Judith Viorst Quotes

My criteria for what makes a book an official 'favorite,' is based almost entirely on how desperately I don't want the story to end.

Any writer who gives a reader a pleasurable experience is doing every other writer a favor because it will make the reader want to read other books. I am all for it.

A good book is always on tap; it may be decanted and drunk a hundred times, and it is still there for further imbibement.

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

Learning to decipher words had only added to the pleasures of holding spines and turning pages, measuring the journey to the end with a thumb-riffle, poring over frontispieces. Books! Opening with a crackle of old glue, releasing perfume; closing with a solid thump.

I do not know any reading more easy, more fascinating, more delightful than a catalogue.

So he lent her books. After all, one of life's best pleasures is reading a book of perfect beauty; more pleasurable still is rereading that book; most pleasurable of all is lending it to the person one loves: Now she is reading or has just read the scene with the mirrors; she who is so lovely is drinking in that loveliness I've drunk.

And as for me, thogh that I can but lyte, On bakes for to rede I me delyte, And to hem yeve I feyth and ful credence, And in myn herte have hem in reverence So hertely, that ther is game noon, That fro my bokes maketh me to goon, But hit be seldom, on the holyday; Save, certeynly, when that the month of May Is comen, and that I here the foules singe, And that the floures ginnen for to springe, Farwel my book and my devocion.

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

A book is really like a lover. It arranges itself in your life in a way that is beautiful. Even as a kid, my sister, who was the eldest, brought books home for me, and I think I spent more time sniffing and touching them than reading. I just remember the joy of the book, the beauty of the binding. The smelling of the interior. Happy.

Of all things I liked books best.

To encounter a fine book and have time to read it is a wonderful thing.

Oh! I am delighted with the book! I should like to spend my whole life in reading it.

I can't imagine a man really enjoying a book and reading it only once.

but for my own part, if a book is well written, I always find it too short.

Book lovers will understand me, and they will know too that part of the pleasure of a library lies in its very existence.

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.

Personally, I am a hedonistic reader; I have never read a book merely because it was ancient. I read books for the aesthetic emotions they offer me, and I ignore the commentaries and criticism.

The true felicity of a lover of books is the luxurious turning of page by page, the surrender, not meanly abject, but deliberate and cautious, with your wits about you, as you deliver yourself into the keeping of the book. This I call reading.

Some of the sweetest hours in life, in retrospect will be found to have been spent with books.

The pleasures of writing correspond exactly to the pleasures of reading

It can't be supposed," said Joe. "Tho' I'm oncommon fond of reading, too." Are you, Joe?" Oncommon. Give me," said Joe, "a good book, or a good newspaper, and sit me down afore a good fire, and I ask no better. Lord!" he continued, after rubbing his knees a little, "when you do come to a J and a O, and says you, 'Here, at last, is a J-O, Joe,' how interesting reading is!

How much sooner one tires of anything than of a book!

In the candle's flickering light, the library's thousands of books emerged from the shadows, and for a moment Nicholas could not help admiring them again. During free time he had almost never looked up from the pages he was reading, but now he saw the books anew, from without rather than from within, and was reminded of how beautiful they were simply as objects. The geometrical wonder of them all, each book on its own and all the books together, row upon row, the infinite patterns and possibilities they presented. They were truly lovely.

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.