Best 19526 quotes in «book quotes» category

I fancy mankind may come, in time, to write all aphoristically, except in narrative; grow weary of preparation, and connection, and illustration, and all those arts by which a big book is made.

If a man writes a book, let him set down only what he knows. I have guesses enough of my own.

If a man wants to read good books, he must make a point of avoiding bad ones; for life is short, and time and energy limited.

I fantasize about having a manual job where I can come home at night, read a book and not feel responsible for what will happen the next day.

If any ambitious man have a fancy to revolutionize, at one effort, the universal world of human thought, human opinion, and human sentiment, the opportunity is his own -- the road to immortal renown lies straight, open, and unencumbered before him. All that he has to do is to write and publish a very little book. Its title should be simple -- a few plain words -- My Heart Laid Bare. But -- this little book must be true to its title.

If anybody would make me the greatest king that ever lived, with palaces, and gardens and fine dinners, and wine, and coaches, and beautiful clothes, and hundreds of servants, on condition that I would not read books, I would not be a king.

If any of my plays outlive me or get on library book shelves and somehow stay read, all of a sudden it's a testament to "that's part of our culture, that's part of our history.

If anybody reads a story in a magazine or book, different pictures compete in their minds.

If anyone ever wonders why there's nothing coming from me, it's not my fault. I'm doing the work. No, I haven't deteriorated or gone insane. Suddenly, I just can't get anything into print. And apparently I'm not alone in this. There are people of very high standing, authors who are having problems. So I have been told. In my own case, the more disturbing element is the editor-in-chief who said to me, "I think this book is terrific. It ought to be in print. I can't publish it -- I've been told I mustn't." The indication is that I'm not writing what people want to read, but I never did.

If anyone has read a lot of books and thinks I am primitive because I have not read even one, then he should throw away those books and get one which says we are all brothers and sisters under God and we too have a right to live.

If anyone is really determined to lend you a book, you never can get out of it!

If anything has changed about my reading over the years, it is that I value the state a book puts me in more that I value the specific contents.

If a parent doesn't want his/her child to read a book then there is always an alternative text to read. But the book banners want to control what every child reads.

If a spectator with a philosophical mind, somebody accustomed to reading books, gets the same kind of information in a movie, he might not fully understand it.

If art is not to be life-enhancing, what is it to be? Half the world is feminine - why is there resentment at a female-oriented art? Nobody asks The Tale of Genji to be masculine! Women certainly learn a lot from books oriented toward a masculine world. Why is not the reverse also true? Or are men really so afraid of women's creativity?

If a secret history of books could be written, and the author's private thoughts and meanings noted down alongside of his story, how many insipid volumes would become interesting, and dull tales excite the reader!

If asked to list my ten favorite American fiction writers, Gail Godwin would be among them. In this, her latest . . . she evokes in a short book the long married life of two artists. Evenings at Five is a strong tale of love-after-death.

If aught can teach us aught, Affliction's looks, Making us pry into ourselves so, near, Teach us to know ourselves, beyond all books, Or all the learned schools that ever were.

If by reaction you mean critical reaction, I was confident that we were putting out a quality book [ Treachery]. So I was reasonably sure that we'd get positive notices.

If Carlos and I were books, he'd be a Nietzsche book, and I'd be a Hubert Selby book - totally different mindsets. But musically, it all fell right into place.

If book knowledge made great investors, than the librarians would all be rich.

If books are not good company, where shall I find it?

If books were Persian carpets, one would not look only at the outer side. because it is the stitch that makes a carpet wear, gives it its life and bloom.

If Brideshead Revisited is not a great book, it's so like a great book that many of us, at least while reading it, find it hard to tell the difference.

If children are studying the 20th century, I'm in their text books.

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.

If a writer knows what he or she is doing, I'll go along for the ride. If he or she doesn't... well, I'm in my fifties now, and there are a lot of books out there. I don't have time to waste with the poorly written ones.

If behind the erratic gunfire of the press the author felt that there was another kind of criticism, the opinion of people readingfor the love of reading, slowly and unprofessionally, and judging with great sympathy and yet with great severity, might this not improve the quality of his work? And if by our means books were to become stronger, richer, and more varied, that would be an end worth reaching.

If 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 can’t be in books. The book needs you.

