17 quotes for book lovers about the therapy of reading
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Will Schwalbe’s Books for Living: a Reader’s Guide to Life was published earlier this year, five years after The End of Your Life Book Club. Back in January, I wrote about how Books for Living had helped me to slow down, make time for the important stuff, and ask others more often, “What are you reading?”
Reading fiction is how I wind down, escape from work and worries, and become a better me. The business and self-improvement books I can sometimes gravitate towards don’t cut it.
To help keep this in mind, here are some of the many quotes I highlighted, underlined, and applauded in Will Schwalbe’s Books for Living. I hope that other keen readers will enjoy these too.
The best quotes for book lovers about the therapy of reading
1. On looking to books for answers

2. On being a librarian, bookseller and reader
3. Reading makes us feel less alone
4. Talking about books is the greatest gift

5. Searching for books to help us make sense of the world
6. On accidentally discovering books that change your life
7. One question we should ask more often
8. Don’t ignore book recommendations from the universe
9. The best part of interrupting a book with a nap
“The best thing about a nap that interrupts my reading is that it often enriches my experience of a book by allowing my subconscious to place me in it. During these naps I might find myself galloping across the moors with Heathcliff or spending Mondays and Wednesdays with Morrie.”
10. Books improve us without us trying

11. Books and people are bound together
12. Every book changes your life
“I’m not the same reader when I finish a book as I was when I started. Brains are tangles of pathways, and reading creates new ones. Every book changes your life. So I like to ask: “How is this book changing mine?”
13. Reading is an art
“Reading is an art we practice our whole lives. It’s not like tying a shoe – it’s like ink painting or flower arranging.”
14. Books don’t need to be thick enough to stop bullets
“A book doesn’t need to be thick enough to stop bullets. It doesn’t need to lower your cholesterol. It doesn’t even need to be a force for social good, though it’s tremendous when it is. It just needs to be ‘an affirmation of life against the transcience of that life, an essential defiance.’ It just needs to be the book you need when you need it.”
15. Reading brings with it responsibility
“Books have played a role in almost every one of the world’s great civil and human rights movements, but only because people who read then decided to act. Reading brings with it responsibility.”
16. On beautiful endings
17. Reading widely is a way to become more fully human – and more humane
“Reading all different kinds of books is not simply reading all different kinds of books; it’s a way of becoming more fully human and more humane.”
If you adore books, need a bit of a boost, and would love some gentle comfort and guidance, check out The Sanctuary, a seven-day course from Tolstoy Therapy.