Reading Sanctuary Quotes

Booksellers are the bartenders of the reading world. People share thoughts and interests they keep private from others in their lives.

My home was in a pleasant place outside of Philadelphia. But I really lived, truly lived, somewhere else. I lived within the covers of books.

My greatest fear is being somewhere without a book.

The library would've cheered me up, most days. I loved the heavy oaken tables, the high walls stacked with books to the ceiling, the musty smell of old pages and the heavy brass fixtures that had gone dark with age and wear.

Those of us who know the transporting wonder of a reading life know that it little matters where we are when we talk about books or meet authors or bemoan the state of publishing because when we read, we are always inside, sheltered in that interior room, that clean, well-lighted, timeless place that is the written word.

All my good reading, you might say, was done in the toilet.

I got hit by the bug of reading - not via a person, but via the one-room library in our small town. I remember that the children's books were in the right-hand corner near the floor. Often when I went there, I was the only visitor.

I take refuge in my books.

I grew up in an apartment that would have made a trailer look really decadent and nice. Pretty much the only dependable thing I had was books.

For to sit in a room full of books, and remember the stories they told you, and to know precisely where each one is located and what was happening in your life at time or where you were when you first read it is the languid and distilled pleasure of the connoisseur.

I long for, not a writer's retreat - I can write in any situation - but a reader's retreat.

The books in Mo and Meggie's house were stacked under tables, on chairs, in the corners of the rooms. There where books in the kitchen and books in the lavatory. Books on the TV set and in the closet, small piles of books, tall piles of books, books thick and thin, books old and new. They welcomed Meggie down to breakfast with invitingly opened pages; they kept boredom at bay when the weather was bad. And sometimes you fall over them.

The library was open for one hour after school let out. I hid there, looking at art books and reading poetry.

My stepfather introduced me to The London Library when I was about 18; the clientele has definitely changed since then, but it is still a wonderful oasis in the middle of London.

Now I'll read anytime, anywhere. I love reading in front of the space heater. Isn't that a sad confession? But it's like my substitute for the roaring fireplace of yore.