"Some books are unreservedly forgotten; none are unreservedly remembered." -W. H. Auden "A room without books is like a body without a soul." -Cicero "The proper study of mankind is books." -Aldous Huxley This collection of more than five hundred quotations captures the wisdom and wit of the most insightful things ever said about books, spoken and written by such legendary figures as: Aeschylus, Ernest Hemingway, John Ruskin, Woody Allen, Thomas Jefferson, Charles Scribner, Maya Angelou, Franz Kafka, George Bernard Shaw, Jane Austen, Helen Keller, Wallace Stevens, Francis Bacon, Malcolm X, Robert Penn Warren, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Groucho Marx, William Carlos Williams, William Faulkner, John Milton, Oprah Winfrey, Robert Frost, George Orwell, and W. B. Yeats. Encompassing the many facets of books and the pleasures and puzzlements they afford, The Quotable Book Lover includes chapters on writing, reading, and bookbinding, among other subjects. With its wide range of commentary, this compilation will surely entertain and enlighten bibliophiles everywhere. Helena Hjalmarsson, M.A., L.C.S.W., L.P., is a psychoanalyst and NeuroMovement® practitioner in North Salem, N.Y. and New York City. Her practices are informed by the idea of non-duality, the power of the present moment and the freedom that can be found by reaching beyond one’s personal identity, experience and beliefs. Helena is the author of Finding Lina (Skyhorse 2013). She lives in North Salem, N.Y., with her two daughters. The Quotable Book Lover By Ben Jacobs, Helena Hjalmarsson Skyhorse Publishing Copyright © 1999 Ben Jacobs and Helena Hjalmarsson All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-62087-625-1 Contents Foreword by Nicholas A. Basbanes, Preface, 1 In Praise of Books, 2 On Writing, 3 Autobiography and Biography, 4 Reading, 5 Libraries, 6 Literacy, 7 Censorship and the Destruction of Books, 8 Publishing and Publishers, 9 Literature, 10 Collecting Books, Index, CHAPTER 1 In Praise of Books The books we read help to shape who we are. Reading offers us, as children, our first independence — allowing us to travel far beyond the confines of our immediate world. Books introduce us to great figures in history, narratives that stir our spirit, fictions that tug us out of ourselves and into the lives of a thousand others, and visions of every era through which human beings have lived. And in the process of stretching who we are, books also connect us to all others — of our own or previous times — who have read what we've read. In the community of readers, we instantly become linked to those who share our love for specific characters or passages. "A well-composed book," says Caroline Gordon, "is a magic carpet on which we are wafted to a world that we cannot enter in any other way." Here, then, are some words in praise of that magic carpet. * * * Books may well be the only true magic. Alice Hoffman * * * A well-composed book is a magic carpet on which we are wafted to a world that we cannot enter in any other way. Caroline Gordon (1895-1981) * * * Books are the carriers of civilization ... They are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind. Books are humanity in print. Barbara W. Tuchman (1912-1989) * * * Good books are the warehouses of ideas. H. G. WELLS (1866-1946) Books admitted me to their world open-handedly, as people for their most part, did not. The life I lived in books was one of ease and freedom, worldly wisdom, glitter, dash and style. JONATHAN RABAN For Love and Money (1987) * * * I grew up kissing books and bread. Salman Rushdie Imaginary Homelands (1992) * * * Bread and books: food for the body and food for the soul — what could be more worthy of our respect, and even love? Salman Rushdie Imaginary Homelands (1992) * * * A book is a version of the world. If you do not like it, ignore it; or offer your own version in return. Salman Rushdie Imaginary Homelands (1992) * * * How beautiful to a genuine lover of reading are the sullied leaves and worn-out appearance, nay the very odour (beyond Russia) if we would not forget kind feelings in fastidiousness, of an old "Circulating library" Tom Jones or Vicar of Wakefield. How they speak of the thousand thumbs that have turned over their pages with delight. Charles Lamb "Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading" (1822) * * * A book reads the better which is our own, and has been so long known to us, that we know the topography of its blots, and dog's ears, and can trace the dirt in it to having read it at tea with buttered muffins. Charles Lamb Last Essays of Elia (1833) Books must be the axe to break the frozen sea inside me. FRANZ KAFKA (1883-1924) A good book is the precious lifeblood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on a purpose to a life beyond life. John Milton "Areopagitica" (1644) For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul whose proge