“A book unopened alters not the ink on its pages. What is there is there.”

“Only the ship is made of books, its sails thousands of overlapping pages, and the sea it floats upon is dark black ink.”

“Unread books are like unopened doors.”

“Reading alters the appearance of a book. Once it has been read, it never looks the same again, and people leave their individual imprint on a book they have read. Once of the pleasures of reading is seeing this alteration on the pages, and the way, by reading it, you have made the book yours.”

“For a moment I was distracted. Books always did that to me... I liked the creamy pages, the smell of ink, all the secrets locked inside.”

“The burning of a book is a sad, sad sight, for even though a book is nothing but ink and paper, it feels as if the ideas contained in the book are disappearing as the pages turn to ashes and the cover and binding--which is the term for the stitching and glue that holds the pages together--blacken and curl as the flames do their wicked work. When someone is burning a book, they are showing utter contempt for all of the thinking that produced its ideas, all of the labor that went into its words and sentences, and all of the trouble that befell the author . . .”