To a lover of books the shops and sales in London present irresistible temptations.

A place is not really a place without a bookstore.

Altogether, if I had to pick one place to hang out anywhere, from New York to Cape Town and Australia to Hong Kong, a bookstore would be it.

though books, as Milton says, may be the embalming of mighty spirits, they are also the resurrection of rebellious, reactionary, fantastical, and wicked spirits! in books dwell all the demons and all the angels of the human mind. it is for this reason that a a bookshop — especially a second-hand bookshop / antiquarian - is an arsenal of explosives, an armory of revolutions, an opium den of reaction.

and just because books are the repository of all the redemptions and damnations, all the sanities and insanities, of the divine anarchy of the soul, they are still, as they have alwasys been, an object of suspicion to every kind of ruling authority. in a second-hand bookshop are the horns of the altar where all the outlawed thoughts of humanity can take refuge! here, like depserate bandits, hide all the reckless progeny of our wild, dark, self-lacerating hearts. a bookshop is powder-magazine, a dynamite-shed, a drugstore of poisons, a bar of intoxicants, a den of opiates, an island of sirens.

of all the 'houses of ill fame' which a tyrant, a bureaucrat, a propagandist, a moralist, a champion of law and order, an advocate of keeping people ignorant for their own good, hurries past with averted eyes or threatens with this minions, a bookshop is the most flagrant.

~ autobiography

A place ain't a place without a bookstore,

A good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read.

That's why I call this place the Haunted Bookshop. Haunted by the ghosts of the books I haven't read. Poor uneasy spirits, they walk and walk around me. There's only one way to lay the ghost of a book, and that is to read it.

By Charing Cross in London Town </br> There runs a road of high renown, </br> Where antique books are ranged on shelves </br> As dark and dusty as themselves. And many booklovers have spent </br> Their substance there with great content, </br> And vexed their wives and filled their homes </br> With faded prints and massive tomes.

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.

Wealth is walking into any bookshop and buying any book you want without looking at the price tag.

Bookstores attract the right kind of folk.

That's why I call this place the Haunted Bookshop. Haunted by the ghosts of the books I haven't read.

Wherever I go, bookstores are still the closest thing to a town square.

So often, a visit to a bookshop has cheered me, and reminded me that there are good things in the world.