We read for all sorts of reasons: To expand our horizons, to learn new things, to walk a mile in someone else's shoes (and, hey, sometimes even to pass a few minutes at the doctor's office). And while you already know why you love to read, it can be inspiring to discover why other people love to read—especially when those other people include some of the greatest authors in history. Herein, we've rounded up some of the best quotes about books by all of your favorite writers and authors. Whether you're looking for poetic musings from the likes of John Green or pithy quips from Jane Austen, these quotes about books will inspire you to hit your local library in search of your next read.
“Books are mirrors: you only see in them what you already have inside you.”
–Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind
“Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book.”
―John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.”
―Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
“Books don’t change people; paragraphs do, sometimes even sentences.”
―John Piper, A Godward Life
“The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.”
–Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
“It is better to know one book intimately than a hundred superficially.”
―Donna Tartt, The Secret History
“Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them.”
―Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays: Second Series
“Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”
―Neil Gaiman, Coraline
“Let us remember: One book, one pen, one child, and one teacher can change the world.”
―Malala Yousafzai, in a commencement speech
“A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading.”
―William Styron, Conversations with William Styron
“The best moments in reading are when you come across something—a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things—which you had thought special and particular to you. Now here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out and taken yours.”
―Alan Bennett, The History Boys
“The test of literature is, I suppose whether we ourselves live more intensely for the reading of it."
―Elizabeth Drew, The Modern Novel
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 are a uniquely portable magic.”
―Stephen King, On Writing
“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”
―Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood
“Without words, without writing and without books there would be no history, there could be no concept of humanity.”
―Hermann Hesse, My Belief
“The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.”
–Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without A Country
“That’s the thing about books. They let you travel without moving your feet.”
—Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake
“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.”
–George R.R. Martin, A Dance With Dragons
“It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.”
–James Baldwin, as quoted in LIFE
“You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”
–Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
“Maybe this is why we read, and why in moments of darkness we return to books: to find words for what we already know.”
―Alberto Manguel, A Reading Diary
“Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them.”
―Lemony Snicket, Horseradish
"To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life."
―W. Somerset Maugham, Books and You
“One glance at a book and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for 1,000 years. To read is to voyage through time.”
―Carl Sagan, Cosmos
“What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though.”
―J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
“Only the very weak-minded refuse to be influenced by literature and poetry.”
―Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Angel
“A good book is a good friend. It will talk to you when you want it to talk, and it will keep still when you want it to keep still–and there are not many friends who know enough for that.”
—Lyman Abbott, New Outlook
“Books are my friends, my companions. They make me laugh and cry and find meaning in life.”
―Christopher Paolini, Eragon
“Reading is that fruitful miracle of a communication in the midst of solitude.”
―Marcel Proust, On Reading
“A house without books is like a room without windows.”
―Horace Mann, Life and Works of Horace Mann
“We lose ourselves in what we read, only to return to ourselves, transformed and part of a more expansive world.”
―Judith Butler, in a commencement speech
“I like libraries. It makes me feel comfortable and secure to have walls of words, beautiful and wise, all around me. I always feel better when I can see that there is something to hold back the shadows.”
―Roger Zelazny, Nine Princes in Amber
“That's what I love about reading: one tiny thing will interest you in a book, and that tiny thing will lead you to another book, and another bit there will lead you onto a third book. It's geometrically progressive - all with no end in sight, and for no other reason than sheer enjoyment.”
―Mary Ann Shaffer, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
“Just the knowledge that a good book is awaiting one at the end of a long day makes that day happier. ”
―Kathleen Thompson Norris, Hands Full of Living
“Books are the most wonderful friends in the world. When you meet them and pick them up, they are always ready to give you a few ideas. When you put them down, they never get mad; when you take them up again, they seem to enrich you all the more.”
―Fulton J. Sheen, Life Is Worth Living
“It was good to walk into a library again; it smelled like home.”
―Elizabeth Kostova, The Historian
“A book is a device to ignite the imagination.”
―Alan Bennett, The Uncommon Reader
“Books, they offer one hope—that a whole universe might open up from between the covers, and falling into that universe, one is saved.”
―Anne Rice, Blackwood Farm
“The problem with books is that they end.”
―Caroline Kepnes, You
