Popular quotes about Book! Wisdom and inspiration are here!
The only way [the book can be written] is to set the unbook-the gilt-framed portrait of the book-right there on the altar and sacrifice it, truly sacrifice it. Only then may the book, the real live flawed finite book, slowly, sentence by carnal sentence, appear.
Bonnie FriedmanA book has got smell. A new book smells great. An old book smells even better. An old book smells like ancient Egypt.
Ray BradburyIf you can find two poems in a book, it could be a pretty good book for you. You know, two poems you really like. There are some poets who are fairly big names in contemporary poetry and who write a book and I might like three or four poems in the book, but the rest of them don't appeal to me personally; but I think that's the way it really ought to be. I think it's really a rare thing to like everything that somebody has written.
Ted KooserIMPORTANT Book reading is a solitary and sedentary pursuit, and those who do are cautioned that a book should be used as an integral part of a well-rounded life, including a daily regimen of rigorous physical exercise, rewarding personal relationships, and sensible low-fat diet. A book should not be used a as a substitute or an excuse.
Garrison KeillorI look upon every good man, as a good book, lent by its owner for another to read, and transcribe the excellent notions and golden passages that are in it for his own benefit, that they may return with him when the owner shall call for the book again: but in case this excellent book shall be thrown into a corner and no use made of it, it justly provokes the owner to take it away in displeasure. --Funeral of John Upton, Esq
John FlavelThe book the Ziff folks sent me as an example of their art was 'Late Night VRML 2.0 with Java,' 700 pages + CD-ROM, published February 1997. I was personally acquainted with more movie stars than people who might conceivably have wanted to buy this book or any book like it.
Philip GreenspunI can walk into a bookshop and point out a number of books that I find very unattractive in what they say. But it doesn't occur to me to burn the bookshop down. If you don't like a book, read another book. If you start reading a book and you decide you don't like it, nobody is telling you to finish it.
Salman RushdieI'm a massive comic book fan. I was buying weekly installments of "The Watchmen", and "From Hell", and "Parallax" and "Johnny Nemo". I was a huge comic book fan as a kid and I still am. Me and my youngest son are both comic book nerds together; make models and stuff.
Jude LawThink of a book special to you, and how much bleaker and poorer your life would be if that one writer had not existed - if that one writer had not, a hundred times or a thousand, made the choice to write. You're going to be that one writer one day for somebody you may never meet. Nobody can write that book you're going to write - that book that will light up and change up a life - but you.
Sarah Rees BrennanThe New Testament is an invaluable book, though I confess to having been slightly prejudiced against it in my very early days by the church and the Sabbath school, so that it seemed, before I read it, to be the yellowest book in the catalogue. Yet I early escaped from their meshes. It was hard to get the commentaries out of one's head and taste its true flavor. [...] It would be a poor story to be prejudiced against the Life of Christ because the book has been edited by Christians.
Henry David ThoreauThere's no such thing as a good book or a bad book. There's a book that matters to a reader.
Maggie StiefvaterA person who publishes a book willfully appears before the populace with his pants down. If it is a good book nothing can hurt him. If it is a bad book nothing can help him.
Edna St. Vincent MillayWell, we think that time "passes," flows past us, but what if it is we who move forward, from past to future, always discovering the new? It would be a little like reading a book, you see. The book is all there, all at once, between its covers. But if you want to read the story and understand it, you must begin with the first page, and go forward, always in order. So the universe would be a very great book, and we would be very small readers.
Ursula K. Le GuinHillary Clinton has finished writing her book where she says her marriage couldn't be stronger, and Bill just finished his book titled 'Chicks I Nailed While Hillary was Writing Her Book.'
Craig KilbornI've tried to reduce profanity but I reduced so much profanity when writing the book that I'm afraid not much could come out. Perhaps we will have to consider it simply as a profane book and hope that the next book will be less profane or perhaps more sacred.
Ernest Hemingway...Samuel rode lightly on top of a book and he balanced happily among ideas the way a man rides white rapids in a canoe. But Tom got into a book, crawled and groveled between the covers, tunneled like a mole among the thoughts, and came up with the book all over his face and hands.
John SteinbeckI've published one book before, and now I'm writing a book of essays and stories about life in Tokyo. And I have one book coming out in May in Germany, about fitness.
Franka PotenteFor me, the goal is always to write a novel that I myself would like to read. People frequently ask me what my favorite book is, and in effect, there's always a capital-F Favorite, capital-B Book that I would like to write myself someday. I try to go for that ideal of writing the best, most entertaining, most beautifully written book that I possibly can.
Michael ChabonReading alters the appearance of a book. Once it has been read, it never looks the same again, and people leave their individual imprint on a book they have read. Once of the pleasures of reading is seeing this alteration on the pages, and the way, by reading it, you have made the book yours.
Paul TherouxA lot of people love the idea of improvising but are terrified of it, so I tried to make a book that was not a chef's book about improvising but a real home cook's book with a real home cook's pantry, supermarket ingredients, that sort of thing.
Sally SchneiderI didn't want to do a book just to do a book. I wanted to do a book that, if you should read it, you might take one thing from it. Until that was clear in my mind, I wasn't going to do one.
Bobby OrrThe good of a book lies in its being read. A book is made up of signs that speak of other signs, which in their turn speak of things. Without an eye to read them, a book contains signs that produce no concepts; therefore it is dumb.
Umberto EcoMy father probably taught me everything I know, aside from dialogue, which I think I get from my mom a lot more. He certainly didn't teach me everything he knew, but you know he has got this book out called "The Spooky Art," which is essentially an advanced book on writing and it's not... You know it's not ABC, but it's for people who feel that bug and know that they're writers and are willing to put in that time alone. Pretty much the vast majority of what he taught me you can find in that book.
