Quotes and Sayings about Books
"I'm one of those writers who, when writing, believes she's god-and that she hasn't bestowed free will on any of her characters. In that sense there are no surprises in any of my books."
- Lynn Abbey
(Related: God, Books, Free will, Sense, Surprises, Writers, Writing)
"I write sets of books, but I've also written a lot of orphans."
- Lynn Abbey
(Related: Books)
"With Shakespeare and poetry, a new world was born. New dreams, new desires, a self consciousness was born. I desired to know to know myself in terms of the new standards set by these books."
- Peter Abrahams
(Related: Dreams, Poetry, Books, Consciousness, Self, Shakespeare, World)
"I am really impressed by lawyers who write books and tell us that they never lost a case. Most lawyers who have never lost a case have not had enough hard cases. But there are very difficult cases out there."
- Floyd Abrams
(Related: Books, Lawyers)
"I just had the sense that at least the books that I had read about law just didn't really have enough of that."
- Floyd Abrams
(Related: Books, Law, Sense)
"I understand that when people read my books that there's something there - but I don't identify with it."
- Kathy Acker
(Related: People, Books)
"Well I guess the plan was to write poetry and publish books and make a living from writing poetry. That was a pretty ambitious plan I guess."
- Robert Adamson
(Related: Poetry, Books, Living, Pretty, Writing)
"Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind, which are delivered down from generation to generation as presents to the posterity of those who are yet unborn."
- Joseph Addison
(Related: Genius, Books, Mankind, Posterity)
"In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but how many can get through to you."
- Mortimer Adler
(Related: Books)
"Study nature, not books."
- Louis Agassiz
(Related: Nature, Books, Study)
"The fate of the singers who, like my songs, went up in flame was also the fate of the books which I later wrote. All of them went up in flame to Heaven in a fire which broke out one night at my home in Bad Homburg as I lay ill in a hospital."
- Shmuel Y. Agnon
(Related: Home, Books, Fate, Fire, Heaven, Night, Songs)
"I have also written a book about the Giving of the Torah, and a book on the Days of Awe, and a book on the books of Israel that have been written since the day the Torah was given to Israel."
- Shmuel Y. Agnon
(Related: Books, Day, Giving, Israel)
"Observation more than books and experience more than persons, are the prime educators."
- Amos Bronson Alcott
(Related: Experience, Books, Observation)
"Good books, like good friends, are few and chosen; the more select, the more enjoyable."
- Louisa May Alcott
(Related: Books, Friends)
"Books that have become classics - books that have had their day and now get more praise than perusal - always remind me of retired colonels and majors and captains who, having reached the age limit, find themselves retired on half pay."
- Thomas Bailey Aldrich
(Related: Age, Books, Day, Now, Praise)
"If writers learn more from their books than do readers, perhaps I may have begun to learn."
- Lloyd Alexander
(Related: Books, May, Writers)
"Most of my books have been written in the form of fantasy."
- Lloyd Alexander
(Related: Books, Fantasy)
"Heart is what drives us and determines our fate. That is what I need for my characters in my books: a passionate heart. I need mavericks, dissidents, adventurers, outsiders and rebels, who ask questions, bend the rules and take risks."
- Isabel Allende
(Related: Heart, Fate, Questions, Rules)
"When I was growing up, I always read horror books, while my sister read romance novels."
- Dorothy Allison
(Related: Romance, Sister, Books, Growing up, Horror)
"The Dick, Jane, and Spot primers have gone to that bookshelf in the sky. I have, in some ways, a tender feeling toward them, so I think it's for the best."
- Chris Van Allsburg
(Related: Feeling, Sky)
"My mother used to take my brother and me to get any books we wanted, but they were second hand books published in the '30s and '40s. I liked scary books."
- Alejandro Amenabar
(Related: Mother, Brother, Books)
"I am grateful for - though I can't keep up with - the flood of articles, theses, and textbooks that mean to share insight concerning the nature of poetry."
- A. R. Ammons
(Related: Nature, Poetry)
"When today's generation reads Jack's books or they listen to the music created by some of us, I believe that they see there is a different way of approaching today's life and today's sometimes seeming hopelessness that can provide answers."
- David Amram
(Related: Life, Music, Answers, Books, Today)
"That by listening to some music, by reading some books, by looking at paintings, and most important by hanging out with one another - by collaborating with one another and creating your own network - you can achieve something that is much better than what is out there."
- David Amram
(Related: Music, Books, Listening, Network, Reading)
"If I could go back in time and tell my younger self that eventually that I'd become very successful writing Dune books after Frank Herbert's death, I would have laughed myself silly, I think, at how strange that prospect would be."
- Kevin J. Anderson
(Related: Time, Death, Successful, Books, Self, Silly, Writing)
"I always turn in my books on time, so you can always count on a book coming out when it's supposed to."
- Kevin J. Anderson
(Related: Time, Books)
"I mean, I wasn't stupid. I knew we'd make money and sell a lot of Dune books."
- Kevin J. Anderson
(Related: Money, Books)
"I wanted the feel in these books to be like an epic fantasy, with kings, queens, dukes and court politics, but of course like what I was explaining before, about making the science make sense, you have to make the politics make sense, too."
- Kevin J. Anderson
(Related: Politics, Science, Books, Court, Fantasy, Kings, Sense)
"I have written a few children's books. The first book that I wrote was for children. It was called "The Package", and it was a mystery story in pictures. It had no words."
- Laurie Anderson
(Related: Books, Children, First, Mystery, Words)
"I really like books that you can kind of hear as much as think about, that are so graphic and visual."
- Laurie Anderson
(Related: Books)
"What five books would I like to be remembered for? Well... Tau Zero, I like that one especially. It was somewhat of a tour de force, and I think it got across what I was trying for."
