VT (for all of my design-obsessed peeps)

imagecourtesyflavorwire “The one way of tolerating existence is to lose oneself in literature as in a perpetual orgy.”  — Gustave Flaubert

imagecourtesyflavorpill “It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it.”  — Oscar Wilde

imagecourtesycoloroutsidethelinesblog “In my view, nineteen pounds of old books are at least nineteen times as delicious as one pound of fresh caviar.”  — Anne Fadiman

imagecourtesyathoughtfuleyeblog “When I look back, I am so impressed again with the life-giving power of literature. If I were a young person today, trying to gain a sense of myself in the world, I would do that again by reading, just as I did when I was young.”  — Maya Angelou

photolukaswassman courtesyflavorwire “What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die.”  — Anne Lamott

imagecourtesyhousebeautiful librarybyanthonybarattadesign “A book, too, can be a star, a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe.” — Madeleine L’Engle

photocourtesyzeospotcom “Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.” — Mark Twain

imagecourtesyjjjjound “We read to know that we are not alone.” — C.S. Lewis

imagecourtesytheenglishmuse When I get a little money, I buy books. If any is left, I buy food and clothes.” — Erasmus

imagecourtesythecaptivereaderwordpress viabeautiful-librariescom “I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.” — Jorge Luis Borges

imagecourtesgawker/latimes “We need to make books cool again. If you go home with somebody and they don’t have books, don’t fuck them. Don’t sleep with people who don’t read!” – John Waters

imagecourtesyvignettedesignblogspotviabeautiful-librariescom “You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.” — James Baldwin

imagecourtesyiappreciatethatviabeautiful-librariescom “Reading is everything. Reading makes me feel like I’ve accomplished something, learned something, become a better person. Reading makes me smarter. Reading gives me something to talk about later on. Reading is the unbelievably healthy way my attention deficit disorder medicates itself. Reading is escape, and the opposite of escape; it’s a way to make contact with reality after a day of making things up, and it’s a way of making contact with someone else’s imagination after a day that’s all too real. Reading is grist. Reading is bliss.” — Nora Ephron

imagecourtesygermansocietyorg viabeautiful-librariescom “I still love books. Nothing a computer can do can compare to a book. You can’t really put a book on the Internet. Three companies have offered to put books by me on the Net, and I said, ‘If you can make something that has a nice jacket, nice paper with that nice smell, then we’ll talk.’ All the computer can give you is a manuscript. People don’t want to read manuscripts. They want to read books. Books smell good. They look good. You can press it to your bosom. You can carry it in your pocket.”  – Ray Bradbury

imagecourtesyjjjjoundblog “I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we’re reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is my belief.” – Franz Kafka