Top 70 Anne Bogel Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “I’ve come to think understanding personality is like holding a good map. That map can’t take you anywhere. It doesn’t change your location; you’re still right where you were before. But the map’s purpose isn’t to move you; it’s to show you the lay of the land. It’s the tool that makes it possible for you to get where you want to go.”

— Anne Bogel

2. “The MBTI is focused on personal growth. At its core, it assumes that self-understanding leads to growth. The MBTI makes you feel special, and at the same time it makes you feel as though you’re not alone.”

— Anne Bogel

3. “Choosing my next book sometimes feels like a complicated dance. With so many books to read, how can I possibly decide what to read? What to read now? What to read next?”

— Anne Bogel

4. “Understanding your MBTI type can help you understand how to care for yourself and how to better relate to the people around you. It’s similar to being given the owner’s manual for a certain model of car – your preferred model.”

— Anne Bogel

5. “I don’t carefully plan – and yet it’s uncanny how often I seem to be reading just the right book at just the right time. Sometimes I feel compelled to read a book – or someone feels compelled to recommend it – for reasons I can’t discern, and only later do I find it’s essential to me, right then. Not before I started reading it, but after. The book may seem random when I choose it, but halfway through I realize, I need this right now.”

— Anne Bogel

6. “Sometimes I only pretend I don’t know what to do, because I don’t want to do it.”

— Anne Bogel

7. “Overthinking also carries a significant opportunity cost. Mental energy is not a limitless resource. We have only so much to spend each day, and how we choose to spend it matters.”

— Anne Bogel

8. “Reading is often viewed as a solitary act; that’s one of the reasons I love it, and it’s certainly my favorite escape and introvert coping strategy of choice.”

— Anne Bogel

9. “If you care, you’ll be there. If you don’t, you won’t.”

— Anne Bogel

10. “Some readers meticulously record the dates they read each title and where they were when they read it.”

— Anne Bogel

11. “A great book. That’s all you want. But reading is personal. We can’t know what a book will mean to us until we read it. And so we take a leap and choose.”

— Anne Bogel

12. “The foundational habits we adopt, the people we hang out with, the thoughts we dwell on – these all greatly impact the kinds of people we are and the kinds of people we become, as well as how we change and how much.”

— Anne Bogel

13. “Understanding our personalities makes it significantly easier to change the things within our grasp. This is whole point of studying various frameworks! Some people resist personality frameworks because they say such frameworks put them in a box. I’ve found that understanding my personality helps me step out of the box I’m trapped in. When I understand myself, I can get out of my own way.”

— Anne Bogel

14. “Idealists believe everyone is unique and special in their own way. It’s true that Idealists probably see themselves as special snowflakes, but the truth is they see you as one too.”

— Anne Bogel

15. “Your favorite book becomes a movie, and you’re terrified to see it because you’re fond of the way you picture the characters and hear their voices in your head.”

— Anne Bogel

16. “It’s hard today, but it won’t stay hard forever.”

— Anne Bogel

17. “We need to be sure we express our love in a way our loved ones can actually receive.”

— Anne Bogel

18. “A book twin is a joy, and I highly recommend finding one, if you can.”

— Anne Bogel

19. “With apologies to Kathleen Kelly, what I’ve come to learn is this: if my real life reminds me of something I read in a book, I’m reading well – and I’m probably living well, too.”

— Anne Bogel

20. “The very process of wrestling through the inventory’s questions forces people into a useful posture of self-awareness and self-examination. It’s helpful on a personal level too. So many young people may feel they’re a mess, especially if they’re one of the rarer types. When a person identifies and learns about their type, they discover it’s okay to be themselves.”

— Anne Bogel

21. “A good book, when we return to it, will always have something new to say. It’s not the same book, and we’re not the same reader.”

— Anne Bogel

22. “You realize midsentence that you have no idea how to say a certain word out loud, because until now you’ve only said to yourself, in your head, while reading.”

— Anne Bogel

23. “The Things We Wish Were True, Marybeth Whalen.”

— Anne Bogel

24. “When we share our favorite titles, we can’t help but share ourselves as well. Shakespeare said the eyes are the windows to the soul, but we readers know one’s bookshelves reveal just as much.”

— Anne Bogel

25. “Why this book, or that one? I never know at the time. Sometimes, of course, I seek out a book I need. But sometimes it’s more apt to say the book seeks me. I’ve learned books move in mysterious ways, and I’d do well to pay attention.”

— Anne Bogel

26. “As a devoted reader, I lovingly give countless hours to finding the right books for me. I don’t think those hours are wasted; part of the fun of reading is planning the reading. But I’ve learned that sometimes, despite my best efforts, a book unexpectedly finds me and not the other way around. And when it does, it’s okay to reshuffle my To Be Read list and go with it.”

