of my favorites from books about books....

The trouble with bookshops is that they are as bad as pubs.  You start with one and then you drift to another, and before you know where you are you are on a gigantic book-binge.

                                    Bodies in a Bookshop

                                     —R. T. Campbell

N: And who lasts longest? [in Heaven]

M: …scholarly people, they tend to last as long as anyone.  They like sitting around reading all the books there are.  And then they love arguing about them.  Some of those arguments—she cast an eye to the heavens—go on for millennium after millennium.  It just seems to keep them young, for some reason, arguing about books.

                                    Narrator; Margaret

“The Dream”

                                    A History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters (304)

                                    —Julian Barnes

 

There is no substitute for books in the life of a child.

                                    Recipe for a Magic Childhood

                                    —Mary Ellen Chase

“Lord,” he said, “when you sell a man a book you don’t sell him just twelve ounces of paper and ink and glue—you sell him a whole new life.  Love and friendship and honor and ships at sea by night—there’s all heaven and earth in a book, a real book, I mean.

                                    Parnassus on Wheels

                                    —Christopher Morley

My husband claims I have an unhealthy obsession with secondhand bookshops….either you intrinsically understand the attraction of searching for hidden treasure amongst the rows of dusty shelves or you don’t; it’s a passion, bordering on a spiritual illness, which cannot be explained to the unaffected.

                                    Elegance (14-15)

                                    —Kathleen Tessaro

…the perfect tranquility of life, which is nowhere to be found but in retreat, a faithful friend, and a good library.

                                    The Lucky Mistake

                                    —Aphra Behn

 

I care not how humble your bookshelf may be, nor how lowly the room which it adorns.  Close the door of that room behind you, shut off with it all the cares of the outer world, plunge back into the soothing company…and then you are through the magic portal into that fair land whither worry and vexation can follow you no more.

                                    Through the Magic Door

                                    —Sir Arthur Conan Doyle