Bookshops Quotes

“bookshops are
time machines
spaceships
story-makers
secret-keepers
dragon-tamers
dream-catchers
fact-finders
& safe places.

(this book is for those who know this to be true)”
― Jen Campbell, The Bookshop Book

“CUSTOMER: If I were to, say... meet the love of my life in this bookshop, what section do you think they would be standing in?”
― Jen Campbell, Weird Things Customers Say in Bookshops

“You see, bookshops are dreams built of wood and paper. They are time travel and escape and knowledge and power. They are, simply put, the best of places.”
― Jen Campbell, The Bookshop Book

“These places are time machines, spaceships, story-makers, secret-keepers. They are dragon-tamers, dream-catchers, fact-finders, and safe places. They are full of infinite possibilities and tales worth taking home.”
― Jen Campbell, The Bookshop Book

“Perhaps that is the best way to say it: printed books are magical, and real bookshops keep that magic alive.”
― Jen Campbell, The Bookshop Book

“There was also something about the smell of bookshops that was strangely comforting to her. She wondered if it was the scent of ink and paper, or the perfume of binding, string, and glue. Maybe it was the scent of knowledge. Information. Thoughts and ideas. Poetry and love. All of it bound into one perfect, calm place.”
― Alyson Richman, The Garden of Letters

“Who wouldn't want to get married in a room full of love stories?”
― Jen Campbell, The Bookshop Book

“These days, we've got booksellers in cities, in deserts, and in the middle of a rain forest; we've got travelling bookshops, and bookshops underground. We've got bookshops in barns, in caravans and in converted Victorian railway stations. We've even got booksellers selling books in the middle of a war.

Are bookshops still relevant? They certainly are.

All bookshops are full of stories, and stories want to be heard.”
― Jen Campbell, The Bookshop Book

“I've stolen books. They're the only thing worth taking that don't belong to you.”
― Sully Tarnish, The Dragon and the Apprentice: A Humorous Fantasy Adventure

“After all, a town without a bookshop was a town without a heart.”
― Veronica Henry, How to Find Love in a Bookshop

“Archie says books are our best lovers and our most provoking friends.”
― Stephanie Butland, Lost For Words

“Some bookstores are organized, more gallery than shop. Some are sterile, reserved for only the new and untouched.
But not this one.
This shop is a labyrinth of stacks and shelves, texts stacked two, even three deep, leather beside paper beside board. Her favorite kind of store, one that’s easy to get lost in.”
― V.E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

“Many of the people who came to us were of the kind who would be a nuisance anywhere but have special opportunities in a bookshop”
― George Orwell, Bookshop Memories

“…secondhand bookstores have pilgrims. The words out of print are a call to arms for those who seek a Holy Grail made of paper and ink.”
― Kathleen Tessaro, Elegance

“Hugo turned to gaze upon the seemingly endless rows of books. Like humans, they came in all shapes and sizes: some were tall and slender, others squat and well upholstered, many were wrinkled with age.”
― Kevin Ansbro, In the Shadow of Time

“I think a bookshop is like a map of the world. There are infinite paths you can take through it and none of them are right or wrong. Here in a bookshop we give readers landmarks to help them find their way, but every reader has to learn to set their own compass.”
― Anna James, Tilly and the Bookwanderers

“Books are dangerous in a country where freedom does not exist.”
― Thomas Montasser, A Very Special Year

“But here, none too soon, are the second-hand bookshops. Here we find anchorage in these thwarting currents of being; here we balance ourselves after the splendours and miseries of the streets.”
― Virginia Woolf, Street Haunting

“I've always felt safe in bookshops. It's as though the stories inside them can rescue me from myself and the rest of the world. A literary sanctuary filled with shelves of paper-shaped parachutes, which will save you when you fall.”
― Alice Feeney, I Know Who You Are

“The truth is that literature can grab hold of us and capture our entire attention. It can transport us to other worlds, free us from every day cares. We can lose ourselves in literature.”
― Thomas Montasser, A Very Special Year

“A cabinet of fantasies, a source of knowledge, a collection of lore from past and present, a place to dream....a bookshop can be so many things.”
― Thomas Montasser, A Very Special Year

“The discoveries in this wonderful cabinet of dreams, the scents of all the new and old books, the aroma of their experiences and promises, their curses and prophesies, of the hands in which they had rested, the care with which the paper manufacturer, printer and binder had worked on them, the ink with which they were printed, the glue, the cloth, the leather, the covers and dust-jackets, the stitching, the ribbons and the tissue paper. No perfumery could produce as perfect a blend from the interplay of countless aromas as a bookshop, in which old and new works were arranged with love.”
― Thomas Montasser, A Very Special Year

“Discovering a book meant freely rising above the demands of everyday life and uprooting your own existence from the here and now in order to plant it elsewhere.”
― Thomas Montasser, A Very Special Year

“there are always plenty of not quite certifiable lunatics walking the streets, and they tend to gravitate towards bookshops, because a bookshop is one of the few places where you can hang about for a long time without spending any money. In the end one gets to know these people almost at a glance. For all their big talk there is something moth-eaten and aimless about them.”
― George Orwell, Bookshop Memories

“My heart settled as I walked in, breathing coffee and paper and sunburnt dust. Like all good bookshops, Edgar's was a pocket universe, where time moved slow as clouds.”
― Melissa Albert, The Night Country

“...podre ir yo a Inglaterra y explorar misma a mi librería. Si me veo con el valor para hacerlo, claro. Vengo escribiéndoles cartas de los mas descaradas desde la seguridad que me dan 5000 kilómetros que hay de por medio. Probablemente entrare un día en esa tienda y saldré de ella al cabo de un rato sin decirles quien soy.”
― Helene Hanff, 84, Charing Cross Road

“Isn't a bookshop, to some extent, a temple to Browsing?”
― Erik Satie, A Mammal's Notebook: Collected Writings of Erik Satie

“…late the other night, when the kids were asleep and the birds at roost, I made a tour through the Internet’s second-hand bookstores,…”
― Kathleen Jamie, Findings

“Libraries and bookshops are gyms for mental exercises.”
― Nkwachukwu Ogbuagu

“Books will always look for readers.”
― Anthony T. Hincks