Jacob Weisberg Quotes

I've been a book collector since I was young, since I was a kid.

I love rare books. Not that I own a lot of them, mind you. You couldn't quite call me a rare-book collector. But I did once work in a rare-books library, and I wrote a novel about a rare book.

I like Victorian children's novels extremely a lot. If I would say I collect anything, that's what I'll hunt for now and again at old book stores.

Book collectors are thrill-seekers. It is a vegetarian hunt to be sure, without much exertion or risk, but the endorphin rush of the chase and the adrenaline high of the capture are much the same with first editions as I imagine they must be in the pursuit of 10-point stags, largemouth bass, or 20-foot waves at Maverick's.

People sometimes think that I bring home all these old books because I'm addicted, that I'm no better than a hoarder with a houseful of crumbling newspapers.

An erratum is a correction inserted into a book after publication. It's a nice thing to collect because you can't go after them, you just come upon them. In 25 years I've only found about 12.

I love photography and first editions. I have that in my genes. My father was an archivist.

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

I don't care whether a book is a first edition or not. I'm not a bibliophile in that word's natural sense.

I love going to tag sales, to auctions.

I collect books, primarily first-edition 20th-century fiction.

My specialty as a collector is books that almost have value. When I love a book, I don't buy the first edition, because those have become incredibly expensive. But I might buy a beat-up copy of the second edition, third printing, which looks almost exactly the same as the first edition except that a couple of typos have been fixed.

I am something of an aficionado of thrift stores. In my youth, I regularly searched their shelves for old books.

I've always spent money on books. I've always enjoyed handling books - the size, the format. I feel very strongly about original ephemera.

I like to frequent antiques shops and flea markets like the Rose Bowl in Pasadena.

I like digging around. I'm a real magpie. I used to raid the old music shops in the early '50s in Paris and Brussels. You could pick up some incredible and often valuable music for almost nothing back then.

At consignment shops, I can collect things reasonably, and it's joyful. My dining room table was $75, and I'm so proud. It's beautiful.

Mr. Pewter led them through to a library, filled with thousands of antiquarian books. 'Impressive, eh?' 'Very,' said Jack. 'How did you amass all these?' 'Well,' said Pewter, 'You know the person who always borrows books and never gives them back?' 'Yes...?' 'I'm that person.

I quite like antiques. I like things that are old and the history they bring with them. I would rather fly to Morocco on an $800 ticket and buy a chair for $300 than spend $1,100 on one at Pottery Barn.

I don't like precious things; I don't spend thousands of dollars on jewellery for myself. I like going into a junk store and finding something for five dollars. That's my style.

The right path to health-care reform is the market path (no subsidies, no monopolies such as drug patents, no licensure, no anything) that tends toward universal distribution at very low prices and relentless improvement in service.

It was at a big swap meet that I discovered you could buy other people's old discarded family photos and vacation pictures for pretty cheap - a quarter, 50 cents, five bucks for a really nice one.

Capra's great passion was Dickens. As soon as he had some money, he bought some of the rarest and most extraordinary editions of Dickens's work, and he was very proud of his collection.

I like finding things in locations where I've worked and things from down South and things from flea markets or even the sidewalks.

Thrift shopping is all about going into the thrift shop and having no expectation of what you might find.