Popular quotes about Books! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 2
I still love books. Nothing a computer can do can compare to a book. You can't really put a book on the Internet. Three companies have offered to put books by me on the Net, and I said, 'If you can make something that has a nice jacket, nice paper with that nice smell, then we'll talk.' All the computer can give you is a manuscript. People don't want to read manuscripts. They want to read books. Books smell good. They look good. You can press it to your bosom. You can carry it in your pocket.
Ray BradburyComic books sort of follow with the move - if people see the movie and if they're interested in the character and want to see more of the character, they start buying the comic books. So a good movie helps the sale of the comic books and the comic books help the movie and one hand washes the other. So, I don't think there's any reason to think that comics will die out.
Stan LeeNot that she objected to solitude. Quite the contrary. She had books, thank Heaven, quantities of books. All sorts of books.
Jean RhysI was teased if I brought my books home. I would take a paper bag to the library and put the books in the bag and bring them home. Not that I was that concerned about them teasing me - because I would hit them in a heartbeat. But I felt a little ashamed, having books.
Walter Dean MyersYou can't write a book if you've never read a book. And if you've read five books and you try to write a book, your book will mainly encompass the themes and the context of the five books you've read. Now, the more books you read, the more you can bring to a book when you decide to write one. So the more rap I learned, the more I was able to bring to rap when I decided to rap. But this was all subconscious.
Bun BMy mother used to take my brother and me to get any books we wanted, but they were second hand books published in the '30s and '40s. I liked scary books.
Alejandro AmenabarIf you read one hour per day in your field, that will translate into about one book per week. One book per week translates into about 50 books per year. 50 books per year will translate into about 500 books over the next ten years.
Brian TracyWhen it comes to the Federal Reserve, there's an awful lot of books out there; in my library, I bet I've got 200 books if I've got any on the Federal Reserve. And we don't need any more books, we need action, and that's what the Liberty Dollar did, it gave people a way to take action. Our catch phrase was you want to "make money, do good, and have fun," and people really responded to that.
Bernard von NotHausI think that some books are more successful than others to certain readers. People who read my books for the humor, they're going to love one book. People who read my books for the mystery, they might not like that book quite as much.
Janet EvanovichKeep away from books and from men who get their ideas from books, and your own books will always be fresh.
George Bernard ShawWe read books, talked books, argued over books and became dearer and dearer to one another.
Mary Ann ShafferThe Brahmins say that in their books there are many predictions of times in which it will rain. But press those books as strongly as you can, you can not get out of them a drop of water. So you can not get out of all the books that contain the best precepts the smallest good deed.
Leo TolstoyFiction allows for moral questioning, but through the back door. Personally, I like books that make you think - books you're still wondering about three days after you finish them; books you hand to a friend and say "Read this, so we can talk about it."
Jodi PicoultBooks are, let's face it, better than everything else. If we played Cultural Fantasy Boxing League, and made books go fifteen rounds in the ring against the best that any other art form had to offer, then books would win pretty much every time.
Nick HornbyI've developed a great reputation for wisdom by ordering more books than I ever had time to read, and reading more books, by far, than I learned anything useful from, except, of course, that some very tedious gentlemen have written books.
Marilynne RobinsonBut I do think it's important to remember that writers do not have a monopoly of wisdom on their books. They can be wrong about their own books, they can often learn about their own books.
China MievilleI tend to turn down books originally published as e-books. As for selling books directly to e-book publishers, I would do so only if all traditional publishers had turned them down.
Richard CurtisWhen I was twelve. And I was going through my parents' bookshelves, I found the most wonderful books and plenty of. Within those wonderful books that were real turn-on's. At 12 or 13, books were such turn-ons.
Judy BlumeI feel lucky that I read so many books as a kid because I know that no matter how much I appreciate a book now, and I can love a book very much, it's never going to be that childhood passion for a book. There's some element, something special about the way they're reading books and experiencing books that's finite.
Rebecca SteadI never wanted my books to be mistaken for poetry or fiction books; I wanted to write reference books. But instead of referring to something, they refer to nothing.
Kenneth GoldsmithI'm not really into comfort books. There are too many of those as it is. Just sort of narcotic books, like my grandmother used to read. They have value like Paxil has value, but there's plenty of them in the world already. There's a shortage of confronting, stimulating, exciting books.
Chuck PalahniukNames are hard. I have a library of What to Name Your Baby books, and Iโm always picking up new books, and books of baby names from other countries. I like cool-sounding names.
George R. R. MartinBooks can be possessive, can't they? You're walking around in a bookstore and a certain one will jump out at you, like it had moved there on its own, just to get your attention. Sometimes what's inside will change your life, but sometimes you don't even have to read it. Sometimes it's a comfort just to have a book around. Many of these books haven't even had their spines cracked. 'Why do you buy books you don't even read?' our daughter asks us. That's like asking someone who lives alone why they bought a cat. For company, of course.
