Something about the quote “Cram your head with characters and stories. Abuse your library privileges. Never stop looking at the world, and never stop reading to find out what sense other people have made of it. If people give you a hard time and tell you to get your nose out of a book, tell them you’re working. Tell them… Read more

One of the great things about books is that you can choose a book to fit your mood. You are not limited to what’s on TV or what is playing at the theater. “Anyway — because we are readers, we don’t have to wait for some communications executive to decide what we should think about next — and how we… Read more

Another absolute truth. Not only are they great resources for books, you can get movies and music and use the computers. I go to a knitting group at my local library, when I’m in town. Lots of libraries have reading groups, classes and movie nights. A library can be the center of cultural life for a family that can’t afford… Read more

This would be a fabulous place for a child to grow up! I love being surrounded by books (see last week’s Quotable) and as “I am a product […of] endless books. My father bought all the books he read and never got rid of any of them. There were books in the study, books in the drawing room, books in… Read more

This is so true! There is something soothing about being surrounded by books. “Sometimes it’s a comfort just to have a book around. Many of these books haven’t even had their spines cracked. ‘Why do you buy books you don’t even read?’ our daughter asks us. That’s like asking someone who lives alone why they bought a cat. For company,… Read more

A little poetry for a Sunday morning… “WHEN you are old and grey and full of sleep, And nodding by the fire, take down this book, And slowly read, and dream of the soft look Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep; How many loved your moments of glad grace, And loved your beauty with love false or… Read more

Virginia Woolf shows up here on occasion, but in this case, I think she’s dead wrong. “When the Day of Judgment dawns and people, great and small, come marching in to receive their heavenly rewards, the Almighty will gaze upon the mere bookworms and say to Peter, “Look, these need no reward. We have nothing to give them. They have… Read more

Considering I just finished reading NOS4A2 at about 2:00 this morning, this is a perfect quote for today: “By now, it is probably very late at night, and you have stayed up to read this book when you should have gone to sleep. If this is the case, then I commend you for falling into my trap. It is a writer’s… Read more

I love this comparison! One of the great things about a used book is that it has had a life before it came to you. Someone bought it and read it; it spent time on someone else’s nightstand next to their bed or in their backpack. Maybe they read it on their couch or flew with it to another continent.… Read more

This sounds like a lovely way to spend an afternoon — or a month, if the weather is good: “Give me books, French wine, fruit, fine weather and a little music played out of doors by somebody I do not know.” John Keats, English Romantic poet Read more