The Last Bookaneer

Strangers talking over piles of books do not remain strangers for long.

When they dreamed of turning iron and metal into gold, they called it alchemy. The much more far-fetched dream of turning bound sheafs of plain paper into fortunes, they call publishing.

Imagine! It is the real power of a book--not what is on the page, but what happens when a reader takes the pages in, makes it part of himself. That is the definition of literature.

A man's library opens up his character to the world.

Before long, I had lost my youth and my patience for indulging others. Books were everything in life; books were better than wine.

An obscure character by the name of Belial. He is interpreted as a minion of the devil by some scholars, but that is wrong. It is ignorance. The name means, literally speaking, 'one who cannot be yoked,' and it is really every one of us who takes control of our own destiny while others blow in the wind. We may be punished for it, but we would never do it another way. We are all Belials.

What they don't realize is that sequels are bound to disappoint those who have waited for them.

They always blamed my reading, you know, for my having fewer friends than my brother and for my weak eyes, never thinking that because I had weak eyes and because I was shy, having a book at the ready rescued me.

You are always better off to read a book, anyway, than to meet the person behind it.

exaggeration is the octopus of the English language

How odd it must be to go through life believing that a book is a book.

It is not when a man is at the end of his life, but when a man is at the end of his profession, that his soul shows itself.

I do not seek the mantle of genius. I am an appreciator, an observer, a preposition, and content in that, and that's me in a nutshell.

Teacher, tender comrade, wife, A fellow farer true through life, Heart whole and soul free, The August father gave to me.

Stevenson threw back his head and made a slow murmuring sound, "If only I could secure a violent death." "Pardon?" "What a fine success!" Stevenson continued, spurring Jack into a canter as he lost himself in his thoughts. "I wish to die in my boots, you see, Mr. Porter. To be drowned, to be shot, to be thrown from this horse into a ditch, Mr. Fergins--aye, to be hanged, rather than pass through the slow dissolution of illnesses!

Recall that when the first presses produced copies of the Bible, the scribes who had to spend years at a time on the same work, just as it had been done for centuries, streamed out from the monasteries with quills raised in the air, decrying the work of the devil. When one of the pioneering tradesmen printed certain words in red ink to emphasize them, it was proof that he had used his own blood. That was why the printers’ assistants began to be called “devils.” Soon printers were threatened with burning, and some were indeed put into the fire along with their equipment. From the beginning, the creation of the modern book was viewed as the work of Satan—an attempt to usurp the word of God.

I was looking for something else in books. I could not really say what, but I think I can say why: a notion started in my own brain was probably wrong, but an answer read in a work of literature would be right. That was my conviction at nineteen, and only in later years would I come to trust myself over a book.

A book can unfold moments or generations, if you know how to see it. Most people, of course, do not. How odd it must be to go through life believing that a book is a book.

Writers must write and they suffer if they don’t. Then they suffer if they do.

It is the real power of a book - not what is on the page, but what happens when a reader takes the pages in, makes it part of himself.

He worshipped at the temple of her intellect and I believe it was a comfort to him to know that she left our world with it still shining.

Beware the camel’s nose—for its whole body will soon follow.

The same thing as you, the same as she. The same as anyone who has ever been doubted or told to go away. To prove myself better.

Avoid the Holy Grail, the heroic journeys, the pursuit of a legend--that is not the life of the bookaneer, who must keep his eyes on the ground while other book people live by dreaming.

What's the use of having eyes if we can't see the world we pass through?

Books inspire a man to embrace the world or flee it. They start wars and end them. They make the men and women who write and publish them vast fortunes, and nearly as quickly can drive them into madness and despair. Stay away from what you do not fathom from now on...

These writers take the essence of every person around them, turn them into books and stories without permission or even a simple thank-you, and want all the credit and glory for themselves.

People hate the idea of politicians, you see, but love the idea of authors, at least until they meet one.