"I love you more than I love books."

Gifford laughed and leaned down to kiss her, but the priest cleared his throat.  "Ring.  Then more vows.  Kissing comes last."

Gifford heaved a melodramatic sigh and offered his hand.  "Very well."
-My Lady Jane by Cynthia Hand

"Who on earth could feel comfortable enough to sleep in a room with no books?"
-My Lady Jane by Cynthia Hand

"Because for some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth.  What a miracle is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you.  Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave.  They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die.  They are full of all the things that you don't get in real life - wonderful, lyrical language, for instance, right off the bat.  And quality of attention: we may notice amazing details during the course of a day but we rarely let ourselves stop and really pay attention.  An author makes you notice, makes you pay attention, and this is a great gift.  My gratitude for good writing is unbounded; I'm grateful for it the way I'm grateful for the ocean.  Aren't you? I ask."
-Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

"If you love books enough, books will love you back."
-Among Others by Jo Walton

"We went down the hill to the bookshop, sort of automatically, as if that's the way all our feet wanted to turn.  I said that to them.

'Bibliotropic,' Hugh said.  'Like sunflowers are heliotropic, they naturally turn towards the sun.  We naturally turn towards the bookshop.'"
-Among Others by Jo Walton

"There may be stranger reasons for being alive.

There are books.  There's Auntie Teg, and Grampar.  There's Sam, and Gill.  There's interlibrary loan. There are books you can fall into and pull up over your head.  There's the distant hope of a karass sometime in the future.  There's Glorfindel who really care about me as much as a fairy can care about anything."
-Among Others by Jo Walton

"The bookstore is the building, but it's not only the building.  It is the books inside.  People are not only their bodies.  And if there is no hope of saving the things we love in their original form, we must save them however we can."
-Words in Deep Blue by Cath Crowley

"We are the books we read and things we love.  Cal is the ocean and the letters he left.  Our ghosts hide in the things we leave behind."
-Words in Deep Blue by Cath Crowley

"Interlibrary loans are a wonder of the world and a glory of civilization.

Libraries really are wonderful.  They're better than bookshops, even.  I mean bookshops make a profit on selling you books, but libraries just sit there lending you books quietly out of the goodness of their hearts."
-Among Others by Jo Walton

"There are some awful things in the world, it's true, but there are also some great books.  When I grow up I would like to write something that someone could read sitting on a bench on a day that isn't all that warm and they could sit reading and totally forget where they were or what time it was so that they were more inside the book than inside their own head."
-Among Others by Jo Walton

"It doesn't matter.  I have books, new books, and I can bear anything as long as there are books."
-Among Others by Jo Walton