— Anne Bogel

27. “Just as I’m all the ages I have been, I’m all the readers I have been.”

— Anne Bogel

28. “Readers want to discover what they want to read, and they want to discover it for themselves.”

— Anne Bogel

29. “You accidentally buy two of the same book at the book sale.”

— Anne Bogel

30. “We think that we have to learn how to give, but we forget about accepting things, which can be so much harder than giving.”

— Anne Bogel

31. “I feel certain of this: I wouldn’t be the person I am today if I weren’t a reader.”

— Anne Bogel

32. “The diagnosis is its own sort of cure.”

— Anne Bogel

33. “William Morris famously wrote, “Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.”

— Anne Bogel

34. “Growth is a multistep process, but it is an actual process. Spiritual formation isn’t quite as slippery as some make it out to be. The first step is to crack ourselves open to see what we’re hiding, either deliberately or inadvertently, and to drag what is in the dark into the light. This is the process of self-discovery and self-awareness.”

— Anne Bogel

35. “Introverts are often thought to be shy, and they may battle the perception that they dislike people or company or that they’re grouchy or social misfits. Extroverts, however, battle the perception that they’re flighty or shallow or relentlessly happy. People tend to assume extroverts are bad listeners, hate being alone, and are irrationally “needy” for the company of others.”

— Anne Bogel

36. “We are constantly evolving products of the influences we take into our brains. What we look at, what we long for-to a large extent, this is exactly who we become. The foundational habits we adopt, the people we hang out with, the thoughts we dwell on-these all greatly impact the kinds of people we are and the kinds of people we become, as well as how we change and how much.”

— Anne Bogel

37. “You want to tell the world about a book you loved, but you fear your friends won’t be able to see past the terrible cover. You want to tell the world about a book you loved, but the title is stupid. You realize midsentence that you have no idea how to say a certain word out loud, because until now you’ve only said it to yourself, in your head, while reading.”

— Anne Bogel

38. “To get the most accurate MBTI type for yourself, you need to identify the cognitive functions you rely on and the specific order you use them in. It’s a surprise to many when they find out that this is in fact the whole point of the assessment. The end game isn’t simply to label your preferences but to discover the mental processes that underpin your personality.”

— Anne Bogel

39. “You accept that it’s time to cull your personal library. You lovingly handle each book, determining if it brings you joy. It does. They all do. You are full of bookish joy, but still woefully short on shelf space.”

— Anne Bogel

40. “Understanding our personalities doesn’t eliminate the tension that results when people with different needs, motivations, and preferences come together or, especially, live together. But understanding things beneath the surface–why people act the way they act and prefer the things they prefer–helps us at least make sense of what’s going on. These people are not out to get us or trying to ruffle our feathers; they’re just different–a different kind of normal.”

— Anne Bogel

41. “The mental arena isn’t my area of expertise,” he said, “but I know this: your thoughts can be the enemy, or you can make them your ally.”

— Anne Bogel

42. “Because he’d overthought the situation, no matter what he chose, he wasn’t going to be happy.”

— Anne Bogel

43. “Nothing had just happened to her, she had made a choice, and then she had made another and another after that. Taken together, the small choices anyone made added up to a life. J. Courtney Sullivan.”

— Anne Bogel

44. “You’re looking for a book that reminds you why you read in the first place. One written well and that will feel like it was written just for you – one that will make you think about things in a new way, or feel things you didn’t expect a book to make you feel, or see things in a new light. A book you won’t want to put down, whose characters you don’t want to tell good-bye. A book you will close feeling satisfied and grateful, thinking, Now, that was a good one.”

— Anne Bogel

45. “Overthinking also carries a significant opportunity cost. Mental energy is not a limitless resource. We have only so much to spend each day, and how we choose to spend it matters. As Annie Dillard writes, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing.” When we spend our time overthinking, that’s what we’re doing.”

— Anne Bogel

46. “Like other kinds of growing up, this doesn’t happen overnight. The transition happens slowly, over time. We make a reading life by reading, and we stumble as we figure it out, learning through trial and error not just what to read for ourselves, but how. Establishing not just that we will be readers, but determining what kind of readers we will be.”

— Anne Bogel

47. “Even on vacation, a good deadline spurs me to read more: if I don’t finish at least half of the physical books I brought on vacation, I’ll feel like a failure.”

— Anne Bogel

48. “When we talk about someone’s personality, we’re referring to those characteristic patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that make that person unique.”

— Anne Bogel

49. “We can’t know what a book will mean to us until we read it. And so we take a leap and choose.”

— Anne Bogel

50. “I’m constantly on the lookout for like-minded readers, those kindred spirits whose circles overlap my own on the Venn diagram of reading tastes.”

— Anne Bogel