Anyone who says they have only one life to live must not know how to read a book. –Anonymous

Why do we read? To become someone else. Mint Vinetu, a Lithuanian bookshop, invokes this idea of identity escape in a series of ads.

A good book should leave you slightly exhausted at the end.  You live several lives while reading it.  ~William Styron

Lord! when you sell a man a book you don’t sell just twelve ounces of paper and ink and glue – you sell him a whole new life.  Love and friendship and humour and ships at sea by night – there’s all heaven and earth in a book, a real book.  ~Christopher Morley

To sit alone in the lamplight with a book spread out before you, and hold intimate converse with men of unseen generations – such is a pleasure beyond compare.  ~Kenko Yoshida

Photos from Mint Vinetu.

And some other book stuff that I love:

I’ve been lusting over these gorgeous editions of classics from Penguin for more than a year. I want them all. It doesn’t matter that I already have copies of nearly all of these, multiples in some case.

I think Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is my favorite–the dodo birds make me smile.

These pictures from PosterText create an illustration from various novels using the text and white space. Love ’em. So clever.

And a few beautiful things from Etsy to conclude (click to see the listing):

I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read on the train. –Oscar Wilde 

Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else. –Gloria Steinem

Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience:  this is the ideal life.  ~Mark Twain