We're celebrating heading back to school--and a new season of the NEA Big Read--with a round-up of quotes that celebrate our love of books and of reading. Find out where there's an NEA Big Read taking place near you on arts.gov! (And it's not too soon to start thinking about applying to host a Big Read in your community next year!) 

"What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die."  — Anne Lamott

"To read is to voyage through time." — Carl Sagan

"Books ARE a form of political action. Books are knowledge. Books are reflection. Books change your mind." — Toni Morrison

"Reading and thoughtfulness and openness are the best way, I should think, to begin to address the richness that is in each of us." — Julia Alvarez

"A word after a word after a word is power." ― Margaret Atwood

"A library is a good place to go when you feel unhappy, for there, in a book, you may find encouragement and comfort. A library is a good place to go when you feel bewildered or undecided, for there, in a book, you may have your question answered. Books are good company, in sad times and happy times, for books are people—people who have managed to stay alive by hiding between the covers of a book." — E.B. White

"A book is more than a verbal structure or series of verbal structures; it is the dialogue it establishes with its reader and the intonation it imposes upon his voice and the changing and durable images it leaves in his memory. A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships." ― Jorge Luis Borges

"When I look back, I am so impressed again with the life-giving power of literature. If I were a young person today, trying to gain a sense of myself in the world, I would do that again by reading, just as I did when I was young." ― Maya Angelou

"A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading." ― William Styron

"We read books to find out who we are. What other people, real or imaginary, do and think and feel... is an essential guide to our understanding of what we ourselves are and may become." ― Ursula K. LeGuin