Best 4184 quotes in «books quotes» category

I need to experience books, not just read them.

I never adapted anything. Beautiful books are beautiful books, that's it. I don't know why we should transform them. I have respect for literature.

I never make up anything. I get everything from my books. They're all true!" --Ann Newton/Shadow of a Doubt (1943)

I never know what I’m going to want to curl up in bed with.” I shrug. “How about a man?” she retorts.

I never thought I'd fall madly in love with literature.

I never got int the library thing. I always liked that I could put my hand on a book when I wanted it. And to know I owned them; that was important too.

I never said you had to like it. You have to accept it. No regret. - Claire Harding - Boone Holler

I never had a book get angry or yell at me, never had a book show disappointment in me or consider me stupid because I didn't understand a line or needed to reread a paragraph or didn't know a word, never had a book mock me, never had a book turn its back on me or slap me in the face or fire me from reading it or decide it was in love with a faster, more intelligent, handsomer reader, I never even had a book get bored with me, or question my logic, I never had a book look suddenly crestfallen because I shut it and left it on its own, I've never met a book too shy to come into the bathroom with me or under the covers, I never met a book that refused to read me to sleep.

In every book lies a world. They pass the time waiting to be found by those that seek them.

In evil times, when public virtue has left the earth, ancient writings are of little account, and no one cares to disturb the silence of the libraries.

In fact, when I finally shuffle off this mortal coil, you will have to pry a book out of my cold, dead hands.

In fact, there are many uses of the innumerable opportunities a modern life supplies for regarding - at a distance, through the medium of photography - other people's pain.

In fiction, the characters have their own lives. They may start as a gloss on the author’s life, but they move on from there. In poetry, especially confessional poetry but in other poetry as well, the poet is not writing characters so much as emotional truth wrapped in metaphor. Bam! Pow! A shot to the gut.

In God's presence I find peace that is much deeper than any disappointment. I will grow and I understand I can't grow myself, that is why I need God and His grace.

In God's eye I spit, hair upon thy rigid tail sharp fangs glittery wet. Earth be thy sand, the sinful be thy toy, I've been playing forever, in song no longer do I find joy. In Gods eye I fight the bad fight with a goal as sharp as an axe, to ungently place thy hands upon its omnipotent thorax.

In God’s Kingdom there are no overnight sensations or flash-in-the-pan successes. Anyone who wants to be used of God will experience hidden years in the backside of the desert. During that time the Lord is polishing, sharpening and preparing us to fit into His bow, so at the right time, like “a polished shaft” He can launch us into fruitful service. The invisible years are years of serving, studying, being faithful in another person’s ministry and doing the behind-the-scenes work. The Bible says, ‘God is not unjust; he will not forget your work’ (Hebrews 6:10 NIV 2011 Edition). Be patient; when the time is right He will bring forth the fruit He placed inside you.

In great thick dusty books he read And hardly ever went to bed Before it was eleven. - One Day When They Had Settled Down

In his person Gascoigne showed a curious amalgam of classes, high and low. He had cultivated his mind with the same grave discipline with which he now maintained his toilette—which is to say, according to a method that was sophisticated, but somewhat out of date. He held the kind of passion for books and learning that only comes when one has pursued an education on one’s very own—but it was a passion that, because its origins were both private and virtuous, tended towards piety and scorn. His temperament was deeply nostalgic, not for his own past, but for past ages; he was cynical of the present, fearful of the future, and profoundly regretful of the world’s decay. As a whole, he put one in mind of a well-preserved old gentleman (in fact he was only thirty-four) in a period of comfortable, but perceptible, decline—a decline of which he was well aware, and which either amused him or turned him melancholy, depending on his moods.

Iniquity shall be increased above that which now thou see, or that thou hast heard long ago.

In Literature it is only the wild that attracts us.

In modeling: He with better looks is more in demand than he who has read better books.

In my own experience, contacts with the big world outside the typewriter are puzzling and terrifying; I don’t think I like reality very much. Principally, I don’t understand people outside; people in books are sensible and reasonable, but outside there is no predicting what they will do.

In my living room there are two large bookcases, each one eight feet tall, and they have about five hundred books between them. If I step up to a shelf and look at the books one by one, I can remember something about each. As a historian once said, some stare at me reproachfully, grumbling that I have never read them. One may remind me vaguely of a time when I was interested in romantic novels. An old college text will elicit a pang of unhappiness about studying. Each book has its character, and even books I know very well also have this kind of wordless flavor. Now if I step back from the shelf and look quickly across both bookcases I speed up that same process a hundredfold. Impressions wash across my awareness. But each book still looks back in its own way, answering the rude brevity of my gaze, calling faintly to me out of the corner of my eye. At that speed many books remain wrapped in the shadows of my awareness--I know I have looked past them and I know they are there, but I refuse to call them to mind.

