What is the point of a book?

Brooke laughed until she nearly choked. Then she said, the thing is, I can see the point of a joke, and I can see the point of a fact, but what is the point of a book, I mean the kinds that tell stories? If a story isn't a fact, but it is a made-up version of what happened...I mean, what is the point of it? Mr Garth leaned his head on the handlebars. Think how quiet a book is on a shelf, he said, just sitting there, unopened. Then think what happens when you open it.

• Ali Smith – There but for the

And you're a reader – clearly – here you are reading your book, which is what it was made for. It loves when you look, wakes when you look, and then it listens and then it speaks. It was built to welcome your attention and reciprocate with this: the sound it lifts inside you. It gives you the signs for the shapes of the names of the thoughts in your mouth and in your mind and this is where they sing, here at the point where you both meet.

• A. L. Kennedy – The Blue Book

When I open them, most of the books have the smell of an earlier time leaking out from between their pages – a special odour of the knowledge and emotions that for ages have been calmly resting between the covers. Breathing it in, I glance through a few pages before returning each book to its shelf...As I relax on the sofa and gaze around the room a thought hits me: this is exactly the place I've been looking for all my life.

• Haruki Murakami – Kafka On The Shore