Quotes About Books

I literally feel like books saved my life. I found these people. Me reading Camus and Kafka, all of the tortured teenager stuff of someone who's falling in love with books. These people, these writers had the questions. They may not have had the answers, but they're not afraid to look at the questions head on. It was just life-changing for me. Yeah, books, honestly, I can't even tell you. I feel saved by books; I feel like they let me be who I was and find the world I wanted to be in.

One of the many things I love about bound books is their sheer physicality. Electronic books live out of sight and out of mind. But printed books have body, presence. Sure, sometimes they'll elude you by hiding in improbable places... But at other times they'll confront you, and you'll literally stumble over some tomes you hadn't thought about in weeks or years. I often seek electronic books, but they never come after me. They may make me feel, but I can't feel them. They are all soul with no flesh, no texture, and no weight. They can get in your head but can't whack you upside it.

Books in a large university library system: 2,000,000. Books in an average large city library: 10,000. Average number of books in a chain bookstore: 30,000. Books in an average neighborhood branch library: 20,000.

You 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.

You're not allowed to say anything about books because they're books, and books are, you know, God.

And tell them all about the books you've read. Better still, buy some more books and read them. That's an order. You can never read too many books.

I think of this a lot in the terms of books. Of course there's a big to-do culturally about e-books versus print books, sales models. The paradigm has changed but my perspective on it is that there's not going to be another paradigm to alight on because everything will continue to evolve so quickly that our brains won't be able to keep up with it.

I love picture books. I think some of the best people in children's books are the ones who create their own picture books. I wish I could say I'm one of them, but I'm not.

Certainly I do not wish that instead of these masters I had read baby books, written down to children, and with such ignorant dullness that they blunt the sense and corrupt the tastes of the still plastic human being. But I do wish that I had read no books at all till later - that I had lived with toys, and played in the open air. Children should not cull the fruits of reflection and observation early, but expand in the sun, and let thoughts come to them. They should not through books antedate their actual experiences.

Without books we're a very uneducated society. Think of the places books have taken us, the people we've been introduced to (fiction or non-fiction) and how books have allowed us to broaden our vocabulary.

I can't single out one of my books or characters as a favorite. In the same way that I don't have a favorite kidney, my books are organically all part of myself. I might even say that put all together, the books are one ongoing, developing story - which, not coincidentally, happens to be my own lifestory.

I read a lot of books. Here are the books I'm using for my 9/11 project. [Wright gestures to three six-foot-long shelves of books.] As I read them I highlight certain passages. Then I have an assistant write down each quote on an index card and note where it came from.

I went off and read the books after the audition and I read all four books in one sitting - you know - didn't wash, didn't eat, drove around with them on the steering wheel like a lunatic. I suddenly understood why my friends, who I'd thought where slightly backward, had been so addicted to these children's books. They're like crack.

I wonder if Karl Ove Knausgård would've written the same books today had been using Twitter. It wasn't around when he was writing those books. Those books were written during the age of the blog, with its big verbiage. The landscape has completely changed today.

If you read my books, especially the Star Trek books and the Quest for Tomorrow books, you'll see in them the core theme of the basic humanistic questions that Star Trek asked.

I'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.

I was always furious because you couldn't take out more than three books in one day. You would go home with your three books and read them and it would still be only five o'clock. The library didn't shut till half past, but you couldn't change the books till the next day.

I never look at fashion magazines. I find them incredibly boring. To me, reading a fashion magazine is the last thing I need to do. I've got books I need to read. More people should read books. It's the most concentrated experience you can have. You know, all those incredible geniuses concentrated their lifetimes' experiences in books. It's much better than chattering away to somebody who's never read anything and knows nothing at all.

One of the most recent things we did [in Perceval Press] is a reissue of a fantastic documentary about Russian prison tattoo culture by Alix Lambert called The Mark of Cain. We've done books from Twilight of Empire, that actually has forewords by Howard Zinn and Dennis Kucinich and others, to books of poetry, photography, painting - all kinds of books.

The reason some crime writers have a chip on their shoulder about the label is because their good books are shelved beside books about nuns and birdwatchers and cats who solve crimes. Overseas, my books are reviewed alongside those of authors like Robert Stone and Don DeLillo, and I have to live and die by that comparison. They don't ghettoize crime writers in other countries, and of course they shouldn't.

I want to write some books. Books that have nothing to do with music, just some fiction type of books for a whole different audience of people.

When 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.

