Books have the power to transform us, to broaden our worldview and help us understand others' perspectives, and to foster compassion. Books possess the magic to transport and uplift us, to give us comfort when we most need it, and to make us swoon and laugh. Gathered from avid readers who are also great writers, this collection of 55+ quotes captures why there's so much to love about books.
On the power of books for self-discovery and transformation
"Every book is a little mirror, and sometimes you look into it and see someone else looking back." – Travis Baldree, Bookshops & Bonedust
"Every book provides a chance to try another life you could have lived." – Matt Haig, The Midnight Library
“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies.” – George R. R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons
“How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book.” – Henry David Thoreau, Walden
“One must always be careful of books ... and what is inside them, for words have the power to change us.” – Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Angel
"You can tell a lot about a person from the library books they borrow." – Freya Sampson, The Last Chance Library
“Books are mirrors: you only see in them what you already have inside you.” – Carlos Ruiz Zafon, The Shadow of the Wind
“Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.” – Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
“Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly—they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced.” – Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
“Books were safer than other people anyway.” – Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane
“The best books ... are those that tell you what you know already.” – George Orwell, 1984
"Billy always knew what book you needed. He had this power, like he was some sort of book doctor—like books were a remedy." – Amy Meyerson, The Bookshop of Yesterdays
"Sometimes books don't find us until the right time." – Gabrielle Zevin, The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry
"Sometimes, books just take us away for a little while, and return us to our place with a new perspective." – Sara Nisha Adams, The Reading List
On the value of books for knowledge and understanding
"The deeper we each read, the more we would understand about this world." – Maria Benedict, The Personal Librarian
"Books know no limits or borders, they create longings and unexpected passions, they pose more questions than answers. They represent the unruly world, filled with contradictions and complications, a world that threatens the totalitarian mindset by being beyond its control." – Azar Nafisi, Read Dangerously
"Being able to read and write did not provide answers to all questions. It led to other questions, and then to others." – Margaret Atwood, The Testaments
"The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us." – Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
"Reading lets us live in someone else’s shoes. Literature builds bridges; it makes our world larger, not smaller." – R.F. Kuang, Yellowface
“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.” – Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood
“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
“Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.” – Henry David Thoreau, Walden
“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.” – Dr. Seuss, I Can Read with My Eyes Shut!
"Books and ideas are like blood; they need to circulate, and they keep us alive." – Janet Skeslien Charles, The Paris Library
“A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.” – G.K. Chesterton, Heretics
“If the reader prefers, this book may be regarded as fiction. But thereis always the chance that such a book of fiction may throw some light on what has been written as fact.” – Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast
“Come to a book as you would come to an unexplored land. Come without a map. Explore it, and draw your own map.” – Stephen King, Hearts in Atlantis
“The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.” – Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
On the importance of books to history and legacy
"There must be something in books, something we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don’t stay for nothing." – Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
“A classic is a successful book that has survived the reaction of the next period or generation. Then it's safe, like a style in architecture or furniture. It's acquired a picturesque dignity to take the place of its fashion.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned
“Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.” – Henry David Thoreau, Walden
“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
“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
“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
“One child, one teacher, one book and one pen can change the world.” – Malala Yousafzai, I Am Malala
"But books, like people, die. They die in fires or floods or in the mouths of worms or at the whims of tyrants. If they are not safeguarded, they go out of the world. And when a book goes out of the world, the memory dies a second death." – Anthony Doerr, Cloud Cuckoo Land
"Books will always have the last word, even if nobody is around to read them." – Ruth Ozeki, The Book of Form and Emptiness
"You should always make time for books." – Phaedra Patrick, The Library of Lost and Found
On the magic of books for escape and enjoyment
“That's the thing about books. They let you travel without moving your feet.” – Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake
"She read paperbacks too, one after the next like she was chain-smoking—romance, science fiction, old pulp fantasy. All she wanted to do was sit, unbothered in a circle of lamplight, and live someone else’s life." – Leigh Bardugo, Hell Bent
“I lived in books more than I lived anywhere else.” – Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane
“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
"The atmosphere of the place soothed her automatically; the rich lantern lights, the sheer scent of paper and leather, and the fact that everywhere she looked, there were books, books, beautiful books." – Genevieve Cogman, The Invisible Library
“He liked the mere act of reading, the magic of turning scratches on a page into words inside his head.” – John Green, An Abundance of Katherines
“And books! ... she would buy them all over and over again; she would buy up every copy, I believe, to prevent their falling into unworthy hands; and she would have every book that tells her how to admire an old twisted tree.” – Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility
“It is remarkable, the character of the pleasure we derive from the best books.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance and Other Essays
“A half-read book is a half-finished love affair.” – David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas
“Like most uneducated Englishwomen, I like reading—I like reading books in the bulk.” – Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own
"Books are a uniquely portable magic." – Stephen King, On Writing
“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
“A truly good book is something as natural, and as unexpectedly and unaccountably fair and perfect, as a wild flower discovered on the prairies of the West or in the jungles of the East.” – Henry David Thoreau, Walking
“There are two motives for reading a book: one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.” – Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness
"I have never been able to resist a book about books." – Anne Fadiman, Ex Libris
"I can survive well enough on my own—if given the proper reading material." – Sarah J. Maas, Throne of Glass
