50 Bookstore Quotes About Places That Are Special to Every Bookworm

If you love reading, you will love these bookstore quotes that remind you just how special spending time in a bookstore can be.

Bookstores are a place that set a slower pace of life as they encourage you to take your time and peruse through different books.

Here are some things you should look for to tell you that you are in a good bookstore:

• A large selection of books with many different genres
• Friendly staff that is willing to help you but doesn’t hover over you
• A comfortable seating area where you can sit down and browse through some books
• A place that holds events such as book clubs, author talks or signings, and readings for kids
• A bookstore that is organized and labeled so that you can find what you are looking for

Read these bookstore quotes to see if they remind you of your favorite bookstore.

Top Bookstore Quotes

Enjoy these quotes about bookstores.

1. “Bookshops are my natural habitat.” — Kathy Lette

2. “I am fatally attracted to all bookstores.” — Lewis Buzbee

3. “Bookstores are wondrous places, are they not?” — Higasa Akai

4. “A place isn’t a place until it has a bookstore.” — Gabrielle Zevin

5. “Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?” — Henry Ward Beecher

6. “The first thing I do in any town I come to is ask if it has a bookstore.” — Robert Frost

7. “Wherever I go, bookstores are still the closest thing to a town square.” — Gloria Steinem

8. “I love bookstores. I love the energy in a bookstore and the smell of the paper.” — Chris Colfer

9. “Bookstores always remind me that there are good things in this world.” — Vincent Van Gogh

10. “Here is the treasure chest of the world—the public library or a bookstore.” — Benjamin Carson

The Magic of Bookstore Quotes

Feel the magic of walking into a bookstore in the following quotes.

11. “Browsing through the shelves in bookstores or libraries, I was completely happy.” — Louis L’Amour

12. “Get your friends together, go to your local bookstore, and have a book-buying party.” — Roy Blount, Jr.

13. “A bookstore is one of the only pieces of evidence we have that people are still thinking.” — Jerry Seinfeld

14. “I can never leave a bookstore without buying a book. I read four or five at a time.” — Mireille Guiliano

15. “Bookstores, like libraries, are the physical manifestation of the wide world’s longest, most-thrilling conversation.” — Richard Russo

16. “Wealth is walking into any bookshop and buying any book you want without looking at the price tag.” — John Waters

17. “I think bookstore browsing will become more cherished as time goes on because it can’t be replicated virtually.” — Chuck Hogan

18. “I have gone to [this bookshop] for years, always finding the one book I wanted—and then three more I hadn’t known I wanted.” — Mary Ann Shaffer

19. “Bookshops are places of magical discoveries and the rediscovery of past pleasures. My bookshop, in fact, any bookshop, makes me very happy.” — Liane Moriarty

20. “You see, bookshops are dreams built of wood and paper. They are time travel and escape and knowledge and power. They are, simply put, the best of places.” — Jen Campbell

You will also enjoy our article on book inscription quotes.

Quotes About Why People Love Bookstores

Learn more about why people enjoy bookstores even in the digital age.

21. “I get crazy in a bookstore. It makes my heart beat hard because I want to buy everything.” — Reese Witherspoon

22. ”I just love the smell of an old bookstore and the feel of the crisp pages along my fingertips.” — Leah Spiegel

23. “I’m an inveterate bookstore wanderer. I read constantly, so I love a good bookstore. I can’t help it.” — David Crosby

24. “I love walking into a bookstore. It’s like all my friends are sitting on shelves, waving their pages at me.” — Tahereh Mafi

25. “Standing there, starting at the long shelves crammed with books, I felt myself relax and was suddenly at peace.” — Helene Hanff

26. “Reading is such a personal thing to me. I’d much rather give someone a gift certificate to a bookstore and let that person choose his or her own books.” — Erik Larson

27. “I stepped into the bookshop and breathed in that perfume of paper and magic that strangely no one had ever thought of bottling.” — Carlos Ruiz Zafón

28. “Those of us who read because we love it more than anything, who feel about bookstores the way some people feel about jewelers.” — Anna Quindlen

29. “The problem with digital books is that you can always find what you are looking for, but you need to go to a bookstore to find what you weren’t looking for.” — Paul Krugman

30. “A bookstore is one of the few places where all the cantankerous, conflicting, alluring voices of the world co-exist in peace and order, and the avid reader is as free as a person can possibly be because she is free to choose among them.” — Jane Smiley

Independent Bookstore Quotes About Their Importance

Independent bookstores hold a special place in people’s hearts, as shown in the quotes below.