- Poul Anderson
(Related: Books, Force, Trying)
"And after I compose my programs, but it is very easy because I look to the music in a very natural way without fuss, and so I look always music, in my home, like books and books and books, choose books and you read the pages, so I do this with music, and I make programs."
- Victoria de los Angeles
(Related: Music, Home, Books)
"As far as I knew white women were never lonely, except in books. White men adored them, Black men desired them and Black women worked for them."
- Maya Angelou
(Related: Men, Women, Books, Lonely)
"It was an hour and a half plane ride, so I slept. I try to sleep because that's probably the only time I get to get my real sleep. When I can't sleep I read books or watch movies."
- Keren Ann
(Related: Movies, Time, Books, Sleep)
"Life is a wonderful thing to talk about, or to read about in history books - but it is terrible when one has to live it."
- Jean Anouilh
(Related: History, Life, Books, Talk)
"As for collaboration - I have done a lot, 26 books, and found publishers increasingly resistive to them. It's not that the books are bad; editors won't even read them."
- Piers Anthony
(Related: Books, Collaboration, Editors)
"I maintain an ongoing survey of Internet Publishing and self publishing, so that it is now possible for any writer with a book to get it published at nominal cost or free, and to have it on sale at booksellers like Amazon.com."
- Piers Anthony
(Related: Internet, Now, Publishing, Self, Writer)
"No one bothered reading the books and understanding - and again, I'm not being high-falutin' about it - but I think our books are great literature with great metaphors of real life dealing with fears and hopes."
- Avi Arad
(Related: Life, Being, Books, Literature, Metaphors, Reading, Understanding)
"Listen, my day job is also Chief Creative Officer for Marvel, and it's a very painful job because we publish a lot of books, and there are things I see where I can punch people out. Therefore, we have some new people now, and the kids are going to read our books."
- Avi Arad
(Related: People, Books, Day, Job, Kids, Now)
"I demand that my books be judged with utmost severity, by knowledgeable people who know the rules of grammar and of logic, and who will seek beneath the footsteps of my commas the lice of my thought in the head of my style."
- Louis Aragon
(Related: Thought, People, Books, Footsteps, Grammar, Logic, Rules, Style, Will)
"I'd love to do a whole series of stories and have them collected into books."
- Sergio Aragones
(Related: Love, Books)
"I read true crime books, and I read when people do case studies of stuff. I'm into books like that. Case studies or forensics or murder - all that good stuff."
- Tom Araya
(Related: People, Books, Crime, Murder)
"Comic books and graphic novels are a great medium. It's incredibly underused."
- Darren Aronofsky
(Related: Books)
"In our fathers' time nothing was read but books of feigned chivalry, wherein a man by reading should be led to none other end, but only to manslaughter and bawdry."
- Roger Ascham
(Related: Time, Books, Chivalry, End, Fathers, Man, Nothing, Reading)
"Comic books and The Chronicles of Narnia. My mother used to read those to me and my twin brother growing up."
- Shawn Ashmore
(Related: Mother, Brother, Books, Growing up)
"I don't believe in personal immortality; the only way I expect to have some version of such a thing is through my books."
- Isaac Asimov
(Related: Books, Immortality)
"We're kidding on that. One of the things I insisted upon when we went into this project was that we are full partners, going fifty-fifty, both on the money and on the say of what's going on with the books."
- Robert Asprin
(Related: Money, Books, Project)
"Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered."
- W. H. Auden
(Related: Books)
"How could I make a little book, when I have seen enough to make a dozen large books?"
- John James Audubon
(Related: Books)
"I think of my books as mainstream and that's were most people who read them look for them in book stores."
- Jean M. Auel
(Related: People, Books)
"Though my books are written from a historical perspective, I have goon so far back that I am in the realm of prehistorical speculation rather than simple historical fact to weave my stories around."
- Jean M. Auel
(Related: Books, Fact, Perspective)
"I don't write for publishers, certainly not for critics, and not for readers, But I am delighted that so many people have found my books enjoyable and want to continue to read them."
- Jean M. Auel
(Related: People, Books, Want)
"I have heard Science Fiction and Fantasy referred to as the fiction of ideas, and I like that definition, but it's the mainstream public that chooses my books for the most part."
- Jean M. Auel
(Related: Science, Ideas, Books, Fantasy, Fiction, Public)
"I have been a reader of Science Fiction and Fantasy for a long time, since I was 11 or 12 I think, so I understand it and I'm not at all surprised that readers of the genre might enjoy my books."
- Jean M. Auel
(Related: Science, Time, Books, Fantasy, Fiction)
"Although most products will soon be too costly to purchase, there will be a thriving market in the sale of books on how to fix them."
- Norman Ralph Augustine
(Related: Books, Will)
"Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove anything."
- Jane Austen
(Related: Education, Men, Books, Pen, Will)
"You see, the interesting thing about books, as opposed, say, to films, is that it's always just one person encountering the book, it's not an audience, it's one to one."
- Paul Auster
(Related: Books)
"I don't know if she should worry too much, I mean some of our greatest writers have had movies made of their books, lots of Hemingway novels were turned into movies, it doesn't hurt the book."
- Paul Auster
(Related: Movies, Books, Hurt, Worry, Writers)
"We had literary references, so we knew what we were talking about. We could quote things, talk about books we'd read; you can say something, you don't have to explain it."
- Kevin Ayers
(Related: Books, Literary, Talk, Talking)
"The reason is that till date, in spite of advances in information technology and strategies of information, the written word in the form of books still remains one of humanity's most enduring legacies."
- Ibrahim Babangida
(Related: Technology, Books, Humanity, Information, Reason, Word)
"It is only through books that we partake of the great harvest that is human civilization across the ages."
