Virginia Woolf

It is permissible even for a dying hero to think before he dies how men will speak of him hereafter. His fame lasts perhaps two thousand years. And what are two thousand years?… What, indeed, if you look from a mountain top down the long wastes of the ages? The very stone one kicks with one’s boot will outlast Shakespeare.

Very jaded and tired and depressed and cross…Must fill my mind with air and light, and walk and blanket it in fog.

Why not blame the libraries? They’re full of violent books.

Whatever our fate is or may be, we have made it and do not complain of it. – Vronksy (Anna Karenina)

A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must lay it down and commence living on its hint… What I began by reading I must finish by acting.

Books, not which afford us a cowering enjoyment, but in which each thought is of unusual daring; such as an idle man cannot read, and a timid one would not be entertained by, which even make us dangerous to existing institution – such call I good books.

A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint. What I began by reading, I must finish by acting.

Never judge a book by its movie.

I know many books which have bored their readers, but I know of none which has done real evil.

All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town.

An autobiography is not about pictures; it’s about the stories; it’s about honesty and as much truth as you can tell without coming too close to other people’s privacy.

We are too civil to books. For a few golden sentences we will turn over and actually read a volume of four or five hundred pages.

The oldest books are still only just out to those who have not read them.

Classic – A book which people praise and don’t read.

As a child I used to read Gone with the Wind over and over again. I wanted to be Scarlett O’Hara. I never wanted to believe that it was possible that there could be infidelity. I never wanted to be believe that it was even possible for a man to look another way, even for a moment. My bubble of monogamy was pierced in a harsh way.

The last book I read was the book I’ve been rereading most of my life, The Fountainhead.

Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.