Booksellers Quotes

“Booksellers are the most valuable destination for the lonely, given the numbers of books written because authors couldn't find anyone to talk to.”
― Alain de Botton, The Consolations of Philosophy

“Dedication: For librarians and booksellers everywhere, who gather books and build shelters for tender souls.”
― Tessa Dare, Any Duchess Will Do

“All my scripts have artistic backgrounds -- ballet, concert hall, opera -- and all the suspects and corpses are cultured, maybe I'll do one about the rare book business in your honor, do you want to be the murderer or the corpse?”
― Helene Hanff, 84, Charing Cross Road

“I mention in the dedication that this book is partially in honor of booksellers and librarians everywhere. I can’t say enough about how much I’ve been impacted by the magic of bookstores and libraries. Books can change lives, but it is the people who love them, who dedicate their lives to them, who make the real difference. If books can’t find their way to the readers who need them, who will be touched by them, who will be transformed by them, they lose their power. So thank you for the bottom of my heart to anyone who works in a bookstore or a library—and especially to those of you who have been courageous and adventurous enough to become bookstore owners, which must be as perilous at times as it is rewarding. Books are more than just words on a page; they are bridges to building communities and to developing more compassionate, more aware citizens. Those of you who love books enough to want to share them are truly changing the world. (in acknowledgements)”
― Kristin Harmel, The Book of Lost Names

“Books choose their readers, not the other way around. I believe that booksellers are the matchmakers. Thank you.”
― Cecelia Ahern

“He talked about the book industry as if it were a dragon that was chained in the basement, and would tear us limb from limb at any moment.”
― Caroline O'Donoghue, The Rachel Incident

“There may be little room for the display of this supreme qualification in the retail book business, but there is room for some. Be enterprising. Get good people about you. Make your shop windows and your shops attractive. The fact that so many young men and women enter the teaching profession shows that there are still some people willing to scrape along on comparatively little money for the pleasure of following an occupation in which they delight. It is as true to-day as it was in Chaucer's time that there is a class of men who "gladly learn and gladly teach," and our college trustees and overseers and rich alumni take advantage of this and expect them to live on wages which an expert chauffeur would regard as insufficient. Any bookshop worthy of survival can offer inducements at least as great as the average school or college. Under pleasant conditions you will meet pleasant people, for the most part, whom you can teach and form whom you may learn something.”
― A. Edward Newton, A magnificent farce and other diversions of a book collector

“Despite the promise of four days of sun and overly sweet wine, Richard was sporting a sour puss. But then that was to be expected - he sold books for a living, after all.”
― Charlie Hill, Books

“Booksellers in the gross are taken for little better than a pack of knaves and atheists.”
― John Dunton

“I had devoted my whole life to books; to bookshops; to booksellers; to bookish people like Charles and Alan. And in doing so, I had ended up like a book: on the shelf.”
― Anthony Horowitz, Magpie Murders

“I, personally, have never been able to throw a book away. I have seen books, like in trash, and to me it's like seeing a human head in the trash. Even if it's a horrible book.”
― Fran Lebowitz

“The habit of reading books is not yet on the brink of extinction. Not yet. This is in no small part due to an elite corps of frontline workers, people who are holding that line, and sometimes even turning the tide. I'm talking about the thousands of booksellers and librarians working long hours to keep reading alive and getting little recognition for all that they do.”
― James Patterson, The Secret Lives of Booksellers and Librarians: True Stories of the Magic of Reading

“Everybody needs books, Molly figured. No matter where they live, how they love, what they believe, whom they want to kill. We all want books. The moment you start thinking of books as some exclusive club, or the loving of books as a high distinction, then you're a bad bookseller.

Books are the best way to discover what people thought before you were born. And an author is just someone who tried their utmost to make sense of their own mess, and maybe their failure contains a few seeds to help you with yours.”
― Charlie Jane Anders, A People's Future of the United States: Speculative Fiction from 25 Extraordinary Writers