Charlie Lovett > Quotes

“A good book is like a good friend. It will stay with you for the rest of your life. When you first get to know it, it will give you excitement and adventure, and years later it will provide you with comfort and familiarity. And best of all, you can share it with your children or your grandchildren or anyone you love enough to let into its secrets.”
― Charlie Lovett, First Impressions: A Novel of Old Books, Unexpected Love, and Jane Austen

“If you mail a rare stamp it becomes worthless. If you drink a rare bottle of wine, you're left with some recycling. But if you read a rare book it's still there, it's still valuable, and it's achieved the full measure of it's being. A book is to read, whether it's worth five pounds or five thousand pounds”
― Charlie Lovett, First Impressions: A Novel of Old Books, Unexpected Love, and Jane Austen

“What he wanted was to find that world-within-the-world where he could be himself by himself.”
― Charlie Lovett, The Bookman’s Tale

“The best way to learn about books, ... is to spend time with them, talk about them, defend them.”
― Charlie Lovett, The Bookman’s Tale

“That must be something to discover a book that nobody's ever heard of or everybody thought was lost."
"It's every bibliophile's dream," said Francis, and Peter knew in a second that it was his own.”
― Charlie Lovett, The Bookman’s Tale

“Anyway, a man who buys a woman a book this nice is looking to be more than just an acquaintance.”
― Charlie Lovett, First Impressions: A Novel of Old Books, Unexpected Love, and Jane Austen

“The best way to learn about books," he said, "is to spend time with them, talk about them, defend them.”
― Charlie Lovett, The Bookman’s Tale

“The gifts of God are rarely what we expect.”
― Charlie Lovett, The Lost Book of the Grail

“I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of anything than of a book! When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.”
― Charlie Lovett, First Impressions: A Novel of Old Books, Unexpected Love, and Jane Austen

“A literary mystery, a damsel in distress, and his rival deposed. If that doesn't get him here then he's not much of a knight in shining armor.”
― Charlie Lovett, First Impressions: A Novel of Old Books, Unexpected Love, and Jane Austen

“The best way to learn about books ... is to spend time with them, talk about them, defend them.”
― Charlie Lovett

“Unlikely is not the same as impossible...”
― Charlie Lovett, First Impressions: A Novel of Old Books, Unexpected Love, and Jane Austen

“You said that today, in order to rid the world of Jews and Gypsies and all the lesser races it takes political will and ingenuity and above all superior military might. But someday, you said, all it will take will be money. Someday, money will choose the leaders and write the laws; money will protect those who work outside the law and hide the true power brokers. money will allow all that we were never able to accomplish to finally come to pass.”
― Charlie Lovett, The Enigma Affair

“It was as if a part of her mind dwelt in him and a part of his mind dwelt in her, and when she was separated from him a part of herself was missing.”
― Charlie Lovett, First Impressions: A Novel of Old Books, Unexpected Love, and Jane Austen

“...they did not speak of the future; they merely lived in the present. It was a perfect summer.”
― Charlie Lovett, The Bookman’s Tale

“You've spent most of your life in hiding.' said Dr. Strayer. 'Your secret lair is the only place you feel truly safe. When you were a child it was your room where you'd hide so you didn't have to interact with your parents. In college it was the rare-books room; once you married Amanda, it was your basement book room. You bury yourself in these places, Peter. You avoid life there.”
― Charlie Lovett, The Bookman’s Tale

“Novel writing seems an altogether less intimidating occupation when one considers that one only need produce a small tale.”
― Charlie Lovett, First Impressions: A Novel of Old Books, Unexpected Love, and Jane Austen

“Any book. But choose carefully,” said Uncle Bertram. “A good book is like a good friend. It will stay with you for the rest of your life. When you first get to know it, it will give you excitement and adventure, and years later it will provide you with comfort and familiarity. And best of all, you can share it with your children or your grandchildren or anyone you love enough to let into its secrets.” —”
― Charlie Lovett, First Impressions: A Novel of Old Books, Unexpected Love, and Jane Austen

“She read the letter again and tried to imagine what it would feel like to be so desperate for a response that you would drop all sense of dignity and propriety and dash from the house at the first sight of the postman.”
― Charlie Lovett, First Impressions: A Novel of Old Books, Unexpected Love, and Jane Austen

“So are you lonely, or just a loner?”
― Charlie Lovett, The Bookman’s Tale

“King Arthur's Knights had been the first book Arthur had read late at night under the covers with a torch...it was he supposed, thinking back on it, the first book that had showed him what reading was really all about.”
― Charlie Lovett, The Lost Book of the Grail

“But though that love was engraved on her heart, she did not have the words to explain its nature.”
― Charlie Lovett, First Impressions: A Novel of Old Books, Unexpected Love, and Jane Austen

“Dobrá kniha je jako dobrý kamarád. Zůstane s tebou do konce života. Zkraje, když se s ní teprve seznamuješ, ti poskytne vzrušení a dobrodružství a v pozdějších letech zase útěchu a pocit, že se vracíš k čemusi známému. Ale nejlepší ze všeho je, že se o ni můžeš podělit se svými dětmi, vnoučaty či s každým, koho budeš mít ráda, že ho vpustíš do jejího tajemství.”
― Charlie Lovett, First Impressions

“I was always scared to meet people. Scared or maybe lazy.”
― Charlie Lovett, The Bookman’s Tale

“The ladies in my family have always known what to do in a roomful of rare books.”
― Charlie Lovett, The Bookman’s Tale

“Jane Austen never married,” he said in frustration. “She entered the male-dominated field of novel writing and her female heroines are strong, independent characters. Just what do you imagine a feminist in a rural English village in the late eighteenth century looks like?”
― Charlie Lovett, The Lost Book of the Grail

“...he pulled on his coat and stepped into the darkness for a walk up to the village shop. He found walking to the shop once or twice a day to buy food as needed a comforting routine.”
― Charlie Lovett, The Bookman’s Tale

“He only kissed her and she kissed him and her knees went weak and her heart raced and she thought for a moment that she saw fireworks.”
― Charlie Lovett, First Impressions: A Novel of Old Books, Unexpected Love, and Jane Austen

“What this committee needs, what this media center needs, is a good dose of Jeeves."
"I'm sorry," said Mr. Peabody, a mathematics lecturer who sat hunched at the far end of the table taking the minutes. "How do you spell that?"
"Is it possible," said Arthur, raising both his shoulders and his voice, "that we are working in a university where lecturers are not aware of the identity of one Reginald Jeeves, the gentleman's personal gentleman and the personal gentleman's gentleman? What has happened to cultural literacy, my fellow members of the Advisory Committee for the Media Center? This sort of ignorance is exactly what needs addressing. What I mean, Mr. Peabody, when I say that we need a dose of Jeeves, is that we need quiet and reasoned wisdom that leads to prompt and directed action.”
― Charlie Lovett, The Lost Book of the Grail

“AS A CHILD, I had an unquenchable thirst for novels,” said Jane,”
― Charlie Lovett, First Impressions: A Novel of Old Books, Unexpected Love, and Jane Austen