Sarah Addison AllenThe first aim of a good college is not to teach books, but the meaning and purpose of life. Hard study and the learning of books are only a means to this end. We develop power and courage and determination and we go out to achieve Truth, Wisdom and Justice. If we do not come to this, the cost of schooling is wasted.
John B. WatsonWrite comic books if you love comic books so much that you want to write them. Don't write them like movies. Comics can do a lot of things that movies can't do, and vice versa.
Grant MorrisonI was shy, but I stood up in front of the class and I gave my report.I was reporting on books that I didn't want to read. I was inventing books that I didn't want to read.
Judy BlumeAncient art has a specific inner content. At one time, art possessed the same purpose that books do in our day, namely: to preserve and transmit knowledge. In olden days, people did not write books, they incorporated their knowledge into works of art. We would find a great many ideas in the works of ancient art passed down to us, if only we knew how to read them.
G. I. GurdjieffIf you read one book a week, starting at the age of 5, and live to be 80, you will have read a grand total of 3,900 books, a little over one-tenth of 1 percent of the books currently in print.
Lewis BuzbeeRanganathan's 5 Laws: Books are for use. Books are for all. Every book its reader, or every reader his book. Save the time of the reader. A library is a growing organism.
S. R. RanganathanI do a lot of research for my books. I can't possibly know all the things I write about and I love learning new things. I spend hours and hours doing research in books, libraries and online. [Once] I traveled to the reservation to get the settings and the flavor of the place down right.
Linda ConradTo buy books would be a good thing if we could also buy the time to read them; but the purchase of books is often mistaken for the assimilation and mastering of their contents.
Arthur SchopenhauerWe may live without poetry, music and art; We may live without conscience, and live without heart; We may live without friends; we may live without books; But civilized man cannot live without cooks. . . . He may live without books,-what is knowledge but grieving? He may live without hope,-what is hope but deceiving? He may live without love,-what is passion but pining? But where is the man that can live without dining?
Robert Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Earl of LyttonSpeaking of love, one problem that recurs more and more frequently these days, in books and plays and movies, Is the inability of people to communicate with the people they love: husbands and wives who can't communicate, Children who can't communicate with their parents, and so on. And the characters in these books and plays and so on, And in real life, I might add, spend hours bemoaning the fact that they can't communicate. I feel that if a person can't communicate, the very least he can do is to shut up!
Tom LehrerThey were steaming out of the station before Maia asked, 'Was it books in the trunk?' 'It was books, admitted Miss Minton. And Maia said, 'Good.
Eva IbbotsonAs for collaboration - I have done a lot, 26 books, and found publishers increasingly resistive to them. It's not that the books are bad; editors won't even read them.
Piers AnthonyHe who expects from a great name in politics, in philosophy, in art, equal greatness in other things, is little versed in human nature. Our strength lies in our weakness. The learned in books are ignorant of the world. He who is ignorant of books is often well acquainted with other things; for life is of the same length in the learned and unlearned; the mind cannot be idle; if it is not taken up with one thing, it attends to another through choice or necessity; and the degree of previous capacity in one class or another is a mere lottery.
William HazlittI liked books - the respite and privacy of them - books about plants and the formation of ice and the business of world wars. Whenever I sank into them I felt free.
Tim WintonBut, in the end, the books that surround me are the books that made me, through my reading (and misreading) of them; they fall in piles on my desk, they stack behind me on my shelves, they surprise me every time I look for one and find ten more I had forgotten about. I love their covers, their weight and their substance. And like the child I was, with the key to the world that reading gave me, it is still exciting for me to find a new book, open it at the first page and plunge in, head first, heart deep.
Ramona KovalDo you know that books smell like nutmeg or some spice from a foreign land? I loved to smell them when I was a boy. Lord, there were a lot of lovely books once, before we let them go.
Ray BradburySome people act as if it were demeaning to their manhood to wish to be well-read but you can no more be a healthy person mentally without reading substantial books than you can be a vigorous person physically without eating solid food. Books should be chosen, not for their freedom from evil, but for their possession of good. Dr. Johnson said: "Whilst you stand deliberating which book your son shall read first, another boy has read both."
Earl NightingaleIf books could have more, give more, be more, show more, they would still need readers who bring to them sound and smell and light and all the rest that canโt be in books. The book needs you.
Gary PaulsenI already optioned a book called The Personal History of Rachel DuPree. I also like The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill. And I love all of Octavia Butler's books. She's created some very complicated black heroines with a variety of belief systems. There are many great books out there, but those are a few of the ones that stand out.
Viola DavisPart of battle has been getting Hollywood to recognize that comic books and superheroes are not synonymous. That's been a huge breakthrough, just in recent years really, and as a result of that recent breakthrough, we've had movies like 300, Road to Perdition, and A History of Violence, that very few people realize were based on comic books and graphic novels. It's very important to make that differentiation.
Michael UslanIf you steal from one book you are condemned as a plagiarist, but if you steal from ten books you are considered a scholar, and if you steal from thirty or forty books, a distinguished scholar.
Amos Oz