Books are important for the mind, heart, and soul. But don’t take it from us: These quotes about reading speak for themselves. Novels, memoirs, short stories, essay compilations, and more continue to shape who we are and how we view the world, no matter what format—physical book, ebook, or audiobook—we use to absorb and enjoy them. Books are pathways into different worlds and different lives, and one can never be truly bored with a good book. Here are some of the best quotes about books, whether you love to read or listen.
Famous Quotes About Books
1. “The best books… are those that tell you what you know already.” – George Orwell, 1984
2. “You can get lost in any library, no matter the size. But the more lost you are, the more things you’ll find.” ―Millie Florence, Lydia Green Of Mulberry Glen
3. “When a long book succeeds, the writer and reader are not just having an affair; they are married.” – Stephen King, The Bazaar of Bad Dreams
4. “Every author ought to write every book as if he were going to be beheaded the day he finished it.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise
5. “Somebody who only reads newspapers and at best books of contemporary authors looks to me like an extremely near-sighted person who scorns eyeglasses. He is completely dependent on the prejudices and fashions of his times, since he never gets to see or hear anything else.” Albert Einstein (German-born theoretical physicist, universally acknowledged to be one of the two greatest physicists of all time)
6. “Give me a man or woman who has read a thousand books and you give me an interesting companion. Give me a man or woman who has read perhaps three and you give me a very dangerous enemy indeed.” – Anne Rice, The Witching Hour
7. “Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.” Harper Lee (American novelist is best known for her 1960 novel To Kill a Mockingbird)
8. “The person who deserves most pity is a lonesome one on a rainy day who doesn’t know how to read.” Benjamin Franklin (Founding Fathers of the United States. A polymath, he was a leading writer, printer, political philosopher, politician, Freemason, postmaster, scientist, inventor, humorist, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat)
9. “How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book.” – Henry David Thoreau, Walden
10. “A half-read book is a half-finished love affair.” – David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas
11. “The ability to read awoke inside of me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive.” ―Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X
12. “If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.” – Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood
13. “The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.” Dr. Seuss (American children’s author, political cartoonist, illustrator, poet, animator, and filmmaker)
14. “The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.” – Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
15. “There is no Frigate like a Book To take us Lands away.” Emily Dickinson (American poet)
16. “I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in.” Robert Louis Stevenson (Scottish novelist, poet and travel writer, most noted for writing Treasure Island, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde)
17. “That’s the thing about books. They let you travel without moving your feet.” ―Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake
18. “We are of opinion that instead of letting books grow moldy behind an iron grating, far from the vulgar gaze, it is better to let them wear out by being read.” Jules Verne (French novelist, poet, and playwright)
19. “Books are a uniquely portable magic.” Stephen King (American author of horror, supernatural fiction, suspense, crime, science-fiction, and fantasy novels)
20. “I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.” ―Jorge Luis Borges
21. “Classic’ – a book which people praise and don’t read.” Mark Twain (American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer.)
22. “If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.” ―Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood
23. “I read a book one day and my whole life was changed.” ―Orhan Pamuk, The New Life
24. “I have tried to write by the old rule that how good a book is should be judged by the man who writes it by the excellence of the material that he eliminates.” – Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast
25. “Books don’t offer real escape, but they can stop a mind scratching itself raw.” ―David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas
26. “I love the sound of the pages flicking against my fingers. Print against fingerprints. Books make people quiet, yet they are so loud.” ―Nnedi Okorafor
27. “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.” ―George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons
28. “I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of anything than of a book!” – Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
29. “The man who does not read good books is no better than the man who can’t.” Mark Twain (American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer)
30. “In the end, we’ll all become stories.” ―Margaret Atwood, Moral Disorder and Other Stories
31. “So please, oh please, we beg, we pray, go throw your TV set away, and in its place you can install a lovely bookshelf on the wall.” Roald Dahl (Roald Dahl was a British novelist, short-story writer, poet, screenwriter, and wartime fighter pilot.)
32. “It is well known that reading quickens the growth of a heart like nothing else.” ―Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making
33. “Libraries will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no libraries.” ―Anne Herbert
34. “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies . . . The man who never reads lives only one.” George R.R. Martin (American novelist and short-story writer, screenwriter, and television producer. He is the author of the series of epic fantasy novels A Song of Ice and Fire, which was adapted into the Emmy Award-winning HBO series Game of Thrones)
35. “To a bibliophile, there is but one thing better than a box of new books, and that is a box of old ones.” – Will Thomas, Some Danger Involved
36. “I lived in books more than I lived anywhere else.” – Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane
