Who knows more about the joy of reading than authors?

“I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book! — When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.”

― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“A good library will never be too neat, or too dusty, because somebody will always be in it, taking books off the shelves and staying up late reading them.”

― Lemony Snicket, Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can’t Avoid

“He had taught her to love reading, one of the greatest gifts a parent could give a child, and in doing so, he had opened the world to her.”

― Kristin Harmel, The Book of Lost Names

“Reading lets us live in someone else’s shoes. Literature builds bridges; it makes our world larger, not smaller.”

― R.F. Kuang, Yellowface

“We read not to escape life but to learn how to live it more deeply and richly, to experience the world through the eyes of the other.”

― Barbara Davis, The Echo of Old Books

“Sometimes, books just take us away for a little while, and return us to our place with a new perspective.”

― Sara Nisha Adams, The Reading List

“Shakespeare said the eyes are the windows to the soul, but we readers know one’s bookshelves reveal just as much.”

― Anne Bogel, I’d Rather Be Reading: The Delights and Dilemmas of the Reading Life

“I think within all of us, there is a void, a gap waiting to be filled by something. For me, that something is books and all their proffered experiences.”

― Madeline Martin, The Last Bookshop in London

“She loved that moment when she walked into a bookstore. Books were stacked everywhere, with friendly little signs directing you to local authors or signed copies or bestsellers.”

― Jasmine Guillory, By the Book

“You grow readers, expand minds, if you let them choose, but you go banning a read, you stunt the whole community.”

― Kim Michele Richardson, The Book Woman’s Daughter