Book Collector Quotes

The book borrower...proves himself to be an inveterate collector of books not so much by the fervor with which he guards his borrowed treasures...as by his failure to read these books.

He loved a book because it was a book; he loved its odor, its form, its title. What he loved in a manuscript was its old illegible date, the bizarre and strange Gothic characters, the heavy gilding which loaded its drawings. It was its pages covered with dust — dust of which he breathed the sweet and tender perfume with delight.

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

I've been a book collector since I was young, since I was a kid.

I was that kid with the glasses and the hungry expression who haunted every library book sale and used bookstore in town: the one who always has a book in one hand and is reaching for the next book with the other. There's one in every town.

I'm really a library man, or second-hand book man.

I love rare books. Not that I own a lot of them, mind you. You couldn't quite call me a rare-book collector. But I did once work in a rare-books library, and I wrote a novel about a rare book.

M. Mabeuf’s political opinion was a passionate fondness for plants, and a still greater one for books. He had, like everybody else, his termination in ist, without which nobody could have lived in those times, but he was neither a royalist, nor a Bonapartist, nor a chartist, nor an Orleanist, nor an anarchist; he was an old-bookist.

I'd love a signed first edition of 'City of Glass' by Paul Auster. My favourite book of all time.

I collect books, primarily first-edition 20th-century fiction.

I'm the sort of person who would be perfectly happy spending an entire day in a rare books room.

I'm a collecting maniac and I buy a lot of books and records. I have over thousand cds.

A bibliomaniac is one to whom books are like bottles of whiskey to the inebriate, to whom anything that is between covers has an intoxicating savor.

Any given day, you'll find me at secondhand bookstores.

I have a very big apartment in Paris but you can't really move around there anymore; piles of books everywhere. I don't want any more books. I have too many books; sometimes I have to buy another copy of a book that I know I have somewhere in my house or office because I can't find it.

I loved to read, and if I could've been a professional reader, that's probably what I would've wanted to be!

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.

Thomas Jefferson had the largest library of books in the world that was in the hands of a private collection.

I like buying drones, hover boards, 360-degree cameras and fabulous cars. I am a little bit like a boy. I also spend a lot on books. I am a voracious reader, and I love vintage stores and first editions.

I have this obsession with really cool, old 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.

I buy way too many books.

I'm doing exactly what I was supposed to do. Yeah. I didn't exactly choose this. My own life, if it were up to me, would be very, very quiet. I'd be like a shopkeeper, a book collector, or something like that. I'm not like this. Myself as a performer and an artist is totally different from who I am.

I collect books - a lot of books.

I'm afraid I've degenerated into a bibliophile.