Best 19526 quotes in «book quotes» category

You can make your superhero a psychopath, you can draw gut-splattering violence, and you can call it a "graphic novel," but comic books are still incredibly stupid.

You can never read your own book with the innocent anticipation that comes with that first delicious page of a new book, because you wrote the thing. You've been backstage. You've seen how the rabbits were smuggled into the hat. Therefore ask a reading friend or two to look at it before you give it to anyone in the publishing business. This friend should not be someone with whom you have a ­romantic relationship, unless you want to break up.

You can never visit the same place twice. Each time, it's a different story. By the very act of coming back, you wipe out what came before.

You can make initial contact with someone who does not speak your language with signs or smiles, but to communicate you need words. So it is with a nation; to understand it you have to read its books

You cannot be afraid, Read the book. Smile at it. It's a great book-the greatest book you've ever read.

you can not fully read a book without being alone. But through this very solitude you become intimately involved with people whom you might never have met otherwise, either because they have been dead for centuries or because they spoke languages you cannot understand. And, nonetheless, they have become your closest friends, your wisest advisors, the wizards that hypnotize you, the lovers you have always dreamed of. -Antonio munoz molinas, "the power of the pen

You cannot get PTSD from reading a book or from hearing a story, even repeated stories over and over.

You cannot invent an algorithm that is as good at recommending books as a good bookseller, and that's the secret weapon of the bookstore - is that no algorithm will ever understand readers the way that other readers can understand readers.

You cannot judge a book by its contents.

You cannot invent an algorithm that is as good at recommending books as a good bookseller.

You cannot even begin to understand contemporary African politics if you have not read this fascinating book

You cannot prove this in real time, but when economists 20 years from now write a book on the recovery, it may well be entitled, It could have been much better.

You cannot write for children They're much too complicated. You can only write books that are of interest to them.

You can only be young once. But you can always be immature.

You can predict a person's future and divine his bank balance if you know two things: the books he reads, the people he associates with.

You can put down a bad book; you can avoid listening to bad music; but you cannot miss the ugly tower block opposite your house.

You can publish a poem you think is a very important poem, and you don't hear a word from anyone. [...] You can publish a book of poetry by dropping it off a cliff and waiting to hear an echo. Quite often, you'll never hear a thing. So doing that, using older work, puts it in a context, and that sort of forces the reader to realize what its importance is-if it has any. Everything needs a context. You're not going to recognize a poet unless you have a context.

You can read books without ever stepping into a library; and practice spirituality without ever going to a temple.

You can read it in history books now, but they often suppress the fact that the U.S. government tolerated [Nazi]. It's really remarkable because they claim that [Franklin] Roosevelt was impeded by the Neutrality Act. On the other hand, he bitterly condemned a Mexican businessman for sending several guns to the Republic. If you look back, oil was the one commodity that [Francisco] Franco could not receive from the Germans and the Italians, so that was quite significant.

You can read me like a book. If I'm not having a good time, which is very rare, then you'll know.

You can sail in the desert with a ship of fools. You can smuggle in Moses and his book of rules. But you can't take a mother and give her back her son. What kind of freedom is bought with a gun? People like to build their prison walls when they're afraid to look inside... a thousand points of light are the muzzle flashes in the night. And the freedoms you profess to hold won't bring the dead back from the cold.

You can sell a lot more books if you work with other authors than if you try to do everything all by yourself.

You can see a whole book as a series of creating an expectation and then delivering a skew on that expectation so it's not totally satisfied.

You can't change where you come from, but you can change where you go from here. Just like a book. If you don't like the ending, you make up a new one.

You can't count on notoriety lasting very long, and there's no way to predict whether anyone will care about your books or you in three years, let alone ten or twenty.

You can't. Do you hear me? You think you've figured something out? You run over here so pleased with yourself because you changed your mind. Now you're certain. You're so... sloppy. You don't know anything. The book, the math, the dates, the writing, all that stuff you decided with your buddies, it's just evidence. It doesn't finish the job. It doesn't prove anything.

You can't expect someone who has been in prison his whole entire life to turn around and become a sweet guy who writes books and walks his dog and has a normal life.

You can't eat books, sweetheart.

You can't develop character by reading books. You develop it from conflict.

You can't do magic with books unless they're very special copies.

You can't ever approach a book as a complete virgin, certainly not if you're a critic. There is a lot of bad faith out there. That's why I finally trained myself not to look at this stuff anymore, because it doesn't do me any good to see myself either praised or attacked.

You can't die with an unfinished book.

You can't judge a book by its cover, can you?

You can't just be reading books all the time and leave the writting of them to others.

You can't just be you. You have to double yourself. You have to read books on subjects you know nothing about. You have to travel to places you never thought of traveling. You have to meet every kind of person and endlessly stretch what you know.

You can't just be reactive to the things going on in your life. You have to imagine, and you have to plunder other people's work, books, poems, ideas, observations.

You can't know what a book is about until the very end. This is true of a book we're reading or writing.

You can't have a favourite meal, like you can't have a favourite movie or a favourite book or a favourite child.

You can't have a dream come true if you don't have a dream. You can't write a book if you don't write.

You can't judge a book by its cover, though. People think I'm bad because I got tattoos or snort a little cocaine here and there. They think I'm a killer. But what if I wasn't a killer? Then what? Don't be tripping on me. I pay my damn taxes, OK? Chill.

You can't kill a good comic book series.

You can't really give away anything in your book ... should be exciting, it's my life, and I'm a cool and exciting guy.

You can try reading books that will help you be a leader, like Marshall Rosenberg and Thich Nhat Hanh. Be very humble and say, "I don't know why. I don't feel qualified, but I accept this role that you gave me, and so help me.

You can't tell a doper well under control from a vegetarian book-keeper.

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 can't throw a rock without a comic book character falling out of a tree.

You can't write a children's book that takes more than five or six minutes to read, because it will drive the parents batty. It has to be compact. Nobody thinks about the parents when they write these stupid books. I could write longer children's books, but it would actually be bad if I did.

You can't sell a book in America if you don't dump on Bush. That's the cheapest shot in the world. You cannot get an advance, and you can't sell a book because the publishers are all people who hate Bush and hate Republicans.

You can't write a book and just expect it to sell itself, you know. We're not building that better mousetrap and waiting for the world to beat a path to our dear. You've got to build a market for your book.

You can't write the same book twice. Though I've been in historical musical situations, I can't go back and do that again. And though I run into artistic crises, they keep my life interesting.