Book Prices Quotes

Hardcover books are fairly expensive these days and to read one requires a significant commitment of time in our busy society. So I want to make sure that when readers buy one of my books they get something they're familiar with.

And if our book consumption remains as low as it has been, at least let us admit that it is because reading is a less exciting pastime than going to the dogs, the pictures or the pub, and not because books, whether bought or borrowed, are too expensive.

The road to ignorance is paved with good editions. Only the illiterate can afford to buy good books now.

Books on their own aren't insanely expensive compared to other things; three large cappuccinos cost more than a paperback, and two and a half gallons of gas cost more than a paperback.

I expected higher prices for some books, but [there would be] flexibility for other books.

I love the look of books published by the firm of Rupert Hart-Davis: They strike me as handsome, elegant, and inviting. I'll pick up almost anything with that imprint, especially if it's in a jacket or priced low.

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.

Literate households in the 17th century would have had the Bible, John Bunyan's "The Pilgrim's Progress," and a couple of other books. Shakespeare plays were cheap, so you could buy those, but a folio cost a pound, which was an incredible amount of money then.

I've drunk Amazon's free Diet Coke. Nothing makes more sense to me than a company trying to make bookselling into a profitable business. I'm not anti-Amazon, and I'm not pro-publishers either. I'm pro-books.