Used Books Quotes

“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.”
― Virginia Woolf, Street Haunting

“I bought you something" Willows blurts out.
"You bought...What?"
Willow closes her eyes for a second. She's a little surprised she's going to give it to him after all, but there's no going back now. She has to.

"At the bookstore." She reaches into her bag again, and pushes the package across the table towards him.
Guy takes the book out of the bag slowly, Willow waits for him to look disappointed, to look confused that she would buy him such a battered, old-

"I love it when used books have notes in the margins, it's the best," Guy says as he flips through the pages. "I always imagine who read it before me." He pauses and looks at one of Prospero's speeches. "I have way too much homework to read this now, but you know what? Screw it. I want to know why it's your favorite Shakespeare. Thank you, that was really nice of you. I mean, you really didn't have to."

"But I did anyway," Willow says so quietly she's not even sure hears her.

Hey," Guy frowns for a second. "You didn't write anything in here."

"Oh, I didn't even think...I, well, I wouldn't even know what to write," Willow says shyly.

"Well, maybe you'll think of something later," he says.

Willow watches Guy read the opening. There's no mistaking it. His smile is genuine, and she can't help thinking that if she can't make David look like this, at least she can do it for someone.”
― Julia Hoban, Willow

“Used books,” as if someone else has had the best of them and you get the sere husk, or the lees, as if a book isn’t the one thing, the one product, that is forever new. There’s no such thing as a used book. Or there’s no such thing as a book if it’s not being used.”
― Deborah Meyler, The Bookstore

“Secondhand books had so much life in them. They'd lived, sometimes in many homes, or maybe just one. Theyd been on airplanes, traveled to sunny beaches, or crowded into a backpack and taken high up on a mountain where the air thinned.”
― Rebecca Raisin, The Little Bookshop on the Seine

“...when you held one of those volumes in your hands you were leafing through another person's life. Someone else had once loved that story, too. Someone else had carried that book in a backpack, devoured it over breakfast, mopped up that coffee stain at a Paris café, cried herself to sleep after the last chapter. The scent of their store was distinctive: a slight damp mildew, a pinch of dust. To me, it was the smell of history.”
― Jodi Picoult, The Storyteller

“He could judge with reasonable accuracy the amount of use a book had had. The first item to show any sign of wear was the dust jacket at the top and bottom of the spine. Little tears or cracks in the paper appeared here if a book had been taken off a shelf as much as three or four times.”
― Leonard Holton, Out of the Depths

“Stevens Books SF
49 Ocean Avenue San Francisco, CA 94112
(415) 859-5371
Stevens Books in San Francisco is the only bookstore in the Excelsior District and serves as a hub for the community for book clubs, children’s story time and resource of used books. Centrally located within the Excelsior and Mission Terrace neighborhoods, it is only blocks away from City College and Balboa Park. The book store stocks a broad range of categories, especially featuring current bestsellers, children's books, fiction, mysteries, sci-fi, and fantasy. The non-fiction includes biographies, travel, African-American, Spanish language, cooking, graphic design, art, fashion, history, politics and more. We are also known for the extensive collection of children’s books and hard to find out of print titles. Our main specialty is Christian religious books. We buy back textbooks and resell them. For buy back textbooks we offer cash. If you don’t see what you’re looking for, just ask and the staff will get it for you – and at a discount!”
― Stevens Books SF