The Secret, Book & Scone Society

I prefer cinnamon twists over scones because they’re easier to eat while I’m reading. That’s my main priority when it comes to food. Other people are obsessed with calories, nutritional value, antioxidants. I look at food and wonder: Can I eat that without having to put my book down?

Stories are just like people. If you don’t approach them with an open mind and a healthy dose of respect, they won’t reveal their hidden selves to you. In that event, you’ll miss out on what they have to offer. You’ll walk through life an empty husk instead of a vibrant kaleidoscope of passion, wisdom, and experience.

… Becoming a reader is a change for the better. Trust me. No one has ever lost by becoming addicted to stories – to the lessons learned by those who possess enough courage to put pen to paper.

It’s always that way when you’re looking at books. An hour goes by in a minute: you don’t know where the hell the time went. —John Dunning

If it wants a soul, then yes. Every town needs a bookstore.

Stories don’t change much across continents and centuries. Hearts are broken. Pride is wounded. Souls wander too far from home and become lost. The wrong roads are taken. The incorrect choice is made. Stories echo with loneliness. Grief. Longing. Redemption. Forgiveness. Hope. And love.” Now it was her turn to point at the bookstore. “That building is stuffed with books that, once opened, reveal our communal story. And, if you’re lucky, the words in those books will force you to grapple with the hardest truths of your life. After reducing you to a puddle of tears, they’ll raise you to your feet again. The words will pull you up, higher and higher, until you feel the sun on your face again. Until you’re suddenly humming on the way to the mailbox. Or you’re buying bouquets of gerbera daisies because you crave bright colors. And you’ll laugh again—as freely as champagne bubbling in a tall, glass flute. When’s the last time you laughed like that?

Books are everywhere; and always the same sense of adventure fills us. Second-hand books are wild books, homeless books; they have come together in vast flocks of variegated feather, and have a charm which the domesticated volumes of the library lack. Besides, in this random miscellaneous company we may rub against some complete stranger who will, with luck, turn into the best friend we have in the world.

Other people are obsessed with calories, nutritional value, antioxidants. I look at food and wonder: Can I eat that without having to put my book down?

The books in her shop weren’t merely things. They were gifts wrapped in imagination, inspiration, excite ment, pain, and heartache. Gifts given by thousands of writers. Gifts just waiting to be opened.

You’ve got to jump off cliffs and build your wings on the way down. —Ray Bradbury

You like almost every genre, but you’re a binge genre reader. When you’re on a science-fiction kick, you stay with sci-fi for weeks. Then, all of a sudden, you’ll drop that genre and turn to historical fiction.

Words are a pretext. It is the inner bond that draws one person to another, not words. —Rumi

I confess to making decisions that have complicated my life and compromised my principles,” the man said. “But I’ve never taken my coffee any way but black.

And now here is my secret, a simple secret: it is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.

Virginia Woolf, an English novelist, perfectly describes how I feel about books and bookstores. She wrote, Books are everywhere; and always the same sense of adventure fills us . . . in this random miscellaneous company we may rub against some complete stranger who will, with luck, turn into the best friend we have in the world.

to the lessons learned by those who possess enough courage to put pen to paper.

Nora Pennington loved selling books. She loved talking to people about books. But what she wanted most was to heal people using books.

Not all secrets were meant to be shared.

But Nora knew all too well that it was possible for two lonely people to meet, believe they’d fallen in love, and marry, only to discover—years later—that their loneliness remained.

vibrant kaleidoscope of passion, wisdom, and experience.

Is that from a book?” Andrews asked. Estella looked a Nora and smiled. “Probably. Isn’t everything worth repeating from a book?

The wound is the place where the light enters you. —Pablo Neruda

You have to sink to the very bottom, my child,” the woman had whispered in her lullaby voice. “After that, you can push off with both feet and start swimming toward the surface. You’re strong. You can get there. But it’s going to hurt. You have to clean out the wound before it can heal. Let the stories be your antiseptic. Bear the pain now for a chance at a better tomorrow. Otherwise, you’ll repeat the mistakes that landed you in this bed.

A good marriage needs collisions. Meteorites and solar flares. Fights, laughter, passion, sex. Stars dying and being reborn. What we ended up with was as distant and cold as space.

look at food and wonder: Can I eat that without having to put my book down?

This is the risk of having friends. There’s a price to pay for making yourself vulnerable.

And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter—they are so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small cramped dark inside you so long. —Sylvia