Best 4184 quotes in «books quotes» category

It is time to float on the waters of the night. Time to wrap my arms around this book and press it to my chest, life preserver in a sea of unremarkable men and women, anonymous faces on the street, a hundred thousand unalphabetized things, a million forgotten hours.

It is usually unbearably painful to read a book by an author who knows way less than you do, unless the book is a novel.

It is weird to me on how people will come to church frequently and have absolutely no desire or intention to change anything about their life based on what they experienced in the church.

It is uphill work writing books

It is when we are faced with death that we turn most bookish.

It is you who must someday break through the protective polish of who you are, to become naked and powerful to who you can truly be.

It'll be dark soon, Rudy.' He walked on. 'So what?' 'I'm going back.' Rudy stopped and watched her now as if she were betraying him. 'That's right, book thief. Leave me now. I bet if there was a lousy book at the end of this road, you'd keep walking. Wouldn't you?

It looked like the sort of book described in library catalogues as 'slightly foxed', although it would be more honest to admit that it looked as though it had been badgered, wolved and possibly beared as well.

It mattered most to me then because of where I was in my life. So in a way, there isn't just one book that matters most, there might be several, or even a dozen.

It makes me sad that not every book is good,' I said. 'Not every book can be loved.' 'But when I pull a book off a shelf, and examine it, turning it this way and that, inspecting the cover, flipping through the pages and glancing at the words as they flash by, a thought here and a sentence there and I know that there is potential between those pages for love. Even if in my opinion the book is bad, someone else may find it good. Isn’t that like love?

It just happens to be the way I'm made. I have to write things down to feel I fully comprehend them.

It just so happened that a big old crocodile had been sunning himself on the beach very close to the soldier who was on point in the left-hand column, but the soldier was concentrating so hard on the tree line ahead that he didn’t notice the creature. Well, the crock got nervous and made a loud hissing sound and then headed for the river. I was nearby in the center column and watched as that soldier turned as white as a sheet.

It may be whispered to those uninitiated people who are anxious to know the habits and make the acquaintance of men of letters, that there are no race of people who talk about books, or, perhaps, who read books, so little as literary men.

It may be that The Great Gatsby is as perfect, word for word, just in terms of English; but Ulysses is deeper, richer, wider – and is comic, whereas The Great Gatsby is a tragic novel. And I think all great art is comic art. (video)

I took a speed-reading course where you run your finger down the middle of the page and was able to read "War and Peace" in 20 minutes. It’s about Russia.

I told him. We got a library here. Got plenty of good books, too. -Larry Brown, Dirty Work

I took on a year of reading books for a reason. Because words are witness to life: they record what has happened, and they make it all real. Words create the stories that become history and become unforgettable. Even fiction portrays truth: good fiction is truth.

I travel because it makes me realize how much I haven't seen, how much I'm not going to see, and how much I still need to see.

It plumps up your thinker and fills up your heart. And where you end up is not where you start.

I treated Art as the supreme reality and life as a mere mode of fiction.

I try to find the books that I lost or forgot more than 30 years ago on another continent, with the hope and dedication and bitterness of those who search for their first lost books, books that if found I wouldn't read anyway, because I've already read them over and over, but that I would look at and touch just as the miser strokes the coins under which he's buried...Books are like ghosts

It’s a heck of a responsibility to look after a spirit. So give kids the best of who you are. That’s the most you can ever do.

It's a book in which one finds everything,' Stuart continues sagely. 'I cannot tell you the number of times I've opened its pages and found a line, some passing thought--the most mundane detail--speaking directly to my set of circumstances! One finds it magically relevant, as though Joyce anticipates all. It is the great repository of everything.

It's a great blessing if one can lose all sense of time, all worries, if only for a short time, in a book.

It's alright to love someone who doesn't love you back, as long as they're worth you loving them. As long as they deserve it.

Its appearance was greeted with cries of rapture, and following a brief struggle over possesion of the volume, William rescued it before it should be torn to pieces, but allowed himself to be induced to read some of the passages aloud, his dramatic rendering being greeted by wolflike howls of enthusiasim and hails of live pits.

It's a strange grief… to die of nostalgia for something you you will never live.

It's a symbiotic process, writing. What I am makes the books—not part of me, all of me—and then the books themselves inform the sense of what I am. So the more I can be, the better the books will be.

It's a truth universally acknowledged...

Its better to hold a book between your Fingers than to Hold a Cigarette.