- Ibrahim Babangida
(Related: Civilization, Books, Harvest)
"Literary imagination is an aesthetic object offered by a writer to a lover of books."
- Gaston Bachelard
(Related: Imagination, Books, Literary, Writer)
"Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested."
- Francis Bacon
(Related: Books)
"I'm obsessed with zombies. I like watching zombie movies and I read zombie books."
- Kevin Bacon
(Related: Movies, Books, Zombies)
"The reason that there are so few good books written is that so few people who write know anything."
- Walter Bagehot
(Related: People, Books, Reason)
"The reason why so few good books are written is that so few people who can write know anything."
- Walter Bagehot
(Related: People, Books, Reason)
"Americans like fat books and thin women."
- Russell Baker
(Related: Women, Americans, Books)
"It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive."
- James A. Baldwin
(Related: People, Books)
"That difficult start drove me on to inspire children and let them know that it is never to late to repair a bad experience at school, and once you get your head down and start to read books, you can really achieve."
- Johnny Ball
(Related: Experience, Books, Children, School)
"I'm a geophysicist and all my earth science books when I was a student, I had to give the wrong answer to get an A. We used to ridicule continental drift. It was something we laughed at. We learned of Marshall Kay's geosynclinal cycle, which is a bunch of crap."
- Robert Ballard
(Related: Science, Books, Earth, Ridicule, Wrong)
"By the usual reckoning, the worst books make the best films."
- Iain Banks
(Related: Books)
"I wouldn't like to be a character in one of my books!"
- Iain Banks
(Related: Character)
"Lists of books we reread and books we can't finish tell more about us than about the relative worth of the books themselves."
- Russell Banks
(Related: Books, Worth)
"Oh, I was super serious about practicing and rudiments, and still am. I still have all my books."
- Travis Barker
(Related: Books)
"Books say: she did this because. Life says: she did this. Books are where things are explained to you, life where things aren't."
- Julian Barnes
(Related: Life, Books)
"The bastard form of mass culture is humiliated repetition... always new books, new programs, new films, news items, but always the same meaning."
- Roland Barthes
(Related: Books, Culture, Meaning, News, Repetition)
"Old books that have ceased to be of service should no more be abandoned than should old friends who have ceased to give pleasure."
- Bernard Baruch
(Related: Books, Friends, Old, Pleasure, Service)
"So we want an Islamic state where Islamic law is not just in the books but enforced, and enforced with determination. There is no space and no room for democratic consultation. The Shariah is set and fixed, so why do we need to discuss it anymore? Just implement it!"
- Abu Bakar Bashir
(Related: Determination, Books, Law, Space, State, Want)
"Americans are paying for our lack of an energy policy with their jobs and out of their pocketbooks."
- Bob Beauprez
(Related: Policy, Americans, Energy, Jobs)
"When I was growing up in the 1960s, there was starting to be more books geared towards young adults."
- Alison Bechdel
(Related: Books, Growing up)
"But I read comic books. I read things like Richie Rich and Little Lulu."
- Alison Bechdel
(Related: Books)
"Books are not men and yet they stay alive."
- Henry Ward Beecher
(Related: Men, Books)
"Books are not made for furniture, but there is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house."
- Henry Ward Beecher
(Related: Books, Nothing)
"There are three schoolmasters for everybody that will employ them - the senses, intelligent companions, and books."
- Henry Ward Beecher
(Related: Books, Senses, Will)
"Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?"
- Henry Ward Beecher
(Related: Nature, Human nature)
"When I am dead, I hope it may be said: His sins were scarlet, but his books were read."
- Hilaire Belloc
(Related: Hope, Books, May)
"I don't keep any copy of my books around... they would embarass me. When I finish writing my books, I kick them in the belly, and have done with them."
- Ludwig Bemelmans
(Related: Books, Writing)
"I love meeting fans. The people who are fans of my books are really smart and dedicated, because some independent comics are hard to get. I will drive all the way to Pittsburgh or Detroit to put it in their hands."
- Brian M. Bendis
(Related: Love, People, Books, Fans, Meeting, Will)
"I write from my imagination, not from what I've read in books or seen on TV or to make money. I wrote from an idea I was passionate about."
- Dirk Benedict
(Related: Imagination, Money, Idea, Books)
"I have written two nonfiction books, I'm embarrassed to say."
- Dirk Benedict
(Related: Books)
"Books and harlots have their quarrels in public."
- Walter Benjamin
(Related: Books, Public, Quarrels)
"Of all the ways of acquiring books, writing them oneself is regarded as the most praiseworthy method. Writers are really people who write books not because they are poor, but because they are dissatisfied with the books which they could buy but do not like."
- Walter Benjamin
(Related: People, Books, Poor, Writers, Writing)
"I had already done a lot of research for Rough Riders, keeping notebooks and old photographs. Some of the books were antiques for that time period, with the covers falling off."
- Tom Berenger
(Related: Time, Books, Old, Research)
"You will find something more in woods than in books. Trees and stones will teach you that which you can never learn from masters."
- Saint Bernard
(Related: Books, Trees, Will)
"Censorship is a strange situation. There was times when people would burn books because they didn't like what people were doing."
- Michael Berryman
(Related: People, Books, Censorship)
"The fear of failure is so great, it is no wonder that the desire to do right by one's children has led to a whole library of books offering advice on how to raise them."
- Bruno Bettelheim
(Related: Fear, Failure, Advice, Books, Children, Desire, Right, Wonder)
"Right up to the middle of this century all perceptions of the world around us were delivered via the bookshelf or the paper route."
- Theodore Bikel
(Related: Perceptions, Right, World)
"Given Pounds and five years, and an ordinary man can in the ordinary course, without any undue haste or putting any pressure upon his taste, surround himself with books, all in his own language, and thence forward have at least one place in the world."
