John Crowley Quotes

There is no denying the aesthetics of a well-made, well-loved book.

I love the process of cracking the spine for the first time and slowly sinking into a book. That will soon seem old-fashioned, I'm sure, like the time of illuminated manuscripts.

I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book! -- When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.

I don't own a Kindle, no. I love books, they are beautiful objects.

I have to admit that I am really partial to the look and feel of a book. I have been that way my entire life. I like the weight, look, and feel of a book. I enjoy turning the pages, and frequently scan the spines of my many books on the wall, each title a reminder of the stored information and creative thoughts contained therein.

I like to smell a book before I start it. I fold over the pages, write comments in the margins, leave it on the bed next to my pillow when I fall asleep.

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

My fingers positively itched to drift at length along their spines, to arrive at one whose lure I could not pass, to pluck it down, to inch it open, then to close my eyes and inhale the soul-sparking scent of old and literate dust.

And how could anyone consent to give up the smell of open books, old or new?

Books woke me up. Books are my favorite man-made objects. I fetishize their design, smell, feel. And that they can contain such burning, complex communications is a miracle to me.

Of all things I liked books best.

From the time I began to read, as a child, I loved to feel their heft in my hand and the warm spot caused by their intimate weight in my lap; I loved the crisp whisper of a page turning, the musky odor of old paper and the sharp inky whiff of new pages. Leather bindings sent me into ecstasy. I even loved to gaze at a closed book and daydream about the possibilities inside.

I even love the smell of books.

There is no scent so pleasant to my nostrils as that faint, subtle reek which comes from an ancient book.

I took delight in hurling books across the room if I knew I would not be reading the second chapter. Then I’d go and pick them up again, because they are books, after all, and we are not savages.

A book has got to smell. You have to hold it in your hands and pray to it.

Books look handsome and it's a real singular experience getting to go to a bookstore. I don't want to not do that.

It's important to read a book, but also to hold the book, to smell the book... it's perfume, it's incense, it's the dust of Egypt.

Bread of flour is good; but there is bread, sweet as honey, if we would eat it, in a good book.

But by accident, not by cunning calculation, books, because of their weight and texture, and because of their sweetly token resistance to manipulation, involve our hands and eyes, and then our minds and souls, in a spiritual adventure I would be very sorry for my grandchildren not to know about.

To a bibliophile, there is but one thing better than a box of new books, and that is a box of old ones.

There's nothing wrong with reading a book you love over and over.

I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading!

Book-love, I say again, lasts throughout life, it never flags or fails, but, like Beauty itself, is a joy forever.

In the highest civilization the book is still the highest delight.