Lists

10 More Bookish Quotes of Note

Liberty Hardy

Senior Contributing Editor

Liberty Hardy is an unrepentant velocireader, writer, bitey mad lady, and tattoo canvas. Turn-ons include books, books and books. Her favorite exclamation is “Holy cats!” Liberty reads more than should be legal, sleeps very little, frequently writes on her belly with Sharpie markers, and when she dies, she’s leaving her body to library science. Until then, she lives with her three cats, Millay, Farrokh, and Zevon, in Maine. She is also right behind you. Just kidding! She’s too busy reading. Twitter: @MissLiberty

These are a few quotes about reading and books I’ve recently come across and loved:

“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”
– Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“Why are you all reading? I do not understand this reading business when there is so much fucking to be done.” – Sheila Heti, How Should a Person Be?

“The main effort of arranging your life should be to progressively reduce the amount of time required to decently maintain yourself so that you can have all the time you want for reading.” – Norman Rush

“You get a little moody sometimes but I think that’s because you like to read. People that like to read are always a little fucked up.”  – Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides

“My education was the liberty I had to read indiscriminately and all the time, with my eyes hanging out.” – Dylan Thomas

“I am simply a ‘book drunkard.’ Books have the same irresistible temptation for me that liquor has for its devotee. I cannot withstand them.” – Lucy Maud Montgomery

“”I thought you were supposed to be in bed,” said Veronica.
“I was, but I couldn’t sleep, your bed is all lumpy,” said Henry. “It’s full of books.”” – Michelle Cooper, A Brief History of Montmaray

“I read anything I saw lying around. Pulp fiction, great literature and everything in between – I gave them all the same rough treatment.” – Ian McEwan, Sweet Tooth

“Reading in bed is a self-centered act, immobile, free from ordinary social conventions, invisible to the world, and one that, because it takes place between the sheets, in the realm of lust and sinful idleness, has something of the thrill of the forbidden.” – Alberto Manguel, A History of Reading

“Sylvie’s knowledge, like Izzie’s, was random yet far-ranging, “The sign that one has acquired one’s learning from novels rather than an education,” according to Sylvie.” – Kate Atkinson, Life After Life