Bookshop Quotes

“A good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read.”
― Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!

“It’s like he’s picking up parts of the world and showing them to me, saying, See? It’s beautiful.”
― Cath Crowley, Words in Deep Blue

“Some people see a bookshop as an archive, or a shrine, or even a time machine. But I think a bookshop is like a map of the world. There are infinite paths you can take through it and none of them are right or wrong. Here in a bookshop we give readers landmarks to help them find their way, but every reader has to learn to set their own compass.”
― Anna James, Tilly and the Bookwanderers

“Nothing belongs to itself anymore.
These trees are yours because you once looked at them.
These streets are yours because you once traversed them.
These coffee shops and bookshops, these cafés and bars, their sole owner is you.
They gave themselves so willingly, surrendering to your perfume.
You sang with the birds and they stopped to listen to you.
You smiled at the sheepish stars and they fell into your hair.
The sun and moon, the sea and mountain, they have all left from heartbreak.
Nothing belongs to itself anymore.
You once spoke to Him, and then God became yours.
He sits with us in darkness now
to plot how to make you ours.” K.K.”
― Kamand Kojouri

“It's my belief that anyone worth knowing enjoys spending time in a bookshop.”
― Oliver Darkshire, Once Upon a Tome: The Misadventures of a Rare Bookseller

“The bookshop felt damp and chilly, but it was still and unsupervised bookshop, and Anna felt a frisson of excitement as she scanned the shelves with greedy eyes. Libraries weren't quite the same, she'd found; something about the prosaic smell of other people's houses and fingers seeping off the pages diluted that sense of magical worlds, but untouched, unread, unexplored books were something else.”
― Lucy Dillon, The Secret of Happy Ever After

“Books are magical in that they can transport you to another time and place, introduce you to people you come to know as friends, in both characters, authors and now in real people who, at some point in their lives, have chosen each book as carefully selected gifts for someone they cared about.”
― Jaimie Admans, The Little Bookshop of Love Stories

“Forever feels a long time when you're eighteen. When you're away from home for the first time in your life, when you forge instant friendships that are so strong they are destined, surely, to be with you until the bitter end.”
― Jane Green, Bookends

“Books have always been my escape from daily life and now they are my daily life.”
― Jaimie Admans, The Little Bookshop of Love Stories

“Any bookseller will tell you that, even with 100,000 booksneatly sorted and shelved in a well-lit, warm shop, if you put an unopened box of books in a dark, cold, dimly lit corner, customers will be riffling through it in a matter of moments. The appeal of a box of unsorted, unpriced stock is extroidinary.”
― Shaun Bythell, The Diary of a Bookseller

“When the old man in the crumpled suit came to the counter to pay for the copy of Dostoyevsky's The Idiot, I discreetly pointed out that his fly was open. He glanced down - as if for confirmation of this - then looked back at me and said, 'A dead bird can't fall out of it's nest', and left the shop fly still agape.”
― Shaun Bythell, The Diary of a Bookseller

“That's the problem with lying. You can never remember what you've said.”
― Jane Green, Bookends

“Given that the bookstore was a bit of a secret, it didn't look like much from the outside. Just a door with a knob that always seemed on the verge of falling off. And yet there was a certain sort of magic once you stepped inside. It was the feel of candlelight at twilight, paper dust caught in the air, and rows and rows of unusual books on crooked shelves.”
― Stephanie Garber, Once Upon a Broken Heart

“Jasper frowned at the name. "Like, a meet-cute?"
"At the end," I supplied. "It's when Darcy tells Elizabeth he loves her most ardently, when Mark brings Bridget a new diary, when Harry tells Sally he loves her, when Will buys Junie the inn." I smiled up at the name, putting my hands on my hips. "The grand romantic gesture."
So, obviously, we named the bookshop the Grand Romantic.”
― Ashley Poston, A Novel Love Story

“No truly intelligent person shows off the number of books they read in a week, month, or year.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Besides, he loved his shop better than his house, and here on Sundays he could browse among his own books undisturbed, eat his lunch, doze, and answer at length some of the correspondence, erudite and whimsical, he received from people he had never seen but whom he felt he knew well. Booklovers: if you knew what kind of books a man wanted, you knew the man.”
― Patricia Highsmith , The Blunderer