I've read over 4,000 books in the last 20+ years. I don't know anybody who's read more books than I have. I read all the time. I read very, very fast. People say, "Larry, it's statistically impossible for you to have read that many books."

I 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.

There is the myth that writing books for children is easier than writing books for grownups, whereas we know that truly great books for children are works of genius, whether it's 'Alice in Wonderland' or the 'Gruffalo' or 'Northern Lights.' When it's a great book, it's a great book, whether it's for children or not.

I love books the way I love nature. ... I can imagine now that a time will come, that it is almost upon us, when no one will love books ... It is no accident, I think, that books and nature (as we know it) may disappear simultaneously from human experience. There is no mind-body split.

If children haven't been read to, they don't love books. They need to love books, for books are the basis of literature, composition, history, world events, vocabulary, and everything else.

There was that special smell made up of paper, ink, and dust; the busy hush; the endless luxury of thousands of unread books. Best of all was the eager itch of anticipation as you went out the door with your arms loaded down with books.

We do not belong to those who only get their thought from books, or at the prompting of books, -- it is our custom to think in the open air, walking, leaping, climbing, or dancing on lonesome mountains by preference, or close to the sea, where even the paths become thoughtful.

I 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.

Read at least one book a month. This is self-serving, obviously. It's a proven fact that people who read buy more books than people who don't read. In truth, I wish you'd read ten books a month, or at least buy that many.

I have discovered that enemies will buy your books as much as your fans buy your books because they're looking for something new to hate you for.

However, I survived and started to read all chemistry books that I could get a hand on, first some 19th century books from our home library that did not provide much reliable information, and then I emptied the rather extensive city library.

I don't like to read books where I feel as though I've stepped into the middle of things and don't know what's going on. I like to see characters I've met before, but I don't want to feel left out because I haven't read other books in the series.

I keep writing children’s books, I keep making children’s books, because I still have them inside of me.

I don't think it's more positive to have a Twitter account, a Tumblr, and a blog. Someone without those things will use their time to do other things, like read books or swim or talk to their children or read websites or listen to music or write books or lie in bed or sit in a chair. I don't think any of these things are more positive than any other things. I don't think having an internet presence helps financially.

Reading time is precious. Don't waste it. Reading bad books, or books that are wrong for a certain time in your life, can dangerously turn you off the activity altogether.

At difficult times of my life, books have been an incredible comfort. When I was 12, I changed schools and my parents split up. It was then that I became addicted to reading. A great writer can attach themselves to your mind and heart, and you feel you understand the world better. As long as you have the capacity to read, you needn't be alone any more. I remember thinking as a child, "If I could give one person the comfort I keep getting from books, then I want to write."

I don't give books as gifts. Books are extremely personal, and I would hate to give someone a book that they don't like or want, because it would break my heart if they didn't read it.

The problem in our country isn't with books being banned, but with people no longer reading. Look at the magazines, the newspapers around us - it's all junk, all trash, tidbits of news. The average TV ad has 120 images a minute. Everything just falls off your mind. You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.

If this nation is to be wise as well as strong, if we are to achieve our destiny, then we need more new ideas for more wise men reading more good books in more public libraries. These libraries should be open to all — except the censor. We must know all the facts and hear all the alternatives and listen to all the criticisms. Let us welcome controversial books and controversial authors. For the Bill of Rights is the guardian of our security as well as our liberty.

Materializations are often best produced in rooms where there are books. I cannot think of any time when materialization was in any way hampered by the presence of books.

Quentin and I were constantly finding something new that we had in common and comic books were one of them. I think we were talking about comic books much earlier in our relationship, before I had the part.

When I was younger I only read sports books. I loved the biographies that told how athletes developed. When I got into coaching, I did start to read more instructional books, but I was always more interested in the people behind the ideas.

One can never read too little of bad, or too much of good books: bad books are intellectual poison; they destroy the mind. In order to read what is good one must make it a condition never to read what is bad; for life is short, and both time and strength limited.

There now remain only a few books, which they call books of the lesser prophets; and as I have already shown that the greater are impostors, it would be cowardice to disturb the repose of the little ones. Let them sleep, then, in the arms of their nurses, the priests, and both be forgotten together.

In the past few years I've assigned books to be read before a student attends one of my weeklong seminars. I have been astonished by how few people -- people who supposedly want to write -- read books, and if they read them, how little they examine them.

There are no books in this world that everybody must read, but only books that a person must read at a certain time in a given place under given circumstances and at a given period of his life.