Bookish Quotes #46

“Until then I had thought each book spoke of the things, human or divine, that lie outside books. Now I realized that not infrequently books speak of books: it is as if they spoke among themselves. In the light of this reflection, the library seemed all the more disturbing to me. It was then the place of a long, centuries-old murmuring, an imperceptible dialogue between one parchment and another, a living thing, a receptacle of powers not to be ruled by a human mind, a treasure of secrets emanated by many minds, surviving the death of those who had produced them or had been their conveyors.”
~ Umberto Eco

 "Even books, word-things that should be judged by their content, fascinate me as objects.  I confess I have many books in my library that I have never read nor had the intention of reading.  I want them because their sheer presence represents a yearning, a mood, a love, and yes, an act of self-preservation.  When my eyes scan my library, the typefaces of the titles, the textures of the covers, and their imagined weight give me a moment very like the pleasure of reading."
~ Leo Lionni