“I think you’ll do the job all right, Dixon. It’s not that you’ve got the qualifications, for this or any other work, but there are plenty who have. You haven’t got the disqualifications, though, and that’s much rarer.”
Kingsley Amis, Lucky Jim
“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.”
Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
“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, Coraline
“Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book.”
John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
“If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.”
Oscar Wilde
“What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn’t happen much, though.”
J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
“One must always be careful of books,” said Tessa, “and what is inside them, for words have the power to change us.”
Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Angel
“I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in my life. And I am horribly limited.”
Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
“Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers.”
Charles W. Eliot
“A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading.”
William Styron, Conversations with William Styron
“Books are a uniquely portable magic.”
Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
