Popular quotes about Books! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 30
But what struck me was the book-madness of the place--books lay scattered across the unmade bed and the top of a battered-looking desk, books stood in knee-high piles on the floor, books were crammed sideways and right side up in a narrow bookcase that rose higher than my head and leaned dangerously from the wall, books sat in stacks on top of a dingy dresser. The closet door was propped open by a pile of books, and from beneath the bed a book stuck out beside the toe of a maroon slipper.
Steven MillhauserI read books when I was a kid, lots of books. Books always seemed like magic to me. They took you to the most amazing places. When I got older, I realized that I couldn't find books that took me to all of the places I wanted to go. To go to those places, I had to write some books myself.
Pat MurphySolid scriptural theology should be valued in the church. Books in which Scripture is reverently regarded as the only rule of faith and practice-- books in which Christ and the Holy Ghost have their rightful office-- books in which justification, and sanctification, and regeneration, and faith, and grace, and holiness are clearly, distinctly, and accurately delineated and exhibited, these are the only books which do real good. Few things need reviving more than a taste for such books as these among readers.
J. C. RyleOur books will bear witness for or against us, our books reflect who we are and who we have been, our books hold the share of pages granted to us from the Book of Life. By the books we call ours we will be judged
Alberto ManguelI think the books are the books. They were conceived as books. They weren't conceived as movies. When I write scripts, that's an idea and a situation that I think is a really good idea for a movie. When I'm writing a book, I'm not thinking, "Oh, this would be a great movie." This would be a very interesting book. And I think the books are things that cannot really be adapted into another medium.
Bret Easton EllisThere are a lot of people out there who will write books, in which everything turns out nicely and the bad guys lose, the good guys win, the boy gets the girl and they live happily ever after. There's a million books like that and if that's the comfort you're looking for, you should read those books and not my books because that's not the kind of book that I am interested in.
George R. R. MartinPicture books are being marginalised. I get the feeling children are being pushed away from picture books earlier and earlier and being told to look at proper books, which means books without pictures.
Anthony BrowneWell, this is a story about books." About books?" About accursed books, about a man who wrote them, about a character who broke out of the pages of anovel so that he could burn it, about a betrayal and a lost friendship. It's a story of love, of hatred, and of the dreams that live in the shadow of the wind." You talk like the jacket blurb of a Victorian novel, Daniel." That's probably because I work in a bookshop and I've seen too many. But this is a true story.
Carlos Ruiz ZafonBooks are what you step on to take you to a higher shelf. The higher your stack of books, the higher the shelf you can reach. Want to reach higher? Stack some more books under your feet! Reading is what brings us to new knowledge. It opens new doors. It helps us understand mysteries. It lets us hear from successful people. Reading is what takes us down the road in our journey. Everything you need for a better future and success has already been written.
Jim RohnIt had been startling and disappointing to me to find out that story books had been written by people, that books were not natural wonders, coming up of themselves like grass. Yet regardless of where they come from, I cannot remember a time when I was not in love with them - with the books themselves, cover and binding and the paper they were printed on, with their smell and their weight and with their possession in my arms, captured and carried off to myself. Still illiterate, I was ready for them, committed to all the reading I could give them.
Eudora WeltyMost young dealers of the Silicon Chip Era regard a reference library as merely a waste of space. Old Timers on the West Coast seem to retain a fondness for reference books that goes beyond the practical. Everything there is to know about a given volume may be only a click away, but there are still a few of us who'd rather have the book than the click. A bookman's love of books is a love of books, not merely of the information in them.
Larry McMurtryBut even now, with the crates piled high in the hall, what I see most plainly about the books is that they are beautiful. They take up room? Of course they do: they are an environment; atoms, not bits. My books are not dead weight, they are live weight โ matter infused by spirit, every one of them, even the silliest. They do not block the horizon; they draw it. They free me from the prison of contemporaneity: one should not live only in oneโs own time. A wall of books is a wall of windows.
Leon WieseltierBeware of books. They are more than innocent assemblages of paper and ink and string and glue. If they are any good, they have the spirit of the author within. Authors are rogues and ruffians and easy lays. They are gluttons for sweets and savories. They devour life and always want more. They have sap, spirit, sex. Books are panderers. The Jews are not wrong to worship books. A real book has pheromones and sprouts grass through its cover.
Erica JongYou're not allowed to say anything about books because they're books, and books are, you know, God.
Nick HornbyThe 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 TolstoyThen I celebrated my Wall of Books. I counted the volumes on my twenty-foot-long modernist bookshelf to make sure none had been misplaced or used as kindling by my subtenant. โYouโre my sacred ones,โ I told the books. โNo one but me still cares about you. But Iโm going to keep you with me forever. And one day Iโll make you important again.โ I thought about that terrible calumny of the new generation: that books smell.
Gary ShteyngartI 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.
Lloyd AlexanderI 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.
