F. Scott Fitzgerald Quotes

Madam Pince, our librarian, tells me that it is 'pawed about, dribbled on, and generally maltreated' nearly everyday - a high compliment for any book.

He who destroys a good book kills reason itself.

I think I write or publish as much as I do because I can bear being without a book to work on. But routinely when I finish a book, I think, "What will I do? Where will I get an idea?" And a kind of low-level panic sets in. And then eventually something happens. I don't know. If I knew how it happened I would repeat the process, but I don't know - something just occurs to me.

Don't leave me here alone! It's your Sam calling. Don't go where I can't follow! Wake up, Mr. Frodo!

Only those books come down which deserve to last . All the gilt edges, vellum and morocco, all the presentation copies to all the libraries will not preserve a book in circulation beyond its intrinsic date.

Fear keepes and looks to the vineyard, and not the owner.

I hear them mumblin, I hear the cacklin I got em scared, shook, panickin

Real bibliophiles do not put their books on shelves for people to look at or handle. They have no desire to show off their darlings, or to amaze people with their possessions. They keep their prized books hidden away in a secret spot to which they resort stealthily, like a Caliph visiting his harem, or a church elder sneaking into a bar. To be a book collector is to combine the worst characteristics of a dope-fiend with those of a miser.

I don't really collect the mementos. I do steal books off of sets. If there's a library on the set, you can bet that I'll steal away with a book or two.

The dearer a book was to my heart, the more battered and bruised it became.

Please, no matter how we advance technologically, please don't abandon the book. There is nothing in our material world more beautiful than the book.

I need it! I need it! It's a royal heirloom!" "Adrian?" "What are you doing here?" "Looking for you. Come on, we need to go. I'll drive you home." "No, I can't. Not until we get it. He stole it!

She just dropped it and ran!!

I consider as lovers of books not those who keep their books hidden in their store-chests and never handle them, but those who, by nightly as well as daily use thumb them, batter them, wear them out, who fill out all the margins with annotations of many kinds, and who prefer the marks of a fault they have erased to a neat copy full of faults.

Great collections of books are subject to certain accidents besides the damp, the worms, and the rats; one not less common is that of the borrowers, not to say a word of the purloiners

I mean your borrowers of books - those mutilators of collections, spoilers of the symmetry of shelves, and creators of odd volumes.

I do things like get in a taxi and say, "The library, and step on it.

I think [nancy Reagan] was a very controlled and controlling person, because she was so scared all the time and because she had such an inner sense of panic.

All books are in safe hands with me. They're my children, my inky children, and I look after them well. I keep the sunlight away from their pages, I dust and protect them from hungry hookworms and grubby human fingers.

Then he got more books. He saved all the books.

Child! do not throw this book about Refrain from the unholy pleasure Of cutting all the pictures out! Preserve it as your chiefest treasure.

Do we write books so that they shall merely be read? Don't we also write them for employment in the household? For one that is read from start to finish, thousands are leafed through, other thousands lie motionless, others are jammed against mouseholes, thrown at rats, others are stood on, sat on, drummed on, have gingerbread baked on them or are used to light pipes.

That's my anxiety dream. I go to the library and all the books on my subject are out.

I asked him what, if anything, got him down about teaching. He said he didn't think that anything about it got him exactly down, but there was one thing, he thought, that frightened him: reading the pencilled notations in the margins of books in the college library.