Collecting Books Quotes

Good as it is to inherit a library, it is better to collect one.

I guess I never grew up. I was still reading kids' books in high school and college. I was always interested in writing or illustrating children's books, and I started collecting out-of-print books when I was about 10 years old.

I've always spent money on books. I've always enjoyed handling books - the size, the format. I feel very strongly about original ephemera.

I don't read good books anymore, it seems; I just buy them and put them on the shelf and every now and then walk over and pet them. I'm like the optimistic dieter who fills her closet with clothes two sizes too small and dreams of the day she can wear them. I know just what I want to do when I retire.

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 don't care whether a book is a first edition or not. I'm not a bibliophile in that word's natural sense.

It is the interest one takes in books that makes a library. And if a library have interest it is; if not, it isn't.

Book collecting is a largely solitary, mostly male, and completely absorbing activity.

To a book collector, you see, the true freedom of all books is somewhere on his shelves.

I think that if you really love a book, there's nothing nicer than to have a first edition of it.

I love cookbooks. I collect them.

Old or new, the only sign I always try to rid my books of (usually with little success) is the price-sticker that malignant booksellers attach to the backs. These evil white scabs rip off with difficulty, leaving leprous wounds and traces of slime to which adhere the dust and fluff of ages, making me wish for a special gummy hell to which the inventor of these stickers would be condemned.

Capra's great passion was Dickens. As soon as he had some money, he bought some of the rarest and most extraordinary editions of Dickens's work, and he was very proud of his collection.

'The Tin Drum' is one of my favourite books of all time - I've probably got 12 or 15 copies with different covers, different translations - but it's also just about my favourite film.