Book Donation Quotes

Leaving behind books is even more beautiful — there are far too many children.

Someday I hope to write a book where the royalties will pay for the copies I give away.

There are many ways of discarding [books]. You can give them to friends,--or enemies,--or to associations or to poor Southern libraries. But the surest way is to lend them. Then they never come back to bother you.

Not only do I recommend Wendell Berry to anyone who will talk to me for more than seven seconds, but I buy his books in quantity and send them to people. I bought a few dozen of his newest, "Our Only World."

Growing up, my parents managed to show me the importance of reading without cramming it down my throat. A difficult task, I'm sure. It breaks my heart to think that there are kids out there, ready to have their imaginations lit on fire, excited and wanting to read, and facing naked shelves in their school or local libraries. Rather than complain or wait till the system stops failing our nation's children this is a matter I feel we must take into our own hands. There are children, right now, waiting-wanting to read. What shall we tell them>

I've never been a collector - just a consumer - and these days unless a book is signed to me by another author, I don't normally have any qualms about passing it to a friend or donating it to the library.

I am not collecting copies of the cheaper editions of Omar Khayyám. I gave the last four that I received to the lift-boy, and I like to think of him reading them, with FitzGerald's notes, to his aged mother. Lift-boys always have aged mothers; shows such nice feeling on their part, I think.

Books should go where they will be most appreciated, and not sit unread, gathering dust on a forgotten shelf, don't you agree?

We wanted to celebrate the 'Dangerous Deception' release by letting everyone experience the thrill of sharing a book with a reader who wouldn't otherwise have one.

A presentation copy, reader,-if haply you are yet innocent of such favours-is a copy of a book which does not sell, sent you by the author.

I'm the farthest thing from a bibliophile. I purge my collection regularly: If I haven't read a book in a couple of years, I try to give it to someone who will.

I always travel with one book. I'll read it and then leave it for someone else, and take another book.

When I started the Imagination Library in my hometown, I never dreamed that one day we would be helping Scottish kids.

I know that the last thing a book wants is to just sit around unread, serving as an element of interior decorating. So when I have people over, all they have to do is glance at my books, and I implore them to take a few home with them. If I am really ambitious, I pack books into boxes and donate them to prisons.

The perfectly natural thing to do with an unreadable book is to give it away; and the publication, for more than a quarter of a century, of volumes which fulfilled this one purpose and no other is a pleasant proof, if proof were needed, of the business principles which underlay the enlightened activity of publishers.