Top 100 Quotes About Used Books
#1. Publishers, naturally, loathe used books and have developed strategies to depress the secondhand market. They bring out new, even more expensive editions of popular textbooks every three to four years, in a classic cycle of planned obsolescence.
James Surowiecki
#2. I'm far more often annoyed than delighted by previous readers' marks in used books, so I assume that my notations will be equally annoying to future readers, and avoid making them.
J. Robert Lennon
#3. Used books, as if someone else has had the best of them and you get the sere husk, or the lees, as if a book isn't the one thing, the one product, that is forever new. There's no such thing as a used book. Or there's no such thing as a book if it's not being used.
Deborah Meyler
#4. Maybe I'll open a bookstore," he smiled. "New and used books
so everyone has a chance to see the world through the pages of a story.
Karen Kingsbury
#5. He used books the same way he used alcohol: to pretend that he was not here, and if he was here, that he was happy for a change.
Joe Queenan
#6. Used books are the sluts of the literary world. Passed around from person to person, spreading their pages for anyone, getting cheaper and cheaper until eventually they end up in prison.
Stephen Colbert
#7. I hate to think of you stuck here all day every day, doing nothing with that brilliant brain of yours."
"It never was brilliant. Anyway, who keeps these books to see who's used themselves wisely and who's wasted?
Tessa Hadley
#8. It's true, too, that I'm tired of using books as political bullets and grenades. Books are too precious and wonderful to be used for long in such a fashion.
Yann Martel
#9. The expression Jake saw on all the faces, oldest to youngest, was the same: pure joy. Not just that, he thought, and remembered a phrase his English teacher had used about how some books make us feel: the ecstasy of perfect recognition.
Stephen King
#10. I used to think, 'I'm going to write.' I knew that from quite early on, but I also thought, 'Maybe I'll be an explorer or a spy,' and it all came from books.
Lisa Tuttle
#11. He doesn't understand that books don't get used up. I've tried to explain that they aren't like clothes or furniture - that we keep them because we might want to read them again. And because they remind us of how we felt when we read them.
Paula Marantz Cohen
#12. I have learned one lesson as a writer ... keep writing and never throw any notes away. Written parts that can't be used today ... may be used for other books tomorrow.
Timothy Pina
#13. I used to tell my writing students that they must write the books they wished they could come upon - because then the books they hungered and thirsted for would exist.
Anne Lamott
#14. I paused, folding the top corner of the page to keep my place. My dad used to wince every time he saw me do that, but I think books should be loved to pieces. They should be as worn and soft as flannel."
"Chapter 2 Christabel, page 24
Alyxandra Harvey
#15. I used to write my books at night when I was a freelancer with no children. I used to really work in huge spurts - I could turn around a revision in two weeks, I used to be able to write 10,000 words a day. It's like, 'Wow, what happened to that?' That's just gone.
Melissa De La Cruz
#16. We used to root for the Indians against the cavalry, because we didn't think it was fair in the history books that when the cavalry won it was a great victory, and when the Indians won it was a massacre.
Dick Gregory
#17. The homes I like the best are totally occupied, busy, and useful, whether it's a tiny little house or a great big one. Rarely do you find a great big house that's used in a good way. So I prefer smaller spaces that are full of books, full of things that people are doing.
Martha Stewart
#18. I had a briefcase at one point, but it was a kind of 1980s New Wave briefcase. It was made of some kind of cardboard and it had metal hinges. It was kind of faux industrial looking, and I used to carry my books in it rather than a backpack. I didn't want to have normal student accoutrements.
Jeffrey Eugenides
#19. Libraries have certainly come a long way. The days of card pockets inside the backsleeves of books seemed like a faded dream. As a kid, I used to love all those withdrawal date stamps.
Haruki Murakami
#20. I'm not intelligent. I'm not arrogant. I'm just like the people who read my books. I used to have a jazz club, and I made the cocktails and I made the sandwiches. I didn't want to become a writer - it just happened.
Haruki Murakami
#21. What I want is much more complicated. I want somebody I can talk to about books, who would be my friend, and why couldn't we have sex as well if we wanted to? (And used contraception.)
Jo Walton
#22. When I was 13 or 14, my mother used to gift me books that I was dying to read. Those are my most memorable birthday gifts.
Kajol
#23. Of all the things that make for happiness, the love of books comes first. No matter how the world may have used us, sure solace lies there.