- Augustine Birrell
(Related: Books, Haste, Language, Man, Pressure, Taste, World, Years)
"An ordinary man can surround himself with two thousand books and thenceforward have at least one place in the world in which it is possible to be happy."
- Augustine Birrell
(Related: Books, Man, World)
"Books, I found, had the power to make time stand still, retreat or fly into the future."
- Jim Bishop
(Related: Power, Time, Books, Future)
"I love coloring books. I keep some by my bed."
- Karen Black
(Related: Love, Bed, Books)
"Something about glamour interested me. All my schoolbooks had drawings of women on terraces with a cocktail and a cigarette."
- Bill Blass
(Related: Women, Glamour)
"The failure to read good books both enfeebles the vision and strengthens our most fatal tendency - the belief that the here and now is all there is."
- Allan Bloom
(Related: Belief, Failure, Vision, Books, Now)
"I've got around 400 cookbooks."
- Heston Blumenthal
"I think the government should do everything they possibly can to, to bring this crisis to an end; and that means going after BP, enforcing the laws that are on the books, and restoring the gulf to its original condition."
- John Boehner
(Related: Government, Books, Crisis, End, Laws)
"When you have mastered numbers, you will in fact no longer be reading numbers, any more than you read words when reading books You will be reading meanings."
- W. E. B. Du Bois
(Related: Books, Fact, Numbers, Reading, Will, Words)
"I get up in the morning, do my e-mail, I check my e-mails all day. I'll go online and I'll buy my books at Amazon.com, but I don't want to buy all of them because I want to go to Duttons and I want to buy books from another human being."
- Joseph Bologna
(Related: Being, Books, Day, Want)
"At many points during our nation's history, there have been times - known in our history textbooks as "panics" - when adverse conditions affecting the financial and economic sectors of the country have caused individuals to hoard more than they need."
- Jo Bonner
(Related: History, Financial, Country, Nation)
"Books! I dunno if I ever told you this, but books are the greatest gift one person can give another."
- Bono
(Related: Books)
"The best translations cannot convey to us the strength and exquisite delicacy of thought in its native garb, and he to whom such books are shut flounders about in outer darkness."
- Edwin Booth
(Related: Thought, Strength, Books, Darkness)
"Films and gramophone records, music, books and buildings show clearly how vigorously a man's life and work go on after his "death," whether we feel it or not, whether we are aware of the individual names or not. There is no such thing as death according to our view!"
- Martin Bormann
(Related: Death, Life, Work, Music, Books, Man, Names)
"Booksellers are the most valuable destination for the lonely, given the numbers of books that were written because authors couldn't find anyone to talk to."
- Alain de Botton
(Related: Books, Lonely, Numbers, Talk)
"It's clear to me that there is no good reason for many philosophy books to sound as complicated as they do."
- Alain de Botton
(Related: Books, Philosophy, Reason, Sound)
"I love old books. They tell you stories about their use. You can see where the fingerprints touched the pages as they held the book open. You can see how long they lingered on each page by the finger stains."
- Jack Bowman
(Related: Love, Books, Old, Open)
"The most colorful section of a bookstore is the display of SF books, with art by people like Wayne Barlow, who is a terrific artist."
- Bruce Boxleitner
(Related: Art, People, Artist, Books)
"There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them."
- Ray Bradbury
(Related: Books, Reading)
"You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them."
- Ray Bradbury
(Related: People, Books, Culture, Reading)
"Negative humor is forgotten immediately. It's the stuff that makes us feel better about our lives that lives long. Much more satisfying. Enter children's books."
- Berke Breathed
(Related: Humor, Negative, Books, Children)
"I've only read two books in my life: Baseball Sparkplug and Love Story."
- George Brett
(Related: Love, Baseball, Books)
"Finding people who get enormous pleasure from reading books is a more and more unusual experience, and so writers just so much want to be heard."
- Susie Bright
(Related: Experience, People, Books, Pleasure, Reading, Want, Writers)
"I had a hard time publishing my books in the beginning of my career, because editors were afraid what people would think of THEM, personally, if their name was associated with me."
- Susie Bright
(Related: Time, People, Beginning, Books, Career, Editors, Name, Publishing)
"I got introduced to audiobooks because of having a baby."
- Susie Bright
(Related: Baby)
"I don't read books."
- Eric Bristow
(Related: Books)
"There are people who must spend huge amounts of time composing these online diatribes against me, all about how disgusting and terrible I am and how no one should ever read my books, and it's not enough for them to hate me, they can't stand the fact that ANYONE likes me!"
- Poppy Z. Brite
(Related: Time, People, Books, Fact, Hate)
"The response to 'The Greatest Generation' and the books that followed has been one of the most satisfying experiences of my life."
- Tom Brokaw
(Related: Life, Books)
"The lessons taught in great books are misleading. The commerce in life is rarely so simple and never so just."
- Anita Brookner
(Related: Life, Books, Commerce, Misleading)
"I have learned to do more with less, so you don't see the big books anymore."
- Terry Brooks
(Related: Books)
"Anyway, several rewrites later, Del Rey Books did publish my first novel, and it did become the first work of fiction on the New York Times trade paperback bestseller list."
- Terry Brooks
(Related: Work, Books, Fiction, First, Trade)
"I haven't made up my mind about doing anymore Landover books."
- Terry Brooks
(Related: Books, Mind)
"The American mind, unlike the English, is not formed by books, but, as Carl Sandburg once said to me... by newspapers and the Bible."
- Van Wyck Brooks
(Related: Bible, American, Books, English, Mind, Newspapers)
"Today the U.S. is farther from being nourished by poetry than it was a hundred years ago, when books of poems were best-sellers."