In my tradition, God revealed Himself in words and lives in stories and, no, you cannot touch or even see Him. The Word, in Judaism, was never made flesh. The closest God came to embodiment was in the Temple in Jerusalem...But the Temple was destroyed. In Judaism, the flesh became words. Words were the traditional refuge of the Jewish people - Yochanan ben Zakkai led a yeshiva, my father became a professor. And little boys, in the Middle Ages, ate cakes with verses inscribed on them, an image I find deeply moving and, somehow, deeply depressing. This might help explain a certain melancholy quality books in general, for all their bright allure, have always had for me. As many times as I went down to my parents' library for comfort, I would find myself standing in front of the books and could almost feel them turning back into trees, failing me somehow.

In my youth I had three teachers: friends, enemies, and books. In my adulthood I had three professors: God, nature, and life.

Innocence is the beginning of ignorance. Experience is the end of stupidity.

In one such shop I saw lots of books in the window. I was reminded that humans have to read books. They actually need to sit down and look at each word consecutively. And that takes time. Lots of time. A human can’t just swallow every book going, can’t chew different tomes simultaneously, or gulp down near-infinite knowledge in a matter of seconds. They can’t just pop a word-capsule in their mouth like we can. Imagine! Being not only mortal but also forced to take some of that precious and limited time and read. No wonder they were a species of primitives. By the time they had read enough books to actually reach a state of knowledge where they can do anything with it they are dead.

In order to keep liking Nick (as opposed to loving him which was completely non-negotiable) Alice sometimes had to look at him obliquely or with her eyes half closed or through a pin hole on a piece of cardboard. Straight on would burn her retinas.

In order to protect their good names for posterity, many writers never wrote what they thought or the truth as it stood. That's why truth still lies hidden in matters of power, sex and religion. No wonder they chose to do so, many who dared paid with their heads

In reading he found solitude. In reading he could dispel the blare of the world.

In reading, friendship is restored immediately to its original purity. With books there is no forced sociability. If we pass the evening with those friends—books—it’s because we really want to. When we leave them, we do so with regret and, when we have left them, there are none of those thoughts that spoil friendship: “What did they think of us?”—“Did we make a mistake and say something tactless?”—“Did they like us?”—nor is there the anxiety of being forgotten because of displacement by someone else. All such agitating thoughts expire as we enter the pure and calm friendship of reading.

Inside the front flap of the book were handwritten names of the dozen or so people who had checked the book out before Naomi. Instead of writing her name, Naomi had a thin paper receipt with the due date printed on it. She could never possess this book the way those other people had. It was one of those uselessly nostalgic and sentimental thoughts that serve only our own romantic ideals, but I couldn't help believing it was true nonetheless. I took a pencil out from behind the register and handed it to her.

Instead of flowers gifted her rare books.

Instead of filling in the blanks, I wanted to be blank and be filled in.

Instead, I read books in the library, huddling on a bean bag in a corner and getting lost in somebody else's victories and troubles. I never had much time for fiction before. I preferred real life. Mathematics. Solutions. Things that actually have a bearing on my life. But I can understand now why people read, why they like to get lost in somebody else's life. Sometimes I'll read a sentence and it will make me sit up, jolt me, because it is something that I have recently felt but never said out loud. I want to reach into the page and tell the characters that I understand them, that they are not alone, that I'm not alone, that it's okay to feel like this. And then the lunch bell rings the book closes and I'm plunged back into reality.

Intellectual death is endemic in areas where people are not prepared to gain new information for development. Learning is the intervention!

Instead, we'd do what we always did, the only thing we'd ever been dependably stellar at: we'd read.

Intellectual death is endemic in areas where people are unprepared to obtain new information for development. Learning is a way of staying alive.

In the beginning - not now, thank God - Patty was always sharing the important books of her life with him, like Black Elk Speaks, The Golden Bough, and Hero with a Thousand Faces.

In the books I find the thrum of everything unsayable. The characters weep the way I want to, love the way I want to, cry, die, beat their breasts, and bray with life.

Interlibrary loans are a wonder of the world and a glory of civilization. Libraries really are wonderful. They’re better than bookshops, even. I mean bookshops make a profit on selling you books, but libraries just sit there lending you books quietly out of the goodness of their hearts.

In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.

In the bar, the jukebox comes on. Molley must be trying to drown out the sounds of raised voices. I move toward her, unable to resist; her eyes are wet, her face flushed, and I can finally look at her, want her, let myself touch her without grief turning everything to ashes in my mouth.

In the dream, Tana's mother loved her more than anyone or anything. More than death.

In The End, Humans Will Become Humans Own Worst Enemy.

In the grave the chambers of souls are like the womb of a woman: For like as a woman that travails make haste to escape the necessity of the travail: even so do these places haste to deliver those things that are committed unto them.

In the industry, trying out new genres is not always encouraged but what I've discovered is that as a writer, a jaunt outside my comfort zone generally brings new skills to the main body of my work.

In the meantime, there is not an hour to lose. I am about to visit the public library.

In the morning sow thy seed, and in the evening withhold not thine hand: for thou know not whether shall prosper, either this or that, or whether they both shall be alike good.

In the new faith, there is only one commandment. It is this commandment, and this commandment alone, that must be followed to end the times of suffering, which are soon to come. FORSAKE USURY.