Myrtle Reed
#24. Schools still operate as if all knowledge is contained in books, and as if the salient points in books must be stored in each human brain - to be used when needed. The political and financial powers controlling schools decide what these salient points are.
Sugata Mitra
#25. Friends should be like books, easy to find when you need them, but seldom used.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#26. I was a member of Corstorphine Library in Edinburgh, and every Friday night, my parents took me there to borrow books. I also used to spend nearly all my pocket money on books.
Philip Kerr
#27. Teaching was never a vocation for me. Certainly I never aspired to teach people how to live. I was what used to be called a scholar. I wrote books about dead people. That was where my heart was. I taught only to make a living.
J.M. Coetzee
#28. When I was a teenager, I used to love the Bronte books, 'Wuthering Heights' and 'Jane Eyre.' In those books, the women do usually manage to heal the men, but in life, I've found it's often the woman gets wounded. Instead of healing a man, she gets affected by his cruelty.
Jocelyn Moorhouse
#29. I used to advise writers to just write their books and it will find a home, and suddenly that didn't seem as certain. I figured it was time to act. I considered a small press through RADAR, my literary non-profit.
Michelle Tea
#30. My father died when I was quite small, so my uncle used to buy me books and read them to me.
Jenny Nimmo
#31. As a boy, I used to marvel that the letters in a closed book did not get scrambled and lost overnight.
Jose Luis Borges
#32. I preferred to hang out with the dead, dying, or desperate books - used we call them, in a way that we'd never call a person, unless we meant it cruelly
David Levithan
#33. Thomas Mann used to write education novels and now you can write an education memoir, and there are all these memoirs coming out now about people's relationships with books. Like anything else, these can be good or bad. The genre doesn't make it good or bad, it's the execution.
Marco Roth
#34. It doesn't matter how long we've used something; all that matters is how awesome the thing replacing it is. MP3s and automobiles happen to be really, really awesome, whereas ebooks - at least so far - are fairly limited in their awesomeness.
John Green
#35. ...I used to think if you read enough books you'd automatically know how to do everything the right way. But reading and doing are not the same at all.
Judy Blume
#36. The tree I had in the garden as a child, my beech tree, I used to climb up there and spend hours. I took my homework up there, my books, I went up there if I was sad, and it just felt very good to be up there among the green leaves and the birds and the sky.
Jane Goodall
#37. I have two bookcases that used to be filled with cookbooks, but now it's mostly books about politics and government. I might just give this all up and run for office.
Graham Elliot
#38. Oh, books, what books they used to know, Those children living long ago! So please, oh please, we beg, we pray, Go throw your TV set away, And in its place you can install A lovely bookshelf on the wall.
Roald Dahl
#39. I don't like the idea of a book being a test or being used for a test. The way - in my opinion - to make good readers is to let kids choose their own books and not test them.
Avi
#40. The books - the generous friends who met me without suspicion - the merciful masters who never used me ill!
Wilkie Collins
#41. My mother used to take my brother and me to get any books we wanted, but they were second hand books published in the '30s and '40s. I liked scary books.
Alejandro Amenabar
#42. What are these things that this houses, Eva?" Rovender picked up a crumbling tome. He handed it to her.
"These are books," Eva said as the yellowed bits of paper flaked away in her hands to rest on the floor. "It's what humans used to put all of their writing in long ago.
Tony DiTerlizzi
#43. Books are the best of things if well used; if abused, among the worst. They are good for nothing but to inspire. I had better never see a book than be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#44. I've always loved comic books. As a kid, I used to read cowboy stories and historical comics about other worlds, unknown places that would take me out of myself and which helped to develop my imagination.
James Herbert
#45. 'Just looking at pictures' used to be considered cheating. No longer. The graphic novel is booming. Comics, heavily illustrated texts, books with no words are now accepted as reading.
Jon Scieszka
#46. ... if necessary, the books shall be divided as follows:
you get the odd, I get the even pages;
"the books" are understood to mean the ones we used to read aloud
together, when we would interrupt our reading for a kiss,
and would get back to the book after half an hour ...
Vera Pavlova
#47. When I look for self-help books for myself, I used to be scared that I was going to pick up a book that would depress me even more.
Vinny Guadagnino
#48. I used to read music books when I was 13. My mom was working at a library. She's a librarian. I would get my mom to check out any kind of books that had anything to do with the music industry. I read a lot about royalities, publishing, marketing, stuff like that.
