Bibliostyle Quotes

“I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN most interested in the question of what makes a house a home. What are the elements that move a house beyond its physical structure and provide the warmth that we all crave? In my fifteen years as a designer, I’ve come to understand that the answer is simple: It is about surrounding ourselves with things we love.

(...) And in this case, the beauty comes from the owners’ love of books.

Books are beautiful objects in their own right—their bindings and covers—and the space they fill on shelves or stacked on coffee tables in colorful piles add balance and texture to any room. And just like any other part of a home, books require maintenance: They need to be dusted, categorized, rearranged, and maintained. Our relationship with them is dynamic and ever changing.

But our connection to them goes beyond the material. In each house we visited, the libraries were the heart of the home, meaningful to the collectors’ lives. In this book, we tried to capture what they brought to the home—the life and spirit books added. Some subjects have working libraries they constantly reference; others fill their shelves with the potential pleasures of the unread. When we visited the homes, many people could find favorite books almost by osmosis, using systems known only to themselves.

(...) As we found repeatedly, surrounding yourself with books you love tells the story of your life, your interests, your passions, your values. Your past and your future. Books allow us to escape, and our personal libraries allow us to invent the story of ourselves—and the legacy that we will leave behind.

There’s a famous quote attributed to Cicero: “A room without books is like a body without a soul.” If I suspected this before, I know it now. I hope you’ll find as much pleasure in discovering these worlds as we did.”
― Nina Freudenberger, Bibliostyle: How We Live at Home with Books

“I DON’T CALL MYSELF A BIBLIOPHILE,” says the illustrator Pierre Le-Tan, gesturing to the twelve-foot-high bookshelves that line the salon of his Left Bank apartment. “Those people like original editions with certain paper or watermarks.…That doesn’t interest me at all. Bibliophiles prefer the pages uncut, some of them; the edition might be wonderful, but what is the point of a book you can’t read? I just like to read my books.” Le-Tan is, by his own admission, a lover of beautiful things—but it’s obvious he lives with his hundreds of volumes rather than among them.”
― Nina Freudenberger, Bibliostyle: How We Live at Home with Books

“I DIDN’T START OUT AS A BOOK LOVER,” admits Phillip Lim. “Initially, it was more about pragmatism: seeking knowledge having to do with research on work, on my interiors, building a home, even a word I wanted to understand more. But what I love about books is, once you start, you get to go deeper and deeper and deeper into a subject, and from there you go to another book, and another book, and soon after, you have a wall of books. And then you have two walls of books. And then—” The designer indicates the floor-to-ceiling bookcases that serve as the focal point of his loft apartment.

“Books are how I learn,” Lim continues, “but I’m not nostalgic. I hate to look back; books inform you, but then they also become decoration. That may sound horrible to a true book lover, but I feel I honor them by making these objects part of my aesthetic world.”

PHILLIP LIM”
― Nina Freudenberger, Bibliostyle: How We Live at Home with Books

“I CANNOT LIVE WITHOUT A LIBRARY, and I cannot live without a garden,” says Vik Muniz. “A garden is where we negotiate with nature—a place between the wild and the tame—and a library is where we confront everything.”
― Nina Freudenberger, Bibliostyle: How We Live at Home with Books

“Books are such great gifts, because they don’t just say what you think about the book, but about the person you’re giving them to.”

MARK LEE”
― Nina Freudenberger, Bibliostyle: How We Live at Home with Books

“I don’t want to sound pretentious, but I don’t understand people who don’t have books.” Emmanuel de Bayser”
― Nina Freudenberger, Bibliostyle: How We Live at Home with Books

“I’ll sit in the living room and I’ll go through them, either looking for something I remember seeing, or for something to catch my eye and inspire me. And with books, there’s still an element of serendipity; you see new elements from day to day.”

Kathleen Hackett & Stephen Antonson”
― Nina Freudenberger, Bibliostyle: How We Live at Home with Books

“Knausgaard alternates between periods of intense reading and not reading at all; the mountains of books are, he says, largely aspirational. He classifies them into three categories: books he wants to read, books he has to read, and books he feels he ought to read. In the last, unchanging category—which he calls the superego heap—you’ll find a large number of books on philosophy.”
― Nina Freudenberger, Bibliostyle: How We Live at Home with Books

“I have a bad memory and too many books,” distributed among four homes, “so I waste lots of time walking around searching” for a specific book. This has its upside: he’s often surprised by books he’d forgotten.”
― Nina Freudenberger, Bibliostyle: How We Live at Home with Books

“IN EVERY SINGLE SEAT IN THIS HOUSE, YOU CAN PICK UP A BOOK.”
― Nina Freudenberger, Bibliostyle: How We Live at Home with Books

“I think the way people treat books is a bit of an indicator of their character," he says.”
― Nina Freudenberger, Bibliostyle: How We Live at Home with Books

“I DON'T WANT TO SOUND PRETENTIOUS," says Emmanuel de Bayser, "but I don't understand people who don't have books.”
― Nina Freudenberger, Bibliostyle: How We Live at Home with Books

“My environment is incredibly important to me. Arranging things creates order, not just in your own space but also in all of life.”
― Nina Freudenberger, Bibliostyle: How We Live at Home with Books

“Despite the demanding nature of his schedule, Lee is a voracious reader. "I read everywhere," he says. "I have a great reading chair, and I read in bed- a terrible habit for my neck and my eyes. But I find it calming: It's a different part of my brain, unlike the way I take in other media, and I think I retain information better.”
― Nina Freudenberger, Bibliostyle: How We Live at Home with Books

“I really only read in the library," he says. "I'm really attached to the idea that different spaces, whether physical or interpersonal, will create different thoughts and experiences. Having a comfortable chair, good light-- these things do put you into a state of mind to better absorb ideas.”
― Nina Freudenberger, Bibliostyle: How We Live at Home with Books

“Although he denies having a photographic memory, he admits that "when I'm looking for a line I've read, I tend to remember the place on the page, its relationship to the rest of the text.”
― Nina Freudenberger, Bibliostyle: How We Live at Home with Books