Top Ten Favorite Book Quotes

The Broke and Bookish

Every Tuesday over at the Broke and the Bookish they have a Tuesday Top Ten. This week we're detailing our Top Ten Favorite Book Quotes:

               1. “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one.” 

 -George R.R. Martin, A Dance With Dragons

Never has a truer statement been said. Every time I read a good book I fall in love with the characters and their stories. I become engrossed and attached to their lives and ultimately they become my friends. This is why reading is magic. It takes you somewhere else in an instant. It opens your heart and creates an escape for your mind. Reading is brilliant and this quote epitomizes that.

                  2.“Sleep is good, he said, And books are better.”

-George R.R. Martin, A Clash of Kings

For every reader who has spent a day groggy because they were engrossed in a novel until the wee hours of the morning. It’s always worth it. After all, you can always sleep when you’re dead.

        3.  "After all this time?” “Always," said Snape.

-J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows 

I love this quote because it shows how deep true love runs even if it’s painful.

4. “Most maidens are perfectly capable of rescuing themselves in my experience, at least the ones worth something, in any case.”

-Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

Truth.

 5. “Rule number one: Always stick around for one more drink. That's when things happen. That's when you find out everything you want to know.”

-John Berendt, Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil

 If you want to get to know people and bond with them you have to commit. You’ll see the truer side of people the longer you stay. That’s when people start to relax and let down their “hoity toity” good behavior vibe. And again, You can always sleep when you’re dead. Notice a theme? Although, I do understand if you wanted to pass up that drink so you could head home and read, reading is always more important. Obviously.

6. “The moment you stop to think about whether you love someone, you've already stopped loving that person forever.”

-Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

I love this quote because it is so tragically sad. It seems to me that if a person is questioning whether they love someone it isn’t because they want to be out of love but because they desperately want to be IN love with that person. Life would be so much easier if people could just choose the ones they give their hearts to.

      7. “In the shop we buy and sell them, but in truth books have no owner. Every book you see here has been somebody’s best friend.”

-Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

 I love this about books! A story can belong to everyone and you can instantly become best friends with all the other readers of that story. 

      8. “This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped shells, were destroyed by the war.”

-Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front

This quote speaks volumes. People need to be reminded that war is not some great game. War has casulties, far beyond the death count, that will mark and change our society years after the war is over.

9. “No sight so sad as that of a naughty child," he began, "especially a naughty little girl. Do you know where the wicked go after death?"
"They go to hell," was my ready and orthodox answer.
"And what is hell? Can you tell me that?"
"A pit full of fire."
"And should you like to fall into that pit, and to be burning there for ever?"
"No, sir."
"What must you do to avoid it?"
I deliberated a moment: my answer, when it did come was objectionable: "I must keep in good health and not die.”
-Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

Saucy and smart, I love it.

10. “Good-night, my-" He stopped, bit his lip, and abruptly left me.”
- Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

You truly didn't think I would end a post without mentioning tortured love did you? One of the reasons I love Jane Eyre as much as I do is because the whole book oozes the kind of desperate love that tightens my heart. And sure, there may have been a million other quotes to depict that feeling but I like this one best. It shows the simple anguish and torment Mr. Rochester feels when he's near Jane. Nothing is better than that.

P.S. I realize that I may have cheated and used the same book twice but I couldn't help it! The books I love have so many amazing quotes, it was hard to choose!