- James Broughton
(Related: Poetry, Being, Books, Poems, Today, Years)
"I think the thinking is, in the comic books, I should pack as much onto a page as possible, because, you know, it's kind of the cheaper format, and you want to give readers as much as you can for their dollar."
- Chester Brown
(Related: Books, Thinking, Want)
"I have a good collection of cookery books. This is not so much because I like cooking, but because I like eating."
- Louise Brown
(Related: Books, Cookery, Cooking, Eating)
"The importance and influence of books on me has been cumulative: the result of hearing and reading lots of stories about interesting people and places."
- Louise Brown
(Related: People, Books, Hearing, Importance, Influence, Reading, Result)
"Many of the less prolific killers' stories go unheard because they simply don't make good books."
- Pat Brown
(Related: Books)
"Serial killers are everywhere! Well, perhaps not in our neighborhood, but on our television screens, at the movie theatres, and in rows and rows of books at our local Borders or Barnes and Noble Booksellers."
- Pat Brown
(Related: Books, Television)
"I love to read. I love to stretch. In the morning, I get up, and if I'm not in a hurry, I will lie on the floor on a rug, look through some books and magazines, and maybe listen to music and try to do stretching exercises to tune up."
- Jackson Browne
(Related: Love, Music, Lie, Books, Will)
"Then one day I thought it would be wonderful to make a whole book, to make my text and my drawings together, and that's how I started doing children's books."
- Dick Bruna
(Related: Thought, Books, Children, Day)
"Now, I had been drawing all this time - especially in France of course - so, when I came back, my father gave me the chance to do a cover for one of the books he published."
- Dick Bruna
(Related: Time, Father, Books, Chance, France, Now)
"Miffy has changed quite a lot since the early books, although I never realised it at the time."
- Dick Bruna
(Related: Time, Books)
"I did about 2000 covers altogether, for all sorts of books - from Shakespeare to James Bond - and I always had the idea that I must give 100%, no matter who the author was."
- Dick Bruna
(Related: Idea, Books, Shakespeare)
"Master books, but do not let them master you. Read to live, not live to read."
- Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton
(Related: Books)
"Books in a large university library system: 2,000,000. Books in an average large city library: 10,000. Average number of books in a chain bookstore: 30,000. Books in an average neighborhood branch library: 20,000."
- Anthony Burgess
(Related: Books, University)
"I was supposed to go to drama school and then go to New York and do theatre. But I grew up on all those fabulous movies and had read all the bold Hollywood books, and I thought I just had to take a look."
- Delta Burke
(Related: Movies, Thought, Books, Drama, Hollywood, School, Theatre)
"Books are a real solace, friendships are good but action is better than all."
- John Burns
(Related: Action, Books)
"I knew that if I wrote a new book every six months or every year, if I continued to read great books, eventually I would write something worthy of publication. I understood I might be in my forties or my fifties or even my sixties, but I felt confident that it would happen."
- Augusten Burroughs
(Related: Books, Months)
"I love to both give and receive very old books."
- Augusten Burroughs
(Related: Love, Books, Old)
"I still find each day too short for all the thoughts I want to think, all the walks I want to take, all the books I want to read, and all the friends I want to see."
- John Burroughs
(Related: Thoughts, Books, Day, Friends, Want)
"We didn't have a whole lot of money when I was growing up either. I would always ask for magic books or magic tricks for my birthday or for Christmas and the rest of the year I either had to mow lawns or find part time jobs to help supplement the cost of doing magic."
- Lance Burton
(Related: Birthday, Money, Time, Books, Christmas, Growing up, Help, Jobs, Magic, Rest)
"I always wanted to go to the Chavez school but I could never afford it when I was growing up so a lot of my learning came from magic books and watching other magicians. I was also very lucky that I had a couple of really good magic teachers."
- Lance Burton
(Related: Books, Growing up, Learning, Magic, School, Teachers)
"They lard their lean books with the fat of others work."
- Richard Burton
(Related: Work, Books)
"A love of books, of holding a book, turning its pages, looking at its pictures, and living its fascinating stories goes hand-in-hand with a love of learning."
- Laura Bush
(Related: Love, Books, Learning, Living)
"The power of a book lies in its power to turn a solitary act into a shared vision. As long as we have books, we are not alone."
- Laura Bush
(Related: Power, Vision, Act, Books, Lies)
"I was a total education geek. I loved school. I loved learning. I loved doing homework. All of my books and notebooks from high school are underlined and highlighted and there are notes all over the margins. And you know, I was a theater kid too. I was all over the place."
- Sophia Bush
(Related: Education, Books, Learning, School, Theater)
"While Fledging is a different type of book, The Parable series serve as cautionary tales. I wrote the Parable books because of the direction of the country. You can call it save the world fiction, but it clearly doesn't save anything."
- Octavia Butler
(Related: Books, Country, Direction, Fiction, World)
"My main wish is to get my books into other people's rooms, and to keep other people's books out of mine."
- Samuel Butler
(Related: People, Books)
"Books are like imprisoned souls till someone takes them down from a shelf and frees them."
- Samuel Butler
(Related: Books)
"The oldest books are only just out to those who have not read them."
- Samuel Butler
(Related: Books)
"An apology for the devil: it must be remembered that we have heard one side of the case. God has written all the books."
- Samuel Butler
(Related: God, Apology, Books)
"I read books like mad, but I am careful to to let anything I read influence me."
- Michael Caine
(Related: Books, Influence)
"I often reread books I have written."
- Taylor Caldwell
(Related: Books)
"We're competing with everything: the beach, the mall, bookstores. Libraries are in a transition right now, caught between two forces, the old ways and technology. Libraries are under a lot of pressure to provide both."
