Unread Books Quotes:

An unread book is just a block of paper.

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

topic: Block, Book, Unread Books

An unread book does nobody any good. Stories happen in the mind of a reader, not among symbols printed on a page.

- Brandon Mull

topic: Book, Mind, Stories, Unread Books

The truly cultured are capable of owning thousands of unread books without losing their composure or their desire for more.

- Gabriel Zaid

source: Gabriel Zaid “So Many Books: Reading and Publishing in an Age of Abundance”, Paul Dry Books

topic: Book, Desire, Losing, Composure, Unread Books

I suddenly had a little epiphany: all the books we own, both read and unread, are the fullest expression of self we have at our disposal.

- Nick Hornby

source: Nick Hornby (2004). “The Polysyllabic Spree”, McSweeneys Books

topic: Book, Expression, Self, Whimsical, Unread Books

The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story.

- Ursula K. Le Guin

topic: Book, Reading, Writing, Story Writers, Story Writing

He is no true reader who has not experienced the reproachful fascination of the great shelves of unread books, of the libraries at night of which Borges is the fabulist. He is no reader who has not heard, in his inward ear, the call of the hundreds of thousands, of the millions of volumes which stand in the stacks of the British Library asking to be read. For there is in each book a gamble against oblivion, a wager against silence, which can be won only when the book is opened again (but in contrast to man, the book can wait centuries for the hazard of resurrection.)

- George Steiner

topic: Book, Night, Men, Wagers, Borges

Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means, mortgage rates, and the currently tight real-estate market alow you to put there.

- Nassim Nicholas Taleb

topic: Real, Book, Mean, Mortgage Rate, Real Estate Market

Living wild species are like a library of books still unread. Our heedless destruction of them is akin to burning the library without ever having read its books.

- John Dingell

topic: Book, Environmental, Library, Unread Books

There was that special smell made up of paper, ink, and dust; the busy hush; the endless luxury of thousands of unread books. Best of all was the eager itch of anticipation as you went out the door with your arms loaded down with books.

- Zilpha Keatley Snyder

source: Zilpha Keatley Snyder (2004). “The Velvet Room”, p.64, iUniverse

topic: Book, Doors, Dust, Unread Books

Destroying species is like tearing pages out of an unread book, written in a language humans hardly know how to read, about the place where they live.

- Holmes Rolston III

source: Holmes Rolston III (2012). “A New Environmental Ethics: The Next Millennium for Life on Earth”, p.131, Routledge

topic: Book, Pages, Language, Unread Books

Not everybody has time to pay attention fully, or not everybody has the time to read a book. Some people refuse to read books, and I'm just an unread book. Open me!

- Lil B

topic: Book, People, Attention, Unread Books

I am not by any stretch of the imagination a tidy person, and the piles of unread books on the coffee table and by my bed have a plaintive, pleading quality to me - 'Read me, please!'

- Linda Grant

topic: Coffee, Book, Imagination, Pleading, Tidy

‎"It’s not as if I don’t have anything to read; there’s a tower of perfectly good unread books next to my bed, not to mention the shelves of books in the living room I’ve been meaning to reread. I find myself, maddeningly, hungry for the next one, as yet unknown. I no longer try to analyze this hunger; I capitulated long ago to the book lust that’s afflicted me most of my life.

- Lewis Buzbee

topic: Book, Perfectly Good, Long Ago, Analyze This, Unread Books

I think overtly political novels - those that never transcend or contest their author's conscious intentions and prejudices - are problematic. This is not just true of the innumerable unread books in the socialist realist tradition, but also of novels that carry the burden of conservative ideologies, like Guerrillas, Naipaul's worst book, where the author's disgust for a certain kind of black activist and white liberal is overpowering.

- Pankaj Mishra

topic: Book, Thinking, White, Overpowering, Guerrillas

Blockbusting fiction is bought as furniture. Unread, it maintains its value. Read, it looks like money wasted. Cunningly, Americans know that books contain a person, and they want the person, not the book.

- Anthony Burgess

topic: Book, Looks, Fiction, Money Wasted, Unread Books

I find that I have about six bloggable ideas a day. I also find that writing twice as long a post doesn't increase communication, it usually decreases it. And finally, I found that people get antsy if there are unread posts in their queue.

- Seth Godin

source: "Interview: Seth Godin On How Often To Post To Your Blog". Interview with B.L. Ochman, January 12, 2009.

topic: Communication, Writing, Ideas, Unread Books

It takes me about a week and a half to read the typical book. I don't know how many ten-day spans I have left. Eventually the unread books on my shelves will have to be abandoned, or they will join me on the pyre. The book I'm about to purchase may be among them. We all buy books we won't live to read.

- Ken Kalfus

topic: Book, Half, May, Unread Books

Those who aspire to the status of cultured individuals visit bookstores with trepidation, overwhelmed by the immensity of all they have not read. They buy something that theyve been told is good, make an unsuccessful attempt to read it, and when they have accumulated half a dozen unread books, feel so bad that they are afraid to buy more. In contrast, the truly cultured are capable of owning thousands of unread books without losing their composure or their desire for more.

- Gabriel Zaid

source: Gabriel Zaid “So Many Books: Reading and Publishing in an Age of Abundance”, Paul Dry Books

topic: Book, Desire, Half, Immensity, Composure

A bizarrerie of fires, cunabulum of light, it moved with a deft, almost dainty deliberation, phasing into and out of existence like a storm-shot piece of evening; or perhaps the darkness between the flares was more akin to its truest nature swirl of black ashes assembled in prancing cadence to the lowing note of desert wind down the arroyo behind buildings as empty yet filled as the pages of unread books or stillnesses between the notes of a song.

- Roger Zelazny

source: Roger Zelazny (1989). “Frost and Fire”, William Morrow

topic: Song, Book, Fire, Dainty, Prancing

She thought of the library, so shining white and new; the rows and rows of unread books; the bliss of unhurried sojourns there and of going out to a restaurant, alone, to eat.

- Maud Hart Lovelace

source: "Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown". Book by Maud Hart Lovelace, 1943.

topic: Book, White, Shining, Unread Books