There are few things in this life that give me as much pleasure as reading does, and I love to find quotes about reading that express how much I love to read in ways that I could never say. I lose myself in words and only reluctantly do I return to this world. I prefer books to movies, even movies about books. I find solace in the journey that is a good book.
I read and reread, and only a true bibliophile will ever understand the joy of reading a book that they’ve read before, and only a bibliophile understands that when you reread an old book it’s like picking up the phone and calling an old friend. You pick up where you left off, and as you reconnect, you invariably find something new, that you hadn’t noticed before.
“That moment when you finish a book, look around and realize that everyone is just carrying on with their lives as though you didn’t just experience emotional trauma at the hands of a paperback.”
The lover of books doesn’t just read them. She embraces them, learns their every nuance much as a mother learns a newborn baby’s snuffy sounds and new-baby smell. The people in books are real–as real as if they were standing right in front of you–and their lives and your life were joined forever when you opened the book…you could no more abandon them than you could abandon your own child. When they win you cheer and when they die, you cry as though your heart would break. Those around you in the real world don’t understand, and you don’t expect them to.
“A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading.” ~William Styron
Reading takes me away. Though I am bound by time, I know Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII intimately. I know Mr. Darcy and Charlemagne and Corrie ten Boom and Laura Ingalls Wilder…Peter Pan and Alice and Queen Elizabeth…they are old friends, and I’m certain that if we sat down for tea, we would pick up right where we had left off when the book came to an end.
“When I’m reading, wherever I am, I’m always somewhere else.” ~Rebecca Wells
I don’t expect anyone to understand. Even another bibliophile won’t fully understand my love of words, because he has found his own love. We may cross paths traveling through Wonderland or soaring through space…we may find ourselves for a time in the halls of Windsor Castle, or pass one another as we travel down the Amazon…but our experiences will be much the same and as different as can be.
“I prefer the company of books. When I’m reading, I’m never alone, I have a conversation with the book. It can be very intimate. Perhaps you know this feeling yourself?
The sense that you’re having an intellectual exchange with the author, following his or her train thought and you accompany each other for weeks on end.” ~Sophie Divry
I much prefer the people in books to the people in real life. I find friends that think the same thoughts as I do, and I find the ones that challenge my mind. Though they begin their lives as ink and paper, they soon come to life and our lives become intertwined and even when the story has ended and the covers closed, I still find them popping up in unexpected places, as though they just wanted to remind me that they were once part of my soul. Sometimes they pop up so often that I must read their story again, to find myself lost in their world instead of my own.
“In a library, you can find small miracles and truth, and you might find something that will make you laugh so hard that you will get shushed, in the friendliest way.
Libraries are like mountains or meadows or creeks: sacred space. ”
~Anne Lamott
There is no place on earth that offers me sanctuary like a library. The quiet hush reminds me that the ghosts in the pages still walk there, and though they long to be read, they command reverence in their holy place. You need not shout, or demand their attention. Even new libraries with their glass and steel and computerized system, cannot escape the ghosts that live there. It’s as if the architect penciled them in on his blueprints, and as the ribbon was cut and the library cards were handed out, they came whispering through the door, finding themselves on the shelves, embracing their stories as if to say “Oh THERE you are! I wondered where you had gotten off to” and settling in with a sigh that cannot be heard, but only felt.
“Reading is everything. Reading makes me feel like I’ve accomplished something, learned something, become a better person.
Reading makes me smarter. Reading gives me something to talk about later on. Reading is the unbelievably healthy way my attention deficit disorder medicates itself.
Reading is escape, and the opposite of escape; it’s a way to make contact with reality after a day of making things up, and it’s a way of making contact with someone else’s imagination after a day that’s all too real. Reading is grist. Reading is bliss.” — Nora Ephron
When I read, I discover gifts that I didn’t know I possessed. I find myself anxious to learn, to try, to do. I want to shout what I’ve learned from the rooftops…and keep it all to myself. I want to draw others in to share my new found knowledge…and I become anxious when too many people learn my secrets. I feel wiser…and I discover that there is much to be learned.
“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.”
― Jane Austen
Are you a reader? A lover of words? Do your best friends live in the pages of books? Have you found yourself lost in a book, devastated when you must return to reality? Do you feel as though you could walk the streets of ancient Rome, Tudor England and Middle Earth, and find yourself completely at home? Have you slayed dragons, rescued princesses, pledged allegiance to kings and queens or played croquet with the White Queen? You are, indeed, a bibliophile.
“We read to know we’re not alone.”
― William Nicholson
Reading quotes are there to uplift the reader, to remind us why we read, and to let us know that we are among friends. There is no one who understands a reader like another reader, but even though they are kindred spirits, they are and forever will be a mystery to one another. Reading quotes are but a tiny glimpse into the soul of the reader…the writer…the nobody.
Awesome quotes, I love the one by Rebecca Wells, that just rings true for me.
Axel