Bookstore Quotations

There is that romanticized idea of what a bookstore can be, what a library can be, what a shop can be. And to me, they are that. These are places that open doors into other worlds if only you're open to them.

I was that kid with the glasses and the hungry expression who haunted every library book sale and used bookstore in town: the one who always has a book in one hand and is reaching for the next book with the other. There's one in every town.

I am a big advocate of the role of the bookstore in the community.

I was a blueberry picker, bindery worker, bookstore clerk and later manager, and a Realtor.

The daily quota I've set for myself is 500 words or approximately a page and a half double-spaced. Which isn't much, except that I'm extremely slow, extremely meticulous. 'Le mot juste' haunts me. On a good day, I will finally secrete the 500th word at about 5 o'clock, and I'll reward myself by going to Housing Works Bookstore to read.

No matter how beautiful and loved a cover may be, the jury on it remains uncommitted until the book has been in the world for a while. Perhaps bookstore buyers will be indifferent. Perhaps it will be lost on store shelves. Perhaps there's another book or two out there using the same or a similar photo.

Early in my publishing career, someone told me I'd need to have five books in print before I could quit my job as a journalist. Turns out it was closer to 10 books. It also turns out that while it's great to see my titles on bookstore shelves, my best customers are schools and libraries.

Average Americans order nonfat decaf iced vanilla lattes at Starbucks and choose from 1,500 drawer pulls at The Great Indoors. Amazon gives every town a bookstore with 2 million titles, while Netflix promises 35,000 different movies on DVD. Choice is everywhere - liberating to some, but to others, a new source of stress.

I think for Amazon's customers, it offers a kind of addictive service - the ability to shop without leaving your house, the ability to read without going to a bookstore or a library.

Any independent bookstore that has managed to survive is the best place to do a reading.

Just as we were finishing 'Paul's Boutique' we got our own places, and I was going out to clubs a lot less. I got a bit more introverted and spent a lot more time on my own reading. I would just go down to the esoteric bookstore and wander around.

I'm an inveterate bookstore wanderer. I read constantly, so I love a good bookstore. I can't help it.

I was in a bookstore one afternoon, and I stumbled across this book called 'A Guide to Film Schools.' I always loved movies growing up and had never even conceived that it was something you could do for a living. Realizing most of them were in Los Angeles and knowing that was warm, I ended up applying.

I first got really interested in Noh in about 1977. There was an independent bookstore in Bloomington, Indiana where I was going to high school. It was a really nice place. There was a New Directions paperback. It was the Pound/Fenollosa book, 'The Classic Noh Theatre of Japan.'

It strikes me that people want to be engaged, and that those who go into a bookstore in a time of crisis are much more likely to be looking for explanation than for escapism.

We're making changes because the bookstore has struggled to make a profit or break even over the past few years. We have begun affiliating our bookstore with Columbia as they are the eighth largest in the country and know how to run a retail company.

Nobody in France would ever say 'He's a Jewish novelist' or 'She's a black novelist,' even though people do write about those subjects. It would look absurd to a French person to go into a bookstore and see a 'Gay Studies' section.

One of the fine moments in 1940s film is no longer than a blink: Bogart, as he crosses the street from one bookstore to another, looks up at a sign.

I do a lot of research. For 'I Am Legend', I did a lot of research about survivors. If everybody is dead around you, how you can keep surviving. I went to the bookstore and found psychiatry books about survivors from the Holocaust.

I have never checked online. I've always used the bookstore because it's convenient.

Here's an idea: Spend two or three hours a day at least five days a week in front of a bookstore wearing a sandwich board with your bookcover on it while you chase and chat with anyone you can corral and who is willing to talk to you.

Having the book sell out of stores is far and away the most difficult step of all. Walk into a bookstore these days and scan the shelves. Thousands, sometimes tens of thousands of books, are competing with yours and the front of the store is dominated by brand-name authors.

Just look at the shelves of any bookstore in any airport, and you see how much people love crime and mysteries, how much they love solving puzzles.

Our bookstore is merging with Barnes and Noble and also brining Starbucks Coffee on campus as well. That will be a great asset to the students as well as the community. We hope to begin construction on the new bookstore sometime this fall.

People just assume that the bookstore orders the books and has all the control and we don't. I have the control over how many I order, but I don't have control over what's picked for a class.

When the parade began, Lloyd came out of the bookstore and was standing on the sidewalk. And when he saw me he called out in a very loud voice: "JOE! Isn't this wonderful! Isn't this a marvelous day! Can you imagine this ever happening?

We just won't be a walk-in bookstore anymore. As long as there are call-in orders we will keep that (side of the business) going.

When we needed to find a hippie bookstore that sold secondhand books, I thought of Abandoned Planet (518 Valencia St.), which is right across the street from where I used to live, ... When I was a starving writer-director-actor, I'd go to the Muddy Waters Cafe (521 Valencia St.) every day, buy a $3.50 burrito and eat half for lunch, half for dinner.

Bookstore operators tell us that the books which head the bestseller list are books on peace and happiness.

Even our bookstore didn't have the greatest amount. We had a Jai Lewis jersey. I think that might have been it.

I spent seven months trying to collect from a major bookstore chain. Amazon drops the money in my checking account every single month without fail.

The smallest bookstore still contains more ideas of worth than have beenpresented in the entire history of television."Andrew Ross

The smallest bookstore still contains more ideas of worth than have been presented in the entire history of television.

The thing that happened with the music business, there are no stores anymore where you can buy music. It's all an online business now, and that's, you know - the bookstore culture is a very vibrant part of the American experience that we're very reluctant to see go away.

This is the first time I've been to a bookstore that I actually had to search for.

Amazon thrived because it implemented the online bookstore idea better than any of its early rivals did, not because it was the only company to have the idea or the first company to have the idea. It continues to grow only because it keeps trying to improve on the details of the idea and the way it puts it into practise.

A bookstore to me is ike a candy store, ... There is not a book I would not want to read at some point. My son is learning to read right now. Watching him get excited how he can discover things through books is pretty phenomenal.

It's one thing for the people in the industry to know who you are, because they've heard about you earlier. I have friends calling me from the Christian bookstore because there's a poster on the wall. It's just weird.

I want the students to understand how much of a savings they are getting with the rental program. Anyone who's gone into a campus bookstore and priced a book has a greater appreciation for this service. They have books that can cost $140 and $180 each.

If you're going to have a book published in China, that means that you're going to be subject to in-house censorship at the publisher, and then also, of course, the government has an apparatus that is in charge of making sure that ideas that are considered disruptive or overly critical, that those don't get onto bookstore shelves.

I like to give people novels I think they would like, on no particular occasion - just when we're in a bookstore together. I like to receive reference books on my birthday.

I come from a working-class family, and I've been working since I was 13, from babysitting to blueberry picking to factory work to bookstore work. And of course, being a mother and homemaker, the hardest work of all.

The Internet threatens to give every child with access to an interactive computer a free pass into the equivalent of every adult bookstore and video outlet in the country.