E. M. Forster Book Quotations

One always tends to overpraise a long book, because one has got through it.

The only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little farther down our particular path than we have yet got ourselves.

At night, when the curtains are drawn and the fire flickers, my books attain a collective dignity.

One's favorite book is as elusive as one's favorite pudding.

But this time I'm not to blame; I want you to believe that. I simply slipped into those violets. No, I want to be really truthful. I am a little to blame. The sky, you know, was gold, and the ground all blue, and for a moment he looked like some one in a book.

Long books, when read, are usually overpraised, because the reader wishes to convince others and himself that he has not wasted his time.

The book [ A Passage to India ] shows signs of fatigue and disillusionment; but it has chapters of clear and triumphant beauty, and above all it makes us wonder, what will he write next?

Ah, but you see, I didn't want to be fair.

Most of life is so dull that there is nothing to be said about it, and the books and talk that would describe it as interesting are obliged to exaggerate, in the hope of justifying their own existence.

Books have to be read (worse luck it takes so long a time). It is the only way of discovering what they contain. A few savage tribes eat them, but reading is the only method of assimilation revealed to the West.

Books have to be read it is the only way of discovering what they contain.