Juicy J
#49. I'm still getting used to the idea that people out in the world are reading my books. Every time I get a 'fan letter,' I am thrilled. But when people tell me that they're from the south or western Kentucky, and they say, 'I know exactly what you mean!' That's awesome.
Molly Harper
#50. Does one get faith by mere studying of books? Too much reading creates confusion. The Master used to say that one should learn from the scriptures that God alone is real and the world illusory.
Sarada Devi
#51. I've always loved reading fantasy. I used to pick out all the books in the library that had the little unicorn sticker on the side to show that they were fantasy.
Maggie Stiefvater
#52. Mistresses are like books; if you pore upon them too much, they doze you and make you unfit for company; but if used discreetly, you are the fitter for conversation by em.
William Wycherley
#53. I used to joke that she'd married me for my books and my knowledge of the field, and she used to laugh and shake her head.
Jonathan Aycliffe
#54. A lot of talent, a lot of the currency that movies used to have, has spilled over into TV. People talk about TV the way they used to talk about movies and, as much as I hate to say it, the way they used to talk about books.
Matthew Specktor
#55. The only words that ever satisfied me as describing nature are the terms used in fairy books, charm, spell, enchantment; they express the arbitrariness of the fact and its mystery.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
#56. All I wanted to do was go back inside to the library and read a book.I used to spend all my time reading books, or watching television. It was safe. Nobody ever was hurt or teased or looked stupid while reading books or watching television.
Kathryn Magendie
#57. When I was a kid, I used to send away for those ventriloquist kits on the back of comic books.
Alan King
#58. Writers are so used to books being optioned and then the movie never happens.
David Mitchell
#59. My mom used to tell me, 'If you read 50 books, I'll get you a motorbike.'
Orlando Bloom
#60. My father and he had cemented (the verb is excessive) one of those English friendships which begin by avoiding intimacies and eventually eliminate speech altogether. They used to exchange books and periodicals; they would beat one another at chess, without saying a word.
Jorge Luis Borges
#61. I'll accompany you too, fair lady," said Reven. "I would fain meet your grandmother."
"You would what?" said Elfwyn.
"He means he'd like to," said Jinx. Some of the books in Simon's house used old-fashioned words like that.
Sage Blackwood
#62. I used to think there was a secret when it came to success, until I read a shit load of books and posts and realized the secret is the millionaires are getting rich off idiots like me who believe there truly is a secret.
James Jean-Pierre
#63. Oh, sweet little huggles," Mama said. "Remember what Pampy used to say when he wanted to be brave?
Lenora Riegel
#64. (mother) She used to tell me to get my nose out of my book and go get some fresh air.
Emily Giffin
#65. Comic books are what novels used to be - an accessible, vernacular form with mass appeal - and if the highbrows are right, they're a form perfectly suited to our dumbed-down culture and collective attention deficit.
Charles McGrath
#66. I'm used to comic books being reimagined, different takes on some of our beloved superheroes.
Len Wiseman
#67. Learning locked in mildewed books is of little use to anyone and therefore of no value unless it can be used.
L. Ron Hubbard
#68. I've been sifting through the layers
of dusty books and faded papers.
They tell a story I used to know;
one that happened so long ago.
Kate Wolf
#69. I'm totally into new age and self-help books. I used to work in a bookstore and that's the section they gave me, and I got way into it. I just loved the power of positive thinking, letting yourself go.
Jason Mraz
#70. Think of Florence, Paris, London, New York. Nobody visiting them for the first time is a stranger because he's already visited them in paintings, novels, history books and films. But if a city hasn't been used by an artist, not even the inhabitants live there imaginatively.
Alasdair Gray
#71. I used to feel defensive when people would say, 'Yes, but your books have happy endings', as if that made them worthless, or unrealistic. Some people do get happy endings, even if it's only for a while. I would rather never be published again than write a downbeat ending.
Marian Keyes
#72. I'm a books person. Yes, I have a Kindle. I used it for an hour and a half and put it in the closet.
Andrew Wylie
#73. I understood we used to be close. But they were like books i'd read two summer ago; I knew I'd liked them, but I couldn't tell you now what they'd been about.
Sara Shepard
#74. I vividly remember my first 'Superman' comic, which my granddad bought me when I was about 7. From that point on, all I wanted to do is draw comics. And specifically, superhero and science fiction comics. Basically I used to copy comic books, and draw my own comics on scrap paper.