“Choosing to buy a particular book over others only or mainly because it is the cheapest is excusable only if you are learning to read.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“The miracle of birth is like fruit on a tree. We are conceived by a seed, and squeezed through the body of our mothers to bloom and grow." – by Jackie Lynaugh”
― Jackie Lynaugh, Plantation Hill

“there are two well-known types of pest by whom every second-hand bookshop is haunted. One is the decayed person smelling of old breadcrusts who comes every day, sometimes several times a day, and tries to sell you worthless books. The other is the person who orders large quantities of books for which he has not the smallest intention of paying.”
― George Orwell, Bookshop Memories

“Beyond the headlines about war and death, the region is alive with music, art, books, theater, social entrepreneurship, advocacy, libraries, cafes, bookshops, poetry, and so much more, as old and young push to reclaim space for cultural expression and freedom of expression.”
― Kim Ghattas, Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Forty-Year Rivalry That Unraveled Culture, Religion, and Collective Memory in the Middle East

“Kramer's sits on Connecticut Avenue just north of Dupont Circle and is a Washington institution of sorts, functioning as a bookstore, restaurant, and bar all in one. The front always swarms with people perusing the book displays, which overflow with stacks of paperbacks and hardbacks, everything from political memoirs to the juiciest works of fiction.”
― Dana Bate, The Girls' Guide to Love and Supper Clubs

“Now that San Francisco's real estate market had exploded in value, this ramshackle old structure was probably one of the most desired addresses in the neighborhood. With its historic charm and detail, the Sunrose Building, as it was called, was undoubtedly candy corn for real estate developers. The name of the building apparently came from a detail at the roofline---a winking sun. The bookstore's sign and logo incorporated the image. The shop's signature bookmark, printed on the old letterpress and given out with every purchase, bore the image with the slogan An Eye For Good Books.”
― Susan Wiggs, The Lost and Found Bookshop

“বইয়ের দোকান কিছু আছে। কিন্তু সেগুলোতে আপনি চাকর হওয়ার বই ছাড়া আর অন্য কোন বই কিন্তু পাবেন না।"
"চাকর হওয়ার বই বলতে?" মিল্কশেকে চুমুক দিতে দিতে প্রণব বললেন।
"মানে ওই যে বিসিএস এর বই আর কি। চাকরি পাওয়ার বই, গাইড বই। মানে যে বইগুলো পড়লে আপনার সৃষ্টিশীলতাটা মরে যাবে, এই আর কি। বইয়ের দোকানে অন্য বই খুঁজলে হতাশ হবেন।”
― Jubaer Alam, শব্দযাত্রা লেখক সংঘ

“Έμοιαζε λιγότερο με βιβλιοπωλείο και περισσότερο με σκουπιδαριό μεταχειρισμένων βιβλίων, που ήταν βαλμένα ακατάστατα στα κουτσουρεμένα από το σαράκι ράφια και σε γωνιές που κολλούσαν απ' τις αράχνες, ακόμα και στους χώρους που πρέπει να χρησίμευαν για διάδρομοι. Σ΄ένα μεγάλο τραπέζι, φίσκα κι αυτό από στοίβες βιβλίων, ο ιδιοκτήτης έγραφε ακούραστα πεζά, με βιολετιά ωραία γράμματα, λίγο παράφορα, σε φύλλα σχολικού τετραδίου.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“Sometimes we have to stop moving around and quiet down to realize He’s been there all along.”
― Mollie Rushmeyer, The Bookshop of Secrets

“She breathed in their ancient paper dust, their gentle decay. Between pages like these, she’d always found her refuge.”
― Mollie Rushmeyer, The Bookshop of Secrets

“Those who come to lose themselves in the musty romance of a second-hand bookshop can forget their worries for a few hours as they pore over unexpected gems found on the shelves.”
― Gabriella Bennett, The Art of Coorie: How to Live Happy the Scottish Way

“Besides, he loved his shop better than his house, and here on Sundays he could browse among his own books undisturbed, eat his lunch, doze, and answer at length some of the correspondence, erudite and whimsical, he received from people he had never seen but whom he felt he knew well. Booklovers: if you knew what kind of books a man wanted, you knew the man.

The Blunderer”
― Patricia Highwmith

“When I travel, I find myself drawn into bookstores and to books I wonder if I will ever see again.”
― Henry Petroski, The Book on the Bookshelf

“He buys three other books too, because he wants the bookshop still to be there when he comes back next week.”
― Richard Osman, The Man Who Died Twice