Thank God for books as an alternative to conversation.

. . . I lay on the bed and lost myself in the stories.
I liked that. Books were safer than other people anyway.

I think it is good that books still exist, but they make me sleepy.

I love to lose myself in other men's minds. When I am not walking, I am reading, I cannot sit and think. Books think for me

That's the thing about books. They let you travel without moving your feet.

Here's what I mean by the miracle of language. When you're falling into a good book, exactly as you might fall into a dream, a little conduit opens, a passageway between a reader's heart and a writer's, a connection that transcends the barriers of continents and generations and even death ... And here's the magic. You're different. You can never go back to being exactly the same person you were before you disappeared into that book.

In books we never find anything but ourselves. Strangely enough, that always gives us great pleasure, and we say the author is a genius.

No furniture is so charming as books, even if you never open them or read a single word.

To lose yourself in a book is the desire of the bookworm. I mean to be taken. That is my desire.

We are very fond of reading others’ characters, but we do not like to be read ourselves.

Some say they get lost in books, but I find myself, again and again, in the pages of a good book. Humanly speaking, there is no greater teacher, no greater therapist, no greater healer of the soul, than a well-stocked library.

There is a marvelous peace in not publishing ... I like to write. I love to write. But I write just for myself and my own pleasure.

I still love books. Nothing a computer can do can compare to a book. You can't really put a book on the Internet. Three companies have offered to put books by me on the Net, and I said, 'If you can make something that has a nice jacket, nice paper with that nice smell, then we'll talk.' All the computer can give you is a manuscript. People don't want to read manuscripts. They want to read books. Books smell good. They look good. You can press it to your bosom. You can carry it in your pocket.

Hay quien se hunde en la lectura de novelas para distraerse de sí mismo, para olvidar sus penas...