“Learning to decipher words had only added to the pleasures of holding spines and turning pages, measuring the journey to the end with a thumb-riffle, poring over frontispieces. Books! Opening with a crackle of old glue, releasing perfume; closing with a solid thump.”

“A bran' new book is a beautiful thing, all promise and fresh pages, the neatly squared spine, the brisk sense of a journey beginning. But a well-worn book also has its pleasures, the soft caress and give of the paper's edges, the comfort, like an old shawl, of an oft-read story.”

“She had discovered with surprise and pleasure that as she turned each page, the book was written, as if for the first time, all over again.”

“There are lots of great ideas in my book, but as a cohesive unit, my book is only held together with glue at the spine.
 Or it would be, if it weren’t an ebook.”

“I've yet to find the exact word to describe the enjoyment that an evening spent riffling through old pattern books can bring.”

“An old book was a time capsule. When you opened the front cover, you opened a door to another world—a world accessible through a kind of looking glass made of hard-board and cloth. The author’s voice resonated in the reader’s head with the same words that had resonated in his own as he wrote them. He spoke to the reader from the past. What he had witnessed, experienced, learned, and discovered would live forever. You only had to turn a page to travel in time.”