Words worth keeping

A book, too, can be a star, a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe.

Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.

In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.

She is too fond of books, and it has turned her brain.

Fiction is the truth inside the lie.

Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.

The road to hell is paved with adverbs.

The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them -- words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that, isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear.

Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.

What I say is, a town isn’t a town without a bookstore. It may call itself a town, but unless it’s got a bookstore, it knows it’s not foolin’ a soul.

Books are the mirrors of the soul.

Unbeing dead isn't being alive.

Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home.

I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.

It's like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.