Carl Sandburg Book Quotations

My room for books and study or for sitting and thinking about nothing in particular to see what would happen was at the end of a hall.

A book is never a masterpiece: it becomes one. Genius is the talent of a dead man.

I knew I would read all kinds of books and try to get at what it is that makes good writers good. But I made no promises that I would write books a lot of people would like to read.

We don't have to think up a title till we get the doggone book written.

I have become infected, now that I see how beautifully a book is coming out of all this.

His books were part of him. Each year of his life, it seemed, his books became more and more a part of him. This room, thirty by twenty feet, and the walls of shelves filled with books, had for him the murmuring of many voices. In the books of Herodotus, Tacitus, Rabelais, Thomas Browne, John Milton, and scores of others, he had found men of face and voice more real to him than many a man he had met for a smoke and a talk.

History is a living horse laughing at a wooden horse. History is a wind blowing where it listeth. History is no sure thing to bet on. History is a box of tricks with a lost key. History is a labyrinth of doors with sliding panels, a book of ciphers with the code in a cave of the Saragossa sea. History says, if it pleases, Excuse me, I beg your pardon, it will never happen again if I can help it.

The peace of great books be for you, Stains of pressed clover leaves on pages, Bleach of the light of years held in leather.

All my life I have been trying to learn to read, to see and hear, and to write.