Lawrence WrightI wanted to know what it was like to be a drug addict, and have an eating disorder, and have a loved one die, and fall in love. I saw my friends going through these things, I saw the world going through these things, and I needed to understand them. I needed to make sense of them. Books didnโt make me wallow in darkness, darkness made me wallow in books, and it was books that showed me there is light at the end of the tunnel.
Jackson PearceIf 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.
William ShatnerIf some books are deemed most baneful and their sale forbid, how then with deadlier facts, not dreams of doting men? Those whom books will hurt will not be proof against events. Events, not books should be forbid.
Herman MelvilleI still love the book-ness of books, the smell of books: I am a book fetishistโbooks to me are the coolest and sexiest and most wonderful things there are.
Neil GaimanI don't believe in holy writ. Buy fifty books or twenty-five books, take three weeks off, read them and make up your own theory. The fact that you end up literally burning twenty-two out of twenty-five books is beside the point.
Tom Peters[I]t's not just the books under fire now that worry me. It is the books that will never be written. The books that will never be read. And all due to the fear of censorship. As always, young readers will be the real losers.
Judy BlumeHenceforth it will be the task of this Sacred Congregation not only to examine carefully the books denounced to it, to prohibit them if necessary, and to grant permission for reading forbidden books, but also to supervise, ex officio, books that are being published, and to pass sentence on such as deserve to be prohibited.
Pope Pius XIISecond hand books are wild books, homeless books; they have come together in vast flocks of variegated feather, and have a charm which the domesticated volumes of the library lack.
Virginia WoolfNot every child takes instantly to books like a duck to water, but I donโt believe there are children who hate books. There are just children who havenโt yet found the right books for them.
Amanda CraigThere were books everywhere in my house. Books were very present. I just loved books. I never understood reading as anything but a pleasurable activity from a very young age.
Lisa LucasUsually I read several books at a time - old books, new books, fiction, nonfiction, verse, anything - and when the bedside heap of a dozen volumes or so has dwindled to two or three, which generally happens by the end of one week, I accumulate another pile.
Vladimir NabokovHe would talk to them of stories and books, and explain to them how stories wanted to be told and books wanted to be read, and how everything that they ever needed to know about life and the land of which he wrote, or about any land or realm that they could imagine, was contained in books. And some of the children understood, and some did not.
John ConnollyThere 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.
Zilpha Keatley SnyderI don't believe that fiction is dead. I know there are some people who believe that it's an outdated art form, and that to express truth today you need to work in different forms, to write books where it's perhaps not clear what's fiction and what's memoir. I have nothing against those books and love many of them very much. But we have enough space for everyone, traditional realists and hybrid writers, and experimental writers all.
Lauren GroffThe coolest thing about the series is that we stay very true to the books; it would be silly for us not to, because the books are exactly what the fans want to see. Thereโs an action side to it, which I love, and there are werewolves now. There arenโt just vampires. Thereโs a wolf pack.
Taylor LautnerI just think that the skepticism about truth has almost completely flipped - from being something associated with generally left-leaning progressives to being something which is a tool of right-wing populists and demagogues. I think a lot of those people writing books ten years ago would now think those books are no longer needed, they've kind of been vindicated.
Julian BagginiSelf help books are pointless. Here's something for you... Men are from Mars, women are from Venus, and self help books are from Uranus.
Craig FergusonPeople wonder why the novel is the most popular form of literature; people wonder why it is read more than books of science or books of metaphysics. The reason is very simple; it is merely that the novel is more true than they are.
Gilbert K. ChestertonMy mother was an avid readerShe loved books about romance. Books that took place in faraway places and times. Stories with costumes
Adriana TrigianiStudents will read if we give them the books, the time, and the enthusiastic encouragement to do so. If we make them wait for the one unit a year in which they are allowed to choose their own books and become readers, they may never read at all. To keep our students reading, we have to let them.
Donalyn MillerI keep writing childrenโs books, I keep making childrenโs books, because I still have them inside of me.
Oliver JeffersThe two biggest sellers in any bookstore are the cookbooks and the diet books. The cookbooks tell you how to prepare the food, and the diet books tell you how not to eat any of it!
Andy RooneyI often use detective elements in my books. I love detective novels. But I also think science fiction and detective stories are very close and friendly genres, which shows in the books by Isaac Asimov, John Brunner, and Glen Cook. However, whilst even a tiny drop of science fiction may harm a detective story, a little detective element benefits science fiction. Such a strange puzzle.
Sergei LukyanenkoI'd worked on a series of Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul books called The Real Deal for HCI books, which featured essays and poems from teens.Finding the right authors for the series has been no easy feat, mostly because I'm looking for a perfect blend of a teen girl with an interesting story or hook, fantastic writing talent, and the confidence to commit to writing a 30,000+ word book in a matter of months. It's a huge commitment and I recognize that, so the fit has to be there from all these different angles.
Deborah ReberThey 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 IbbotsonFew of those who fill the world with books, have any pretensions to the hope either of pleasing or instructing. They have often no other task than to lay two books before them, out of which they compile a third, without any new material of their own, and with very little application of judgment to those which former authors have supplied.
Samuel Johnson