- John Callahan
(Related: Technology, Beach, Libraries, Now, Old, Pressure, Right)
"This is a feminist bookstore. There is no humor section."
- John Callahan
(Related: Humor)
"I get sent a lot of scripts which feature him as a kind of all-purpose Victorian literary character and really understand little, if anything, about him, his life or his books."
- Simon Callow
(Related: Life, Character, Books, Literary)
"After all manner of professors have done their best for us, the place we are to get knowledge is in books. The true university of these days is a collection of books."
- Albert Camus
(Related: Knowledge, Books, University)
"They offered me millions and millions and millions of dollars to write books about Cary. That was between us. That was private. I'll always love him."
- Dyan Cannon
(Related: Love, Books)
"I don't want to wait more than a year and a half or two years between books."
- Max Cannon
(Related: Books, Want, Years)
"There are certain books in the world which every searcher for truth must know: the Bible, the Critique of Pure Reason, the Origin of Species, and Karl Marx's Capital."
- Al Capp
(Related: Truth, Bible, Books, Reason, World)
"Laws against homosexual behavior should remain on the books."
- Orson Scott Card
(Related: Behavior, Books, Laws)
"I buy way too many books."
- Orson Scott Card
(Related: Books)
"I went to a bookstore and asked the saleswoman, "Where's the self-help section?" She said if she told me, it would defeat the purpose."
- George Carlin
(Related: Purpose, Defeat, Self)
"What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books."
- Thomas Carlyle
(Related: Books, University)
"The true university of these days is a collection of books."
- Thomas Carlyle
(Related: Books, University)
"All that mankind has done, thought or been: it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books."
- Thomas Carlyle
(Related: Thought, Books, Lying, Magic, Mankind)
"In books lies the soul of the whole past time."
- Thomas Carlyle
(Related: Time, Soul, Books, Lies, Past)
"Quentin and I were constantly finding something new that we had in common and comic books were one of them. I think we were talking about comic books much earlier in our relationship, before I had the part."
- David Carradine
(Related: Books, Talking)
"Well you know I've been fan of Tony Hillerman's books for years."
- Keith Carradine
(Related: Books, Years)
"I made a series of wrong decisions about moderately recent books, and I've sold the rights to studios for ridiculous amounts of money and the films have never been made. That's the saddest thing of all, because they're locked up and no one else can make them."
- John Le Carre
(Related: Money, Books, Decisions, Rights, Wrong)
"If I had to put a name to it, I would wish that all my books were entertainments. I think the first thing you've got to do is grab the reader by the ear, and make him sit down and listen. Make him laugh, make him feel. We all want to be entertained at a very high level."
- John Le Carre
(Related: Books, First, Name, Want)
"At a Boston signing, someone from the audience asked why I was so obsessed with furniture in my books. The question rattled around in my head. I had no idea that I was obsessed with furniture."
- Jonathan Carroll
(Related: Idea, Books, Boston, Question)
"I don't care how I got here. In the books, when you look at it 10 or 20 years from now, it's not going say how he got here, it's going to say he's here and he represented the team."
- Vince Carter
(Related: Books, Care, Now, Years)
"Reading about nature is fine, but if a person walks in the woods and listens carefully, he can learn more than what is in books, for they speak with the voice of God."
- George Washington Carver
(Related: Nature, God, Books, Reading, Voice)
"In our house we repeated the pattern of thousands of other homes. There were a few books and a lot of music. Our food and our furniture were no different from our neighbors'."
- Emanuel Celler
(Related: Food, Music, Books, Neighbors)
"The things I keep going back to, rereading, maybe they say more about me as a reader than about the books. Love in the Time of Cholera, Pale Fire."
- Michael Chabon
(Related: Love, Time, Books, Fire)
"Comic books were just the means for me to tell the story."
- Michael Chabon
(Related: Books)
"First, people don't read novels off screens, and they don't have a tendency to shell out real money for books when they don't retain anything physically for their money."
- Jack L. Chalker
(Related: Money, People, Books, First)
"No, I don't autograph blank slips, checks, or stickers, and certainly no books without me in them."
- Jack L. Chalker
(Related: Books)
"Books are the blessed chloroform of the mind."
- Oswald Chambers
(Related: Books, Mind)
"Books are standing counselors and preachers, always at hand, and always disinterested; having this advantage over oral instructors that they are ready to repeat their lessons as often as we please."
- Robert Chambers
(Related: Books)
"Books are the blessed chloroform of the mind."
- Robert Chambers
(Related: Books, Mind)
"Most books today seemed to have been written overnight from books read the day before."
- Nicolas de Chamfort
(Related: Books, Day, Today)
"One whose knowledge is confined to books and whose wealth is in the possession of others, can use neither his knowledge nor wealth when the need for them arises."
- Chanakya
(Related: Knowledge, Wealth, Books, Possession)
"Books are as useful to a stupid person as a mirror is useful to a blind person."
- Chanakya
(Related: Blind, Books)
"If my books had been any worse, I should not have been invited to Hollywood, and if they had been any better, I should not have come."
- Raymond Chandler
(Related: Books, Hollywood)
"The whole story of the comfort women, the system of forced sexual slavery, the medical experiments of Unit 731, is not something that is in the US psyche. That is changing because many books are coming out."
- Iris Chang
(Related: Medical, Women, Books, Comfort, Slavery)
"The best books for a man are not always those which the wise recommend, but often those which meet the peculiar wants, the natural thirst of his mind, and therefore awaken interest and rivet thought."
- William Ellery Channing
(Related: Thought, Books, Interest, Man, Mind)
"It is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with superior minds. In the best books, great men talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their souls into ours."
- William Ellery Channing
(Related: Men, Thoughts, Books, Talk)
"God be thanked for books; they are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages."
