'one of the biggest defects of books'

I've got lots of detective hats, three. I put them on whenever I find out mysterious things are going on in the palace. And I start to investigate, stealthily. It's not like the research I do with Mazatzin, because I do that with books. Books don't have anything in them about the present, only the past and the future. This is one of the biggest defects of books. Someone should invent a book that tells you what's happening at this moment, as you read. It must be harder to write that sort of book than the futuristic ones that predict the future. That's why they don't exist. And that's why I have to go and investigate reality.

—Juan Pablo Villalobos, Down the Rabbit Hole (2010, trans. Rosalind Harvey 2011)

Some Books

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.

—Francis Bacon, "Of Studies" (1625)

The Eighteenth Century

It was the age when first appears that well-known character of the academic world, the scholar whose spider-ridden house is so piled with books that he cannot go to bed and has to sleep in an arm-chair: the little, personal, disorganized sign of the disinterested passion for truth about the past. It was the ago when first appears, as a type, the 'pedant', and when appeared also the first delicate satires upon pedantry. It was the age when the social status of the pure scholar had risen to heights hardly known since the days of Erasmus--...when the Guide-Book to Paris mentions a number of savants among the important and interesting sights of that city.

—Owen Chadwick, From Bossuet to Newman (1957)

'No book written by someone is his grave.'

For some reason, I wanted expressly to discuss the great philosopher. Nodding my head at the book, I said, "I've been to his grave at Könisberg."

"I'm at his grave right now," said my companion, motioning to the open page.

A strange comparison. Doubtless there was nothing like that written there. Kant's thoughts are alive even now. No book written by someone is his grave, I wanted to believe.

—Arvo Valton, "On the Church Step" (1992), from Estonian Short Stories (trans. Ritva Poom 1996)

one little island in a very dark ocean

Soon, the priest spoke at length of his fears, while the hermit, mender of tents, listened patiently until the sun had begun to leak through the chinks in the west wall to paint glowing shafts in the dusty air.
      “Since the death of the last civilization, the Memorabilia has been our special province, Benjamin. And we’ve kept it. But now? I sense the predicament of the shoemaker who tries to sell shoes in a village of shoemakers.”
      The hermit smiled. “It could be done, if he manufactures a special and superior type of shoe.”
      “I’m afraid the secular scholars are already beginning to lay claim to such a method.”
      “Then go out of the shoemaking business, before you are ruined.”
      “A possibility,” the abbot admitted. “It’s unpleasant to think of it however. For twelve centuries, we’ve been one little island in a very dark ocean. Keeping the Memorabilia has been a thankless task, but a hallowed one, we think. It’s only our worldly job, but we’ve always been bookleggers and memorizers, and it’s hard to think that the job’s soon to be finished—soon to become unnecessary. I can’t believe that somehow.”

—Walter M. Miller, A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959)

Books are good company...

Books hold most of the secrets of the world, most of the thoughts that men and women have had. And when you are reading a book, you and the author are alone together---just the two of you. A library is a good place to go when you feel unhappy, for there, in a book, you may find encouragement and comfort. A library is a good place to go when you feel bewildered or undecided, for there, in a book, you may have your question answered. Books are good company, in sad times and happy times, for books are people---people who have managed to stay alive by hiding between the covers of a book.

—E.B. White, in a letter dated April 14, 1971, to the children of Troy, Michigan, upon the opening of a public library there (posted at Letters of Note)