Lynda Barry Quotes

The books that charmed us in youth recall the delight ever afterwards; we are hardly persuaded there are any like them, any deserving our equal affections.

I feel as if when you love a book it becomes a part of you whether you have it on your shelves or not.

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

I hate to lend a book I love...it never seems quite the same when it comes back to me.

Books can be passed around. They can be shared. A lot of people like seeing them in their houses. They are memories. People who don't understand books don't understand this. They learn from TV shows about organizing that you should get rid of the books that you aren't reading, but everyone who loves books believes the opposite. People who love books keep them around, like photos, to remind them of a great experience and so they can revisit and say, "Wow, this is a really great book."

I feel lucky that I read so many books as a kid because I know that no matter how much I appreciate a book now, and I can love a book very much, it's never going to be that childhood passion for a book. There's some element, something special about the way they're reading books and experiencing books that's finite.

Everything rational and sensible abandons me when I try to throw out photographs. Time and time again, I hold one over a wastebasket, and then find it impossible to release my fingers and let the picture drop and disappear.

I find myself very attached to the places I live, and moving is never easy for me.

The objects that we have known in better days are the main props that sustain the weight of our affections, and give us strength to await our future lot.

From Blue Valentine I kept my wedding ring. I actually kept it on for a while. After the shooting had stopped, I was still wearing it – I couldn’t quite take it off – and now I keep it above the kitchen sink where I do dishes, as a little memento.

He read the letter again, but could not take in any more meaning than he had done the first time and was reduced to staring at the handwriting itself. She had made her g's the same way he did : he searched through the letter for every one of them, and each felt like a friendly little wave glimpsed from behind a veil. The letter was an incredible treasure, proof that Lily Potter had lived, really lived, that her warm hand had once moved across this parchment, tracing ink into these letters, these words, words about him, Harry, her son.

It’s hard to throw away history. It was like you were throwing away a part of yourself.

For women live much more in the past...they attach themselves to places.

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.

A good book is an event in my life.

The only reason to buy a paper book any longer is to own it and cherish it and remember it and tell a story about it.

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 do hang on to things. I was so happy my father saved his army jacket. I grew up wearing that all through high school.

I very much love a physical book myself. I think people who have had this experience of also seeing a book come together, from sitting down and writing the first word, to holding the binding in your hand, we have a deeper sentimental attachment to it than others might.

When I take up a book I have read before, I know what to expect; the satisfaction is not lessened by being anticipated. I shake hands with, and look our old tried and valued friend in the face,--compare notes and chat the hour away.

I was raised among books, making invisible friends in pages that seemed cast from dust and whose smell I carry on my hands to this day.

Every house we have lived in, every building to which our hands have lent their work, belongs to us by virtue of love or of regret.

If you take a book with you on a journey," Mo had said when he put the first one in her box, "an odd thing happens: The book begins collecting your memories. And forever after you have only to open that book to be back where you first read it. It will all come into your mind with the very first words: the sights you saw in that place, what it smelled like, the ice cream you ate while you were reading it... yes, books are like flypaper—memories cling to the printed page better than anything else.

No matter how much we love a book, the experience of reading it isn't complete until we can give it to someone who will love it as much as we do

For one thing, I know every book of mine by its scent.