- William Ellery Channing
(Related: Life, God, Books, Past, Spiritual)
"I had still never read one of the Bond books when the movie Dr. No came out."
- Leslie Charteris
(Related: Books)
"Real education should consist of drawing the goodness and the best out of our own students. What better books can there be than the book of humanity?"
- Cesar Chavez
(Related: Education, Books, Goodness, Humanity, Students)
"Learning is acquired by reading books, but the much more necessary learning, the knowledge of the world, is only to be acquired by reading men, and studying all the various facets of them."
- Lord Chesterfield
(Related: Men, Knowledge, Books, Learning, Reading, World)
"A room without books is like a body without a soul."
- Gilbert K. Chesterton
(Related: Soul, Body, Books)
"You come to work because the office is a resource: The office is a place where you can meet with other people, and the office has libraries of books and information on CD-ROM that might help you with your work."
- Jay Chiat
(Related: Work, People, Books, Help, Information, Libraries, Office)
"I think my books come out very visual, which is an obvious consequence."
- Lee Child
(Related: Books, Obvious)
"The Bible is one of the most genocidal books in history."
- Noam Chomsky
(Related: History, Bible, Books)
"As I have studied the Bible and the Book of Mormon, I have come to know through the power of the Spirit of God, that these books contain the fullness of the gospel of Jesus Christ."
- Clayton Christensen
(Related: Power, God, Bible, Books, Christ, Mormon, Spirit)
"Because we do not sell photographs, we have no royalties on books, posters, postcards."
- Christo
(Related: Books)
"The directors thought, They understand nothing in the real economy, in real life. They read some stupid books, and they came from the moon to the earth, and maybe in one month they will disappear."
- Anatoly Chubais
(Related: Life, Thought, Books, Earth, Economy, Moon, Nothing, Will)
"It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations."
- Winston Churchill
(Related: Books, Man, Quotations)
"We are motivated by a keen desire for praise, and the better a man is the more he is inspired by glory. The very philosophers themselves, even in those books which they write in contempt of glory, inscribe their names."
- Marcus Tullius Cicero
(Related: Books, Contempt, Desire, Glory, Man, Names, Praise)
"A home without books is a body without soul."
- Marcus Tullius Cicero
(Related: Home, Soul, Body, Books)
"Write books only if you are going to say in them the things you would never dare confide to anyone."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Books)
"I thought a dignified thing to do would be to live in the country by the time I'm 50 and write books."
- Julian Clary
(Related: Time, Thought, Books, Country)
"I was a very observant child. The boys in my books are based on boys in my neighborhood growing up."
- Beverly Cleary
(Related: Books, Boys, Growing up)
"With twins, reading aloud to them was the only chance I could get to sit down. I read them picture books until they were reading on their own."
- Beverly Cleary
(Related: Books, Chance, Reading, Twins)
"Quite often somebody will say, What year do your books take place? and the only answer I can give is, In childhood."
- Beverly Cleary
(Related: Books, Childhood, Will)
"People are usually surprised to hear this, but I don't really read children's books."
- Beverly Cleary
(Related: People, Books, Children)
"Otis was inspired by a boy who sat across the aisle from me in sixth grade. He was a lively person. My best friend appears in assorted books in various disguises."
- Beverly Cleary
(Related: Friend, Books)
"I feel sometimes that in children's books there are more and more grim problems, but I don't know that I want to burden third- and fourth-graders with them."
- Beverly Cleary
(Related: Books, Burden, Children, Problems, Want)
"I had a very wise mother. She always kept books that were my grade level in our house."
- Beverly Cleary
(Related: Mother, Books)
"I read my books aloud before they were published."
- Beverly Cleary
(Related: Books)
"You want a story? Read 'Gone With the Wind'. These aren't stories. They're joke books. The whole thing of a beginning, a middle and an end has been done to death."
- Brian P. Cleary
(Related: Death, Beginning, Books, End, Want, Wind)
"These are books that want to be read out loud. These are books kids share with each other, and I think that's important."
- Brian P. Cleary
(Related: Books, Kids, Want)
"I like all things grammatical, and I had already written several books about parts of speech, and even the alphabet, so everything that makes up a sentence and even a word was covered except for punctuation."
- Brian P. Cleary
(Related: Books, Speech, Word)
"The Twist was a guided missile launched from the ghetto into the heart of suburbia. The Twist succeeded, as politics, religion and law could never do, in writing in the heart and soul what the Supreme Court could only write on the books."
- Eldridge Cleaver
(Related: Religion, Politics, Soul, Heart, Books, Court, Law, Writing)
"We were fortunate enough to have several good books detailing the camps and the women. Some were by the survivors. I also got to talk to some of the women who had been in the camp, survivors."
- Glenn Close
(Related: Women, Books, Talk)
"It's embarrassing to be involved in the same business as the mainstream comic thing. It's still very embarrassing to tell other adults that I draw comic books - their instant, preconceived notions of what that means."
- Daniel Clowes
(Related: Business, Books)
"The Pentagon can't even audit its own books. It doesn't even know where its money is going. And we refuse to have the tough forces go on the Pentagon so that at least they are efficient with the money they're spending."
- Tom Coburn
(Related: Money, Books)
"The writer I feel the most affinity with - you said you felt my books are 19th century novels, I think they're 18th century novels - is Fielding, Henry Fielding, he's the guy who does it for me."
- Jonathan Coe
(Related: Books, Writer)
"My only regret is that I signed away the world rights and in America they've been far and away my most successful books, but I never saw a cent from any of it."
- Jonathan Coe
(Related: Successful, America, Books, Rights, Regret, World)
"The biggest markets for my books outside the UK are France and Italy, and those are the two countries where I also have the closest personal relationships with my translators - I don't know whether that's a coincidence, or if there's something to be learned from it."
