"

…the art of writing has for backbone some fierce attachment to an idea…. It is on the back of an idea, something believed in with conviction or seen w...more

"

A learned man is a sedentary, concentrated solitary enthusiast, who searches through books to discover some particular grain of truth upon which he ha...more

"

Yet who reads to bring about an end, however desirable? Are there not some pursuits that we practise because they are good in themselves, and some ple...more

"

Second hand books are wild books, homeless books; they have come together in vast flocks of variegated feather, and have a charm which the domesticate...more

"

When the Day of Judgment dawns and people, great and small, come marching in to receive their heavenly rewards, the Almighty will gaze upon the mere b...more

"

For masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in common, of thinking by the body of the people, ...more

"

Fiction is like a spider's web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners.

"

What one means by integrity, in the case of the novelist, is the conviction that he gives one that this is the truth. . . . When one so exposes it [in...more

"

They lack suggestive power. And when a book lacks suggestive power, however hard it hits the surface of the mind it cannot penetrate within.

"

Literature is strewn with the wreckage of those who have minded beyond reason the opinion of others.

"

For books continue each other, in spite of our habit of judging them separately.

"

What a vast fertility of pleasure books hold for me! I went in and found the table laden with books. I looked in and sniffed them all. I could not res...more

"

Books are the mirrors of the soul.

"

Are they not criminals, books that have wasted our time and sympathy; are they not the most insidious enemies of society, corrupters, defilers, the wr...more

"

I like books whose virtue is all drawn together in a page or two. I like sentences that don't budge though armies cross them.