31. “Any independent bookstore that has managed to survive is the best place to do a reading.” — Ruth Ozeki

32. “I am very happy in second-hand bookshops; would a gardener not be happy in a garden?” — Hilary Mantel

33. “The bookstore and the coffeehouse are natural allies; neither has a time limit, slowness is encouraged.” — Lewis Buzbee

34. “Even an ice cream parlor—a definite advantage—does not alleviate the sorrow I feel for a town lacking a bookstore.” — Natalie Goldberg

35. “A good bookshop is not just about selling books from shelves, but reaching out into the world and making a difference.” — David Almond

36. “The Bookshop has a thousand books, / All colors, hues, and tinges, / And every cover is a door / That turns on magic hinges.” — Nancy Byrd Turner

37. “In a second-hand bookshop, head to the back, find the old books with dust undisturbed and worn off covers for these clothe true treasures.” — Rachel Hall

38. “What I say is, a town isn’t a town without a bookstore. It may call itself a town, but unless it’s got a bookstore, it knows it’s not foolin’ a soul.” — Neil Gaiman

39. “Every time I see some author scheduled to read and sign his books at a chain bookstore, I feel like telling him he’s stabbing the independent bookstores in the back.” — Lawrence Ferlinghetti

40. “Nothing will ever replace the experience of wandering haphazardly through a great bookstore, no matter how many algorithms are developed to find matches for our tastes. That’s because not only is there no accounting for taste, there is no predicting it either.” — Dominique Browning

More Bookstore Quotes for Avid Readers

Here are a few more quotes about bookstores for readers to enjoy and connect with.

41. “After school, I’d hang out at the Borders bookstore until it closed.” — Garrett Hedlund

42. “Books look handsome, and it’s a real singular experience getting to go to a bookstore.” — Taylor Goldsmith

43. “We all just took the bookstore at its word because if you couldn’t trust a bookstore, what could you trust?” — Rachel Cohn

44. “I had to leave my debit card at home when I went into a bookstore or else I would drain my account.” — Chelsea M. Cameron

45. “A literary academic can no more pass a bookstore than an alcoholic can pass a bar.” — Carolyn Heilbrun

46. “As I watched bookstores close, I began to wonder how that felt for the owners. Owning a bookstore was their dream, and now they’re struggling and seeing those dreams fall apart.” — Karen Kingsbury

47. “Sometimes, when I’m in a bookstore or library, I am overwhelmed by all the things that I do not know. Then I am seized by a powerful desire to read all the books, one by one.” — Arthur C. Clarke

48. “A civilization without retail bookstores is unimaginable. Like shrines and other sacred meeting places, bookstores are essential artifacts of human nature. The feel of a book taken from the shelf and held in the hand is a magical experience, linking writer to reader.” — Jason Epstein

49. “You cannot invent an algorithm that is as good at recommending books as a good bookseller, and that’s the secret weapon of the bookstore—is that no algorithm will ever understand readers the way that other readers can understand readers.” — John Green

50. “I can’t pass a bookstore without slipping inside, looking for the next book that will burn my hand when I touch its jacket or hand me over a promissory note of such immense power that it contains the formula that will change everything about me.” — Pat Conroy

Why Are Bookstores So Important?

According to booknet.com, bookstores are essential because “bookstores are cornerstones of the local community, providing a haven for those who are passionate about reading.”

We all need a place to feel comfortable and accepted; a bookstore provides that for many people.

Please share these bookstore quotes with your family and friends and post any comments about bookstores in the comment section below.