Books are the heart of any home, and I spend hours going through

In the gentle yet profound voice of a man who sees beauty not as luxury but as language, Nate Berkus, the renowned designer and storyteller of spaces, once declared: “Books are the heart of any home, and I spend hours going through books for design inspiration.” At first, these words may seem simple—a reflection of a designer’s love for his craft. Yet to those who listen with the soul, they reveal something timeless: that books are not merely objects, but living vessels of memory, imagination, and truth. They are the pulse that gives rhythm to the human dwelling, the quiet companions that carry our thoughts beyond the walls we build around us.

To understand the origin of this quote, we must look to Berkus himself—an artist whose work transcends style and enters the realm of meaning. Having traveled the world and endured both beauty and loss, he learned that design is not decoration—it is the architecture of feeling. For him, every home must tell a story, and every object within it must have a soul. Books, he believed, are the purest expression of this philosophy. They are the keepers of spirit, the repositories of human experience. In the pages of books, Berkus found not only visual inspiration but emotional connection—stories of courage, civilizations, and creativity that guide his own hand in shaping the spaces where people live and love.

When he calls books “the heart of any home,” he is not speaking in metaphor alone. The heart, in the ancient sense, is not merely an organ—it is the seat of life, wisdom, and emotion. Just as the heart sustains the body, so too do books sustain the soul of a household. They remind us who we are, where we have been, and what we might yet become. A home without books, no matter how grand, is a house without breath. But where books are gathered—whether worn novels, old travel journals, or heavy tomes of history—there the air hums with the energy of thought. The ancients knew this truth well: the library of Alexandria was not merely a collection of scrolls; it was the heartbeat of civilization, a place where the wisdom of nations pulsed as one.

Consider the example of Thomas Jefferson, the philosopher-founder of America, who once said, “I cannot live without books.” After the British burned the Library of Congress in 1814, Jefferson offered his own vast personal library to replace it. He believed, as Berkus does, that books are the soul’s inheritance, and that knowledge is the true adornment of any space. In Jefferson’s Monticello, as in Berkus’s designs, the home was not an escape from the world but a reflection of it—a sanctuary where beauty and intellect coexisted. Jefferson’s books were not arranged as trophies but as companions, and each bore the marks of his thought: underlines, annotations, fingerprints. In this, we see the eternal truth—a book is not dead ink on paper; it is a living dialogue between the human spirit and the infinite.

For Berkus, too, books serve as bridges—linking the designer to the poet, the artist to the philosopher, the present to the past. As he turns their pages, he communes with countless minds across centuries. He draws inspiration not only from words and images, but from the act of reverence itself—the ritual of sitting in silence, of learning, of allowing wisdom to dwell in the soul. It is this contemplative practice that fuels creativity. For design, at its highest form, is not imitation but interpretation. The artist absorbs the world through books and transforms it into something tangible—a home, a haven, a testament to what it means to be human.

There is also humility in his words, for Berkus reminds us that inspiration does not arise from nothing. The designer, like the philosopher, must learn to listen—to the voices of the past, to the stories of others, to the subtle language of form and feeling. Books, then, are teachers of empathy. They teach us to see through another’s eyes, to imagine another’s world. This, in turn, informs design that is not cold or impersonal, but deeply human. The designer who surrounds himself with books surrounds himself with lives, and thus every space he creates breathes with compassion.

So let this be your lesson, O lover of beauty and seeker of wisdom: fill your home with books, and it will never be empty. Let them stand on your shelves not as decorations, but as friends. Open them not only to read, but to remember that your life, too, is a story still being written. For as Nate Berkus teaches, the home is more than a shelter—it is a reflection of the soul. And when the soul is nourished by learning and imagination, even the humblest dwelling becomes a palace of meaning. Treasure your books, read them, live them—for they are the heartbeats of humanity, and through them, the art of living beautifully endures forever.