Dave Gibbons
#75. We didn't have much money. My whole extended family used to help us, and buy us books and food. It was hard, and there were things I didn't want to talk about. But at the end I was a happy girl.
Maria Das Gracas Silva Foster
#76. As a kid, I used to go to the library and take out all the art books.
Cheech Marin
#77. My parents would read those books to me as well but they used to make me starving when I was a kid because they were always eating ham sandwiches with the crusts off and drinking ginger beer.
Mike Myers
#78. It was also a room full of books and made of books. There was no actual furniture; this is to say, the desk and chairs were shaped out of books. It looked as though many of them were frequently referred to, because they lay open with other books used as bookmarks.
Terry Pratchett
#79. Nothing ... They're from nothing,' he said. 'They came in the book ... I found the book and inside were these flowers ... They were in the book when I bought it ... I bought it used ... Because they meant something.
'To someone else.'
'To someone.
Aimee Bender
#80. When my sister and I were very young, my father used to tell us fairy stories that he'd made up. My mother was always telling him that he should write them down, but he would say, 'Well, they've all been done before. There are so many blooming books in the world - why should I write another one?'
Nicolas Roeg
#81. I loved words that filled your mouth, and sounded as if you were used to books.
Gene Stratton-Porter
#82. As a youngster, I used to try to pick up any bits of wisdom about the guitar I could. It's not like now where you have books and books about every aspect of anything. Any little pearl of wisdom was welcome back then.
Johnny Marr
#83. People apparently only read mystery stories of any length. With mysteries, the longer the better, and people will read any damn thing. But the indulgent, 800-page books that were written a hundred years ago are just not going to be written anymore, and people need to get used to that.
Cormac McCarthy
#85. Slightly embarrassing admission: Even when I was a kid, I used to have these little spy books, and I would, like, see what everybody was doing in my neighborhood and log it down.
Heather Brooke
#86. Like her mother Lauren used to say, books were solid proof that ordinary people were capable of creating magic.
Melissa Hill
#87. some could name things in their environment, others could count or say the alphabet, still others could recite whole books, word for word, from memory. However, they rarely used their speech to communicate with others. The
Sally Ozonoff
#88. I see this land flowing with books, Father. Widespread literacy. Books everywhere, as common as they used to be in circulation before the Crossing, affordable even for the poor.
Erika Johansen
#89. There are books all around me ... I don't read as much as I used to, but I always have a book or two going.
Donald Hall
#90. I think that the online world has actually brought books back. People are reading because they're reading the damn screen. That's more reading than people used to do.
Bill Murray
#91. I used to be very fascinated by Victorian stuff, and my best-known books, the 'Mortal Engines' series, have a sort of retro, Victorian vibe, despite being set in the far future.
Philip Reeve
#92. Black is associated with power because all vibrational energies of all colors are drawn into one place, ready to be used. Wear black when you feel the need to draw energy to yourself for reviving your strength, energy, and will.
Tae Yun Kim
#93. I had to learn chord shapes. I bought books with chord charts. I used to listen to all kinds of pop music.
Mick Taylor
#94. I've written a lot of books in my time, and to write a book about Joe McCarthy and have some of the major media paying attention, I'm not used to that.
M. Stanton Evans
#95. There are often multiple sources for some famous statements by King; as a professional speaker and minister he used some significant phrases with only slight variation many times in his
essays, books, and his speeches to different audiences.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#96. The White House used to belong to the American people. At least that's what I learned from history books and from covering every president starting with John F. Kennedy.
Helen Thomas
#97. I don't think with any book you get used to people falling in love with the story. It's been incredible just to realize your books are being read. It's a pretty amazing feeling.
Jennifer Armentrout
#98. I spend a lot of time looking at rococo books. And almanacs used to be huge sellers - they were pretty much part of the fabric of life. I thought, this is bizarre, I'd love to buy a book like this, and there isn't one. So I thought, all right then, this could be fun. I'll write an almanac.
Ben Schott
#99. In the two books I wrote, even though they were written in a sort of Joycean gobbledegook, there's many knocks at religion and there is a play about a worker and a capitalist. I've been satirising the system since my childhood. I used to write magazines in school and hand them around.
John Lennon
#100. Look at comic books. It used to be something that only geeks were into. And now it's everywhere.
Eli Roth