John Buffalo MailerIf reading makes you smart then how come when you read a book they have to put the title of the book on the top of every single page? Does anyone get halfway through a book, What the hell am I reading?
Brian ReganI was 8 years old when I went across the street from my house to a fair, and they always had a used book sale. For a quarter I bought a book called 'Come On Seabiscuit.' I loved that book. It stayed with me all those years
Laura HillenbrandA BOOK?! WHAT D'YOU WANNA FLAMING BOOK FOR?...WE'VE GOT A LOVELY TELLY WITH A 12-INCH SCREEN AND NOW YA WANNA BOOK!
Roald DahlThe book is not a cut-and-paste job. Yeah, I have a blog, but the material in the book is all new. The blog deals with my life now, whereas as the book starts a few years before my birth until right about the end of junior high. And yes, I am contractually obliged to mention this as much as possible (each time I do, HarperCollins sends me a free pizza).
Jason MulgrewAt that time, I had recently finished a book called Amazing Grace, which many people tell me is a very painful book to read. Well, if it was painful to read, it was also painful to write. I had pains in my chest for two years while I was writing that book.
Jonathan KozolWith the marketplace urging parents to buy all manner of things to make their babies โsmart,โ Gallagherโs book offers parents a view based in science on how much babies really know and figure out on their own. Parents will have fun with this book and gain new respect and awe for their babiesโ amazing capabilities.
Roberta Michnick GolinkoffEach my book feels like my last book. And then I think, like a dedicated alcoholic, that one more won't do me any harm.
John le CarreA good book, in the language of the book-sellers, is a salable one; in that of the curious, a scarce one; in that of men of sense, a useful and instructive one.
Oswald ChambersFor Christmas, 1939, a girl friend gave me a book token which I used to buy Linus Pauling's recently published Nature of the Chemical Bond. His book transformed the chemical flatland of my earlier textbooks into a world of three-dimensional structures.
Max PerutzI've compiled a book from the Internet. It's a book of quotations attributed to the wrong people.
Jerry SeinfeldThis book is unique. I know of no other which so artfully tackles two of the greatest mysteries of modern science, quantum mechanics, and consciousness. It has long been suspected that these mysteries are somehow related: the authorsโ treatment of this thorny and controversial issue is honest, wide-ranging, and immensely readable. The book contains some of the clearest expositions I have ever seen of the strange and paradoxical nature of the quantum world. Quantum Enigma is a pleasure to read, and I am sure it is destined to become a classic.
George GreensteinI notice that I only publish once every four years. It takes a couple of years to write a book and then, for me, for one reason or another, it usually takes about a year of sort of dicking around before I start up. I write a review or little magazine pieces and touring with the other book. But mainly it's just you're not ready, I'm not ready to start another. You're just not up for it.
Carolyn SeeSometimes people read a book in order to not go on a trip. You read a book instead of going on the trip. And so the travel writer is doing the traveling for you.
Paul TherouxNo other book has been so chopped, knifed, sifted, scrutinized, and vilified. What book on philosophy or religion or psychology or belles lettres of classical or modern times has been subject to such a mass attack as the Bible? With such venom and skepticism? With such thoroughness and erudition? Upon every chapter, line and tenet?
Bernard RammThe Kindle is the most successful electronic book-reading tablet so far, but that's not saying much; Silicon Valley is littered with the corpses of e-book reader projects.
David PogueI hope that the relationship of the title to the novel [ What Belongs To You] gets more complex with each section of the book: that maybe it begins by resonating with the question of prostitution - to what extent can a body be commodified, what exactly are you renting or purchasing when you pay for sex - and deepens over the course of the book to address larger questions of ownership and belonging.
Garth GreenwellWhen I receive a new novel from a hopeful publisher - "hoping that I like the book as much as he does" - I check first of all how much dialog there is, and if it looks too abundant or too sustained, I shut the book with a bang.
Vladimir NabokovThe gods weave misfortunes for men, so that the generations to come will have something to sing about.โ Mallarmรฉ repeats, less beautifully, what Homer said; โtout aboutit en un livre,โ everything ends up in a book. The Greeks speak of generations that will sing; Mallarmรฉ speaks of an object, of a thing among things, a book. But the idea is the same; the idea that we are made for art, we are made for memory, we are made for poetry, or perhaps we are made for oblivion. But something remains, and that something is history or poetry, which are not essentially different.
Jorge Luis BorgesWhen I work on a book, I usually start with a question. And I don't sit around and go "I need to write a book. What's a good question?" It will be a question that's just clanging around in my head.
Lynda BarryHOLLY: Are you suggesting I occasionally stray from the rule book? FOALY: No. I'm suggesting you do not own a copy of the rule book, and if you do, you have certainly never opened it.
Eoin ColferLibraries are my passion in life. Before I became mayor (of Los Angeles), I used to sneak out here during lunchtime...and I'd go to a corner and take a book-any book almost-and read it for a while, and then feel rejuvenated.
Richard RiordanSpeak Peace is a book that comes at an appropriate time when anger and violence dominates human attitudes. Marshall Rosenberg gives us the means to create peace through our speech and communication. A brilliant book.
Arun Manilal GandhiMargaret Cavendish was one of the people who came up in the course. That was when I started thinking about her as a character for a book, but my idea was for a totally different book. It had all these characters in it; Samuel Pepys was one of the main characters. He famously wrote these extensive diaries through the period that are really funny and sort of saucy, actually.
Danielle DuttonAnd also it's an ever-gathering process. If I pick up the Sporting News or some sports publication and there's an article on somebody and I think I might see that player, I will tear it out and put it in a file, and I have a looseleaf book so when we're going to play that particular team I take out all these clippings and things I pulled out, I go through them, highlight them, put them in the book.
Vin Scully