Bookseller Quotes

#1. Your second-hand bookseller is second to none in the worth of the treasures he dispenses.

Leigh Hunt

#2. Some of you ... have never read a Patrick O'Brian novel. I beseech you to start now. Start with Master and Commander, which should be available in paperback from your nearest bookseller. And if he-or she-does not have a copy, then beat the wretched fellow.

Kevin Myers

#3. It's a good idea to wait a few months before joining anything when you arrive at a village. A bookseller friend who retired to nearby Oxfordshire, and was worried he might be bored, got himself on to every village committee in the first six months, and spent the next ten years extricating himself.

Jilly Cooper

#4. CUSTOMER: I don't know why she wants it, but my wife asked for a copy of The Dinosaur Cookbook.
BOOKSELLER: The Dinah Shore Cookbook?

Jen Campbell

#5. CUSTOMER: You know that film, Coraline?
BOOKSELLER: Yes, indeed.
CUSTOMER: My daughter loves it. Are they going to make it into a book?

Jen Campbell

#6. I studied writing at university, and I actually majored in screenwriting. Then I went to work as a bookseller and then as a sales rep and publicist and then various editorial jobs until I ended up with HarperCollins in Australia.

Garth Nix

#7. MAN: Do you have black and white film posters?
BOOKSELLER: Yes, we do. They're over here.
MAN: Do you have any posters of Adolf Hitler?
BOOKSELLER: Pardon?
MAN: Adolf Hitler.
BOOKSELLER: Well, he wasn't a film star, was he.
MAN: Yes, he was. He was American. Jewish, I think ...

Jen Campbell

#8. There is something shameful about the death of a play. It does not die with pity, but contempt. A book may fail, but who is there to know it? It dies and is buried, and is decently interred on the bookseller's shelf; but the play dies to laughter, to scorn and disdain.

Mary Roberts Rinehart

#9. CUSTOMER: Do you have security cameras in here? BOOKSELLER: Yes. CUSTOMER: Oh. (customer slides a book out from inside his jacket and places it back on the shelf)

Jen Campbell

#10. The real reason why I should not like to be in the book trade for life is that while I was in it I lost my love of books. A bookseller has to tell lies about books, and that gives him a distaste for them.

George Orwell

#11. If the bookseller happens to desire a privilege for his merchandise, whether he is selling Rabelais or the Fathers of the Church, the magistrate grants the privilege without answering for the contents of the book. - Voltaire (Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire

Voltaire

#12. "Out of Print" is bookseller speak for "We can't be hedgehogged".

Terry Pratchett

#13. Customer: I'm looking for a book for my son. He's six.
Bookseller: How about this one - it's about-
Customer: Yeah, whatever, I'll take it.

Jen Campbell

#14. CUSTOMER: I'm always on night shift at work.
BOOKSELLER (jokingly): Is that why you're buying so many vampire novels?
CUSTOMER (seriously): You can never be too prepared.

Jen Campbell

#15. Often it's not we who shape words, but the words we use that shape us." "You're a funny bookseller, you

Nina George

#16. Sometimes the truth is so bizarre and mind bending that it must be presented as fiction to be accepted.
George Saunders
The Bookseller

C. Robert Cales

#17. Bezos ultimately concluded that if Amazon was to continue to thrive as a bookseller in a new digital age, it must own the e-book business in the same way that Apple controlled the music business. "It is far better to cannibalize yourself than have someone else do it," said Diego Piacentini

Brad Stone

#18. We each take up one virtual space per title ... Virtual shelf life is forever. In a bookstore, you have anywhere from a few weeks to a few months to sell your title, and then it gets returned. This is a big waste of money, and no incentive at all for the bookseller to move the book.

J.A. Konrath

#19. CUSTOMER (holding up a copy of a Harry Potter book): This doesn't have anything weird in it ... does it? BOOKSELLER: You mean, like, werewolves? CUSTOMER: No (whispers) - gays. BOOKSELLER: ... right.

Jen Campbell

#20. I turned to discover the faint smile of the bookseller's
niece. Her voice was pure crystal, transparent and so fragile I feared that her words would break if I interrupted them.

Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#21. That's your truck parked up by the factory isn't it?" Magnus pointed. "It's awfully butch for a bookseller.

Cassandra Clare

#22. I love Stephen King as much as any red rum drinking American, but I resent the fact that I, the bookseller, am his bitch.

Caroline Kepnes

#23. It's the story of a bookseller who finds a handbag in the street one day, takes it home with him, empties out its contents and decides to look for the woman who owns it. He succeeds but when he finds her, he runs off like an idiot.

