Quotations about the Smell of Books
Welcome to my page of quotations about the smell of books and sniffing books. Yes, I am a book sniffer! IMHO, the best smells in the world are coffee, old books, petrichor, and evening orange blossoms on the breeze. There isn't yet a word meaning the smells or smelling of books, but two popular suggestions are ‘biblichor’ and ‘bibliosmia.’
—tg
Front shop and back shop reeked with the smells of new mahogany, dust, pillar-stove, gum, hot-pressed paper and Russian leather. ~May Sinclair, "Disjecta Membra Poetæ," The Divine Fire, 1904
You cannot hold a computer in your hand like you can a book. I don't care what they say about "e-books." A computer does not smell. There are two perfumes to a book: a book is new, it smells great; a book is old, it smells even better. It smells like ancient Egypt. So a book has got to smell. You have to hold it in your hands and pray to it. You put it in your pocket and you walk with it. And it stays with you forever. But the computer doesn't do that for you. I'm sorry. ~Ray Bradbury, interview with Sam Weller, 2010
I know every book of mine by its scent, and I have but to put my nose between the pages to be reminded of all sorts of things...
My Shakespeare has an odour which carries me further back in life; for these volumes belonged to my father, and before I was old enough to read them with understanding, it was often permitted me, as a treat, to take down one of them from the bookcase, and reverently to turn the leaves. The books smell exactly as they did in that old time, and what a strange tenderness comes upon me when I hold one of them in hand... ~George Gissing, The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft, 1903[a little altered —tg]
I was a bookman; I had always been a bookman. From adolescence books had been one of my passions... I would inhale the scholarship of others as a sweet smell. I would gather it like honey, but eclectically, never exhausting one flower before trying the next. ~Arnold Bennett (1867–1931), The Glimpse: An Adventure of the Soul, 1909
Bookshops are the most charming of all shops... Mr. Rowlandson's had stairs worn by the footfalls of four generations of book-hunters... The composed, brown calf bindings give the shop its tone, — and its faint odor, too; a cultivated taste, the liking for that odor of old books. ~Munson Havens, Old Valentines: A Love Story, 1914
My own love of books begins long before I start to read them. First of all, I am an incurable book-sniffer; when I open a new book I at once savour its scent, and I have had some odd looks from bookshop assistants in consequence... ~Bernard Levin, 1982
i love to
smell the flowers
and sniff the books
sitting in gardens
and library nooks
~Terri Guillemets, "Petals & leaves," 1995
So I retreated further into books and daydreams. Books! Books were the window from which I looked out of a rather meager and decidedly narrow room, onto a rich and wonderful universe. I loved the look and feel of them, even the smell. I'm still a book sniffer. That evocative mixture of paper and ink and glue and dust never fails to bring back the twinge of excitement that came with the opening of a new book. Libraries were treasure houses. I always entered them with a slight thrill of disbelief that all their endless riches were mine for the borrowing. And librarians I approached with reverent awe — guardians of the temple, keepers of the golden treasure. ~Zilpha Keatley Snyder (1927–2014), "Autobiography," 1985
I was raised among books, making invisible friends in pages that seemed cast from dust and whose smell I carry on my hands to this day. ~Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind, 2001, translated from Spanish by Lucia Graves, 2004
...we have perfectly lovely smelling old leather books in our library. ~Kate Trimble Sharber (b.1883), The Annals of Ann, 1910
Hello. I am a book addict. I sniff books.
I have a few close friends, all of them books.
My life is book lover, book worm, library visitor.
I could be planted for years in a reading nook.
Why? I love to breathe the air of old books!
~Terri Guillemets, "Book addict," 2018, scrambled blackout poetry created from Kate Carlisle, One Book in the Grave, 2012
You cannot hold a computer in your hand like you can a book. I don't care what they say about "e-books." A computer does not smell. There are two perfumes to a book: a book is new, it smells great; a book is old, it smells even better. It smells like ancient Egypt. So a book has got to smell. You have to hold it in your hands and pray to it. You put it in your pocket and you walk with it. And it stays with you forever. But the computer doesn't do that for you. I'm sorry. ~Ray Bradbury, interview with Sam Weller, 2010
I know every book of mine by its scent, and I have but to put my nose between the pages to be reminded of all sorts of things...
My Shakespeare has an odour which carries me further back in life; for these volumes belonged to my father, and before I was old enough to read them with understanding, it was often permitted me, as a treat, to take down one of them from the bookcase, and reverently to turn the leaves. The books smell exactly as they did in that old time, and what a strange tenderness comes upon me when I hold one of them in hand... ~George Gissing, The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft, 1903
I was a bookman; I had always been a bookman. From adolescence books had been one of my passions... I would inhale the scholarship of others as a sweet smell. I would gather it like honey, but eclectically, never exhausting one flower before trying the next. ~Arnold Bennett (1867–1931), The Glimpse: An Adventure of the Soul, 1909
Bookshops are the most charming of all shops... Mr. Rowlandson's had stairs worn by the footfalls of four generations of book-hunters... The composed, brown calf bindings give the shop its tone, — and its faint odor, too; a cultivated taste, the liking for that odor of old books. ~Munson Havens, Old Valentines: A Love Story, 1914
My own love of books begins long before I start to read them. First of all, I am an incurable book-sniffer; when I open a new book I at once savour its scent, and I have had some odd looks from bookshop assistants in consequence... ~Bernard Levin, 1982
i love to
smell the flowers
and sniff the books
sitting in gardens
and library nooks
~Terri Guillemets, "Petals & leaves," 1995
So I retreated further into books and daydreams. Books! Books were the window from which I looked out of a rather meager and decidedly narrow room, onto a rich and wonderful universe. I loved the look and feel of them, even the smell. I'm still a book sniffer. That evocative mixture of paper and ink and glue and dust never fails to bring back the twinge of excitement that came with the opening of a new book. Libraries were treasure houses. I always entered them with a slight thrill of disbelief that all their endless riches were mine for the borrowing. And librarians I approached with reverent awe — guardians of the temple, keepers of the golden treasure. ~Zilpha Keatley Snyder (1927–2014), "Autobiography," 1985
I was raised among books, making invisible friends in pages that seemed cast from dust and whose smell I carry on my hands to this day. ~Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind, 2001, translated from Spanish by Lucia Graves, 2004
...we have perfectly lovely smelling old leather books in our library. ~Kate Trimble Sharber (b.1883), The Annals of Ann, 1910
Hello. I am a book addict. I sniff books.
I have a few close friends, all of them books.
My life is book lover, book worm, library visitor.
I could be planted for years in a reading nook.
Why? I love to breathe the air of old books!
~Terri Guillemets, "Book addict," 2018, scrambled blackout poetry created from Kate Carlisle, One Book in the Grave, 2012