Walter Benjamin Quotes

Do you know what they call people who hoard books? Smart.

As a rule people don't collect books; they let books collect themselves.

I collect books - a lot of books.

My wife calls me the Imelda Marcos of books. As soon as a book enters our home it is guaranteed a permanent place in our lives. Because I have never been able to part with even one, they have gradually accumulated like sediment.

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 buy way too many books.

I buy thousands of books a year.

I spend a frightening amount of money on books.

I'm one of those freaky people that actually reads books.

I wanted to live among books.

Of course anyone who truly loves books buys more of them than he or she can hope to read in one fleeting lifetime. A good book, resting unopened in its slot on a shelf, full of majestic potentiality, is the most comforting sort of intellectual wallpaper.

I must have books everywhere. They're the soul of a room-they reveal the taste, the interests, and the secrets of whoever lives there.

Have you really read all those books in your room?” Alaska laughing- “Oh God no. I’ve maybe read a third of ‘em. But I’m going to read them all. I call it my Life’s Library. Every summer since I was little, I’ve gone to garage sales and bought all the books that looked interesting. So I always have something to read.

Professors of literature collect books the way a ship collects barnacles, without seeming effort.

She is a real bookworm. I think she lives on print. Her whole house is full of books - looks as if she likes them better than human company.

If you have enough book space, I don't want to talk to you.

A bibliophile of little means is likely to suffer often. Books don't slip from his hands but fly past him through the air, high as birds, high as prices.

I always have several books on the go at any one moment, so it's no good you asking 'What's on the bedside table at the moment, Emma?' because often I can't even see the table!

I'm the farthest thing from a bibliophile. I purge my collection regularly: If I haven't read a book in a couple of years, I try to give it to someone who will.

It sounds like a brag but I've got a separate room in my flat just for unread books; I don't let my read books touch my unread books.

Book lovers are thought by unbookish people to be gentle and unworldly, and perhaps a few of them are so. But there are others who will lie and scheme and steal to get books as wildly and unconscionably as the dope-taker in pursuit of his drug. They may not want the books to read immediately, or at all; they want them to possess, to range on their shelves, to have at command. They want books as a Turk is thought to want concubines - not to be hastily deflowered, but to be kept at their master's call, and enjoyed more often in thought than in reality.

Books, books, books. It was not that I read so much. I read and re-read the same ones. But all of them were necessary to me. Their presence, their smell, the letters of their titles, and the texture of their leather bindings.

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

I have always been reconciled to the fact that I was born a bibliomaniac, never have I sought a cure, and my dearest friends have been drawn from those likewise suffering from book madness.

I used to be very disciplined about only buying three books ahead of what I was reading, but my husband corrupted me, and now I'm dozens ahead of myself!