Quote of the Week: Christopher Morley

There is no mistaking a real book when one meets it. It is like falling in love, and like that colossal adventure it is an experience of great social import. Even as the tranced swain, the booklover yearns to tell others of his bliss. He writes letters about it, adds it to the postscript of all manner of communications, intrudes it into telephone messages, and insists on his friends writing down the title of the find. Like the simple-hearted betrothed, once certain of his conquest, “I want you to love her, too!” It is a jealous passion also. He feels a little indignant if he finds that any one else has discovered the book, too.

-- Christopher Morley (1890-1957)

Though the American essayist, poet and novelist wrote or contributed to over 100 books, Christopher Morley might be best known for his 1939 novel Kitty Foyle: The Natural History of a Woman which was adapted for the screen the following year. Morley was also one of the founders as well as a long time contributing editor to the Saturday Review of Literature. A big Sherlock Holmes fan, Morley founded the Baker Street Irregulars.

And you don’t have to spend much time around the work of Christopher Morley to know that this was a very quotable guy.

“When you sell a man a book, you don't sell him 12 ounces of paper and ink and glue -- you sell him a whole new life.”

What book lover is going to argue with that?

(Hat Tip to My Random Acts of Reading.)