Quotes by Lewis Buzbee

For the last several days Ive had the sudden and general urge to buy a new book. Ive stopped off at a few bookstores around the city, and while Ive looked at hundreds and hundreds of books in that time, I have not found the one book that will satisfy my urge. Its not as if I dont have anything to read; theres a tower of perfectly good unread books next to my bed, not to mention the shelves of books in the living room Ive been meaning to reread. I find myself, maddeningly, hungry for the next one, as yet unknown. I no longer try to analyze this hunger; I capitulated long ago to the book lust thats afflicted me most of my life. I know enough about the course of the disease to know Ill discover something soon.

If you read one book a week, starting at the age of 5, and live to be 80, you will have read a grand total of 3,900 books, a little over one-tenth of 1 percent of the books currently in print.

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 papers edges, the comfort, like an old shawl, of an oft-read story.

Ive had many more thousands of books in my possession than my shelves at home would indicate. At one time, I tried to keep them all, but that quest soon became impossible; I now only keep the ones Im sure Im going to reread, the ones Im definitely going to read before I die, and the ones I cant bear to part with because of an aesthetic or emotional attachment.