Antoine Laurain

#24. CUSTOMER: I'd like to buy this audiobook.
BOOKSELLER: Great.
CUSTOMER: Only, I don't really like this narrator.
BOOKSELLER: Oh.
CUSTOMER: Do you have a selection of narrators to choose from? Ideally, I'd like Benedict Cumberbatch

Jen Campbell

#25. CUSTOMER:Will you be open so I can buy the new Harry Potter book?
BOOKSELLER: Yep, we're having a midnight opening.
CUSTOMER: Great! What time?

Jen Campbell

#26. A man's bookseller should keep his confidence, like his physician. What can become of a world where every man knows what another man reads? Why, sir, books would become like quacks' potions, with every mountebank in the newspapers claiming one volume's superiority over another.

Philip Kerr

#27. The bookseller said it's in two parts, and this is the first. I thought that next year, if we keep saving, we can get the second -

Anthony Doerr

#28. The bookseller could not imagine what might be more practical than a book,

Nina George

#29. Borders had lousy management and made bad corporate decisions, so its fate is less like a terrible accident than a slow-motion slide into a ditch, but it's hard to be happy about a bookseller's demise.

Susan Orlean

#30. CUSTOMER: What kind of bookshop is this?
BOOKSELLER: We're an antiquarian bookshop.
CUSTOMER: Oh, so you sell books about fish.

Jen Campbell

#31. The chambermaid believed in courtly love. A book's physical self was sacrosanct to her, its form inseparable from its content; her duty as a lover was Platonic adoration, a noble but doomed attempt to conserve forever the state of perfect chastity in which it had left the bookseller.

Anne Fadiman

#32. You cannot invent an algorithm that is as good at recommending books as a good bookseller.

John Green

#33. Lily exited the dark chamber of the bookseller's store clutching a small book in her grubby hands, content with her purchase. Her voice was hoarse from selling trinkets all

Patty Apostolides

#34. I wanted to be a librarian from a very young age. Some of my earliest memories are being taken to the local library. I ended up working as a bookseller. Becoming a writer was the logical offshoot of being a reader.

Michael Scott

#35. The bookseller read Catherine like a novel. She let him leaf through her and look through her story.

Nina George

#36. Take heart, Maya. As a bookseller, I assure you that prizewinning can be somewhat important for sales but rarely matters much in terms of quality.

Gabrielle Zevin

#37. CUSTOMER: You know how they say that if you gave a thousand monkeys typewriters, then they'd eventually churn out really good writing? BOOKSELLER: ... yes. CUSTOMER: Well, do you have any books by those monkeys? BOOKSELLER: ...

Jen Campbell

#38. John had said McKindless would be revealed through his library, but John was a bookseller; he formed his opinion of everyone through their books.

Louise Welsh

#39. Overall, I'd say I was an awesome bookseller, but probably not the best book shelver. I loved recommending books and helping people find books.

Julie Kagawa

#40. I am a writer (and one day I'll be an author). For a long time I was a bookseller (who wrote) or a TV producer (who wrote), but for the last decade or so, its been "writer."

Michael Scott

#41. I had decided to become a bookseller because I loved good books. I assumed there must be many others who shared a love for reading and that I could minister to their needs. I thought of this as a calling.

Stuart Brent

#42. Writing blurbs for books means you have to read the book, and it cuts into the business of bookselling. So every time I get a blurb from a bookseller, I try to write a thank you note.

Gabrielle Zevin

#43. There's something kind of heroic about being a bookseller.

Gabrielle Zevin

#44. I have been told by an eminent bookseller, that in no branch of his business , after tracts of popular devotion, were so many books as those on the law exported to the Plantations .

Edmund Burke

#45. CUSTOMER: Is your mother around ?
BOOKSELLER: ... I run this bookshop.
CUSTOMER: Oh. Sorry.

Jen Campbell

#46. The probability of finding a particular book increases in relation to the clarity of the store's focus, the diligence and shrewdness of the bookseller, and the size of the business.

Gabriel Zaid

#47. So, the moral of that story, other than never underestimate an independent bookseller, was that the Continental Army and its commander in chief had a soft spot for Chief Artillery Officer Henry Knox.

Sarah Vowell

#48. Bookseller Praise for Die For Me: 'A blend of hard-edged police

Karen Rose

#49. When I first encountered the 'Sigma Force' novels - long before I became friends with Jim Rollins - a bookseller told me that these stories were about 'geeks with guns.' While not entirely accurate, that's pretty close to the mark, and that really speaks to me.

Jonathan Maberry

#50. The beauty of being a bookseller is that you don't have to be a literary critic: all you have to do to books is enjoy them.

Christopher Morley

#51. To say nothing means to give one's consent.

Asne Seierstad

#52. A remarkable number of the memoirs of booksellers are basically anecdote delivery devices.

Travis McDade