It's been well-thumbed, at least triple-read, there's that smell the fat orange-spine Penguins get when their pages have yellowed and the book bulges, basically the smell of complex humanity, sort of sweat and salt and endeavour. Like all the fat orange Penguins, it gets fatter with reading, which it should, because in a way the more you read it the bigger your own experience of the world gets, the fatter your soul.

It's Easy To Feel Like A Big Fish, When Your Pond is Just A Puddle!

It's commonplace to say that we 'love' a book, but when we say it, we mean all sorts of things. Sometimes we mean that a book was important to us in out youth, though we haven't picked it up in years; sometimes what we 'love' is an impressionistic idea glimpsed from afar (Combray...madeleins...Tante Leonie...) as apposed to the experience of wallowing and plowing through an actual text, and all too often people claim to love books they haven't read at all. Then there are books we love so much that we read every year or two, and know passages of them by heart; that cheer us up when we are sick or sad and never fail to amuse us when we take them up at random; that we pass on to all our friends and acquaintances; and to which we return again and again with undimmed enthusiasm over the course of a lifetime. I think it goes without saying ghat most books that engage readers on this very high levels are masterpieces; and this is why I believe that True Grit by Charles Portis is a masterpiece.

It seemed any young woman at odds with her place in life--be she a genteel lady or a serving girl--might find a happier home within the pages of a book.

It seemed that having girlfriends was a sign of innocence and a boundless capacity to care about other women. The hearts in that photograph and multiple strings attached to multiple other hearts. Everything was less about cliché and more about camaraderie. We weren't out for ourselves, we were out for each other. When had I forgotten that? When had I cut the pink wire?

Its emptiness is more than the lack of living, breathing beings. It is the unread pages of the many books that reside on the shelves throughout the room I should hot have thought one could tell when books have gone unread, but after the company of Birchwood's well-loved library it is as if I can hear these books whispering, their pages grasping and reaching for an audience.

It's hard not being able to see you, but my life in Tokyo would be a lot worse if it weren't for you.

It should be obvious but I’ve never met anyone that is able to perceive incompetent managers and lack of corporate integrity as the main causes for incompetent workers and poor results in productivity. And by the way, the exact same principles apply to Universities, but I've also never met students capable of questioning their teachers as they should, or teachers that aren't afraid to be questioned regarding their own integrity. It's really easy to talk bullshit in a classroom using social status, certificates and books as backbone for credibility but hard to face accountability for the words one vomits out of his brain without ever trying to digest them with a stomach for confrontation with realism. If anything useful I learned in college, as both student and lecturer, is that my teachers and coworkers were a bunch of arrogant cocksuckers feeding on the illusion that their reputation makes them who they are. Their self-delusion makes them pathetic. And the only thing they ever produced were pathetic students.

It should be noted that my mother has a long history of being disturbingly unperturbed by what normal people deem perturbing. Certain things simply don't strike her as worthy of a sit-down.

It's in my head now. It's a memory. No camera could have captured what I saw and felt.

It's nice to know in my life Jesus is behind me. There have been times when I thought that I was going through my struggle myself. I was resentful of anyone that was happy around me since I was bitter that I had to go through , what I felt to be, a very unbearable trial. It was a good relief to know that I could talk to Jesus about my problems when I felt like I had no one else to talk to. It was comforting to know that He understood my dilemma when others couldn't.

It's not courage so much as stubbornness," Alice said frankly. Her lips curled back from her teeth in a grim smile. "I don't like to lose.

It's like you're reading a book and every time someone's tearing the pages.

It’s neither an injury nor a wound but it can leave a scar. Some people do not have to break you to leave a strong mark; they are a lightning of miracle.

It's night in the Free People's World Tree Library. All the librarians are asleep, ... between the pages of their enchanted novels.

It’s not easy to write a poem about a poem.

It's not macho to read? Nonsense. Reading is a stouthearted activity, disporting courage, keenness, stick-to-itness. It is also, in my experience, one of the most thrilling and enduring delights of life, equal to a home run, a slamdunk, or breaking the four-minute mile.

It's marvelous to know another person's entire literary canon by heart. It's like knowing their secret personal language.

It’s no big deal. It’s kind of like a tattoo. It won’t hurt, not too much, just a few stitches and it’ll be all over. It’s really interesting how it’s done. You won’t believe where your soul hides. Go on, take a guess. Where do you think it is?

It’s not just the books Alba craves, it’s standing inside a place that houses millions of them. Libraries are Alba’s churches, and the university library, containing one edition of every book ever published in England, is her cathedral.