A Quote by Elizabeth Bishop
Open the book. (The gilt rubs off the edges of the pages and pollinates the fingertips.)
Related Quotes
Only those books come down which deserve to last . All the gilt edges, vellum and morocco, all the presentation copies to all the libraries will not preserve a book in circulation beyond its intrinsic date.
Overdone lipstick is a deterrent to men. It rubs off easily onto their skin and the edges of their shirts, so it discourages them from kissing, touching, and coming closer to you, which is what they really want to do!
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.
Why do you read many books? The great book is within your heart. Open the pages of this inexhaustible book, the source of all knowledge. You will know everything.
There is a difference between a book of two hundred pages from the very beginning, and a book of two hundred pages which is the result of an original eight hundred pages. The six hundred are there. Only you don't see them.
When I open them, most of the books have the smell of an earlier time leaking out between the pages - a special odor of the knowledge and emotions that for ages have been calmly resting between the covers. Breathing it in, I glance through a few pages before returning each book to its shelf.
The only way [the book can be written] is to set the unbook-the gilt-framed portrait of the book-right there on the altar and sacrifice it, truly sacrifice it. Only then may the book, the real live flawed finite book, slowly, sentence by carnal sentence, appear.
I’d much rather pretend I’m somewhere else, and any time I open the pages of a book, that happens.
I used to comfort myself with the idea of a book with serrated, detachable pages, so that you could read the thing the way it came and then shuffle the pages, like a giant deck of cards, and read the book in an entirely different order. It would be a different book, wouldn't it? It would be one of infinite books.
When I was working at Gilt, a lot of people at the time - this is back in 2009; Gilt launched in 2007 - were making their first fashion purchases online and at a discount.
If I never see you again I will always carry you inside outside on my fingertips and at brain edges and in centers centers of what I am of what remains.
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 . . .
I'd love to do a book with scratch n' sniff pages and pieces of string and plastic attached to the pages, you know?
There are things I'll never talk about for sure. My life is an open book, but there's always a few secret pages in the back that nobody will be able to read.
I have to get three pages done every day, and there's usually a point about 150 pages in where everything falls apart, where all the plans are for naught. The book has become something else, and I have a nervous breakdown, and then I submit to what the book has become, and I keep going, and that's a terrible and then a great time.
To stand in a great bookshop crammed with books so new that their pages almost stick together, and the gilt on their backs is still fresh, has an excitement no less delightful than the old excitement of the second-hand bookstall.
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