I fear that I can no longer travel without technology. Twenty years ago, I loved getting on a bus in West Africa and taking off for a city I'd never been to before, relying on advice from out-of-date travel books and fellow passengers on the bus. Now, I end up using TripAdvisor, Yelp, and Google Maps. I probably eat and sleep better when I'm on the road, but I miss the mystery of travel when it was more random and unpredictable.

I feel about lending a book the way most fathers feel about their daughters living with a man out of wedlock.

I feel a reassuring oneness with other people when I find that even my most intimate, anguished, socially inadmissible emotions and desires are known to others.... Kindred souls—indeed, my selves otherwise costumed—turn up in books in the most unexpected places. Discovering them is one of the great rewards of a liberal education. If I quote liberally, it is not to show off book learning, which at my stage of life can only invite ridicule, but rather to bathe in this kinship of strangers.

I feel closer ties and more intimate bonds with certain characters in books, with certain images I’ve seen in engravings, than with many supposedly real people with the metaphysical absurdity known as ‘flesh and blood’. In fact, ‘flesh and blood’ describes them very well: they resemble cuts of meat laid out on the butcher’s marble slab, dead creatures bleeding as though still alive.

I feel free and strong. If I were not a reader of books I could not feel this way. Whatever may happen to me, thank God that I can read, that I have truly touched the minds of other men.

I feel as if when you love a book it becomes a part of you whether you have it on your shelves or not.

I feel better in my mind because I'm doing what God made me to do. He said, 'Go write books, Steve, and you'll be happy.' I'm happy now, and that has had an effect on my life and my relationship with my wife and kids and even my friends. I've always wanted to be a writer.

I feel certain that if, in our homes, parents will read from the Book of Mormon prayerfully and regularly, both by themselves and with their children, the spirit of that great book will come to permeate our homes and all who dwell therein.

I feel a kind of reverence for the first books of young authors. There is so much aspiration in them, so much audacious hope and trembling fear, so much of the heart's history, that all errors and shortcomings are for a while lost sight of in the amiable self assertion of youth.

I feel guilty if I'm not reading books, but I read scripts of movies or things that I know I'm committed to that I'm going to do the project. I tell myself, "I'm going to read this script like six times," and I only read it the initial time.

I feel happy and secure when I'm on my bed with a good book... I forget everything which is terrible in our world.

I feel like all this stuff that we make: books and art and music, all of it. There's this energy that circles the world that wants to be made manifest, and it is just looking for someone to come through. And it's dying for you to make it. And if you don't do it, it will go find somebody else.

I feel, holding books, accommodating their weight and breathing their dust, an abiding love. I trust them, in a way that I can't trust my computer, though I couldn't do without it. Books are matter. My books matter. What would I have done through these years without the library and all its lovely books?

I feel like a divorced wife once my book is published and has left me, and hate to be brought back into intimate contact!

I feel like 'Gossip Girl' isn't really 'Gossip Girl' anymore when they're away at school because they don't go to NYU; they go to, like, Yale and Brown. New York City is just as much a character as anyone else in the books, and I was really sort of reluctant to show them off in their separate college worlds.

I feel like a lot of times when you get signed to an agent they just send you everywhere, so I still audition for a lot for voiceover stuff. I actually don't book a lot of it, and I love doing it so I get disappointed because I want to do more voice stuff.

I feel like every time I start up, it's like a truck you have to get into 15th gear, so you very solely crank into that mental space where you feel really immersed in the world of the book and then you can just kind of go.

I feel like I have a lot of novel ideas, but they often come up while I'm already in the process of working on a book. You have to watch out with the slutty new idea.

I feel like it's impossible to please the hardcore comic book fans, because they'll never be happy no matter what you do.

I feel like if I'm going to give you a book about my dad, then I really want to give you my dad, because he is interesting and he is funny and if you're buying a book about him, I don't want you to have to sit through stuff that's not him.

I feel like in American fiction we're moving out of a period of intense irony, and I'm very glad about that. I feel like irony is fine for its own sake but shouldn't be the sole reason to write a book. It has been an ironic world view: that's the best way I can describe it. I'm a fan of earnestness. I feel like there's a new wave of earnestness and I'd be happy if I'm some small part of that.