- Jonathan Coe
(Related: Books, Countries, France, Italy, Relationships)
"But you can try to read books at the wrong time or for the wrong reasons."
- Jonathan Coe
(Related: Time, Books, Wrong)
"But at the same time, I have trouble keeping things out of books, which is why I don't write short stories because they turn into novels."
- Jonathan Coe
(Related: Time, Books, Trouble)
"As the books grew bigger and more ambitious, the situations in question sometimes became political ones, and so it became necessary to start painting in the social background on a scale which eventually became panoramic."
- Jonathan Coe
(Related: Books, Painting, Question)
"I don't like books, they're all fact, no heart."
- Stephen Colbert
(Related: Heart, Books, Fact)
"Books support us in our solitude and keep us from being a burden to ourselves."
- Jeremy Collier
(Related: Being, Books, Burden, Solitude, Support)
"I have written 20 books, and each one is like having a baby. Writing is not easy; some people want to write books but just can't put a story together. I can put together a story that interests both me and my readers."
- Jackie Collins
(Related: People, Baby, Books, Want, Writing)
"I know that I am very popular in Holland, in fact I have visited Amsterdam several times to publicize my books. I have a great publisher in Holland and they have published all of my books in Dutch."
- Jackie Collins
(Related: Books, Fact, Popular)
"Authors change publishers because it's like being married for a long time and suddenly you want to go out and have a wild affair! No, not seriously, sometimes the deal is more interesting with a new publisher, and other times they have more enthusiasm for your books."
- Jackie Collins
(Related: Change, Time, Enthusiasm, Being, Books, Want)
"All of my books have the potential to become movies, it's just a question of finding a studio who wants to get behind me and put up the money to make the movie."
- Jackie Collins
(Related: Money, Movies, Books, Potential, Question)
"The biggest critics of my books are people who never read them."
- Jackie Collins
(Related: People, Books)
"And I think of that again as I've written in several of my beauty books, a lot of health comes from the proper eating habits, which are something that - you know, I come from a generation that wasn't - didn't have a lot of food."
- Joan Collins
(Related: Beauty, Food, Health, Books, Eating, Habits)
"Well I've written four beauty books as well."
- Joan Collins
(Related: Beauty, Books)
"Many books require no thought from those who read them, and for a very simple reason; they made no such demand upon those who wrote them."
- Charles Caleb Colton
(Related: Thought, Books, Reason)
"Next to acquiring good friends, the best acquisition is that of good books."
- Charles Caleb Colton
(Related: Books, Friends)
"He who studies books alone will know how things ought to be, and he who studies men will know how they are."
- Charles Caleb Colton
(Related: Men, Books, Will)
"Books, like friends, should be few and well chosen. Like friends, too, we should return to them again and again for, like true friends, they will never fail us - never cease to instruct - never cloy."
- Charles Caleb Colton
(Related: Books, Friends, Will)
"I knew it was going to be enormous because of the number of people who bought the books, but, to be honest, I never thought it would be bigger than Bond. Never in a million years."
- Robbie Coltrane
(Related: Thought, People, Books, Years)
"The book salesman should be honored because he brings to our attention, as a rule, the very books we need most and neglect most."
- Confucius
(Related: Attention, Books, Neglect)
"I think the only boundaries are individual and personal. A writer should be free to write about anything he or she wants to, including the twin towers. I have made small references to 9/11 in my past two books."
- Michael Connelly
(Related: Books, Past, Writer)
"The more books we read, the clearer it becomes that the true function of a writer is to produce a masterpiece and that no other task is of any consequence."
- Cyril Connolly
(Related: Books, Writer)
"QuickBooks - the very fact that we could even dream to make something in the business arena, and that it would then succeed - was a total revolution to me."
- Scott Cook
(Related: Business, Dream, Fact, Revolution, Succeed)
"Outside books, we avoid colorful characters."
- Mason Cooley
(Related: Books)
"I read less and less. I have not forgiven books for their failure to tell me the truth and make me happy."
- Mason Cooley
(Related: Truth, Failure, Books)
"My thought has been shaped by books; my desires by pictures."
- Mason Cooley
(Related: Thought, Books)
"I get letters from readers who say that they have always hated reading, but somebody suggested one of my books, they actually finished the book and enjoyed it, and they're going on to read another book. I'm thrilled that they have figured out that reading is fun."
- Caroline B. Cooney
(Related: Books, Fun, Letters, Reading)
"Actually my first eight books were historical novels, but they were never published."
- Caroline B. Cooney
(Related: Books, First)
"I believe my voice is pretty much the same. I've written 75 books, so I'm better at it now than I was earlier in my career."
- Caroline B. Cooney
(Related: Books, Career, Now, Pretty, Voice)
"I'd never have written the big books in London."
- Jilly Cooper
(Related: Books, London)
"So he said 'I'm going to chop off the bottom of one of your trouser legs and put it in a library.' I thought 'That's a turn-up for the books.'"
- Tommy Cooper
(Related: Thought, Books)
"Magic came very easy for me when I was a kid. When I was 8 years old I started doing it, and by the time I was 12, I was already published in magic books."
- David Copperfield
(Related: Time, Books, Magic, Old, Years)
"I've had aunts and uncles who not only haven't read my books but could hardly believe that I was a writer."
- Robert Cormier
(Related: Books, Writer)
"So far it's 43 books in 25 years."
- Bernard Cornwell
(Related: Books, Years)
"So the books have a greater appeal to a British audience, but that hasn't stopped them making best-seller lists in places like Brazil, Japan and at least a dozen other countries."
- Bernard Cornwell
(Related: Books, Brazil, Countries)
"And yes, there's a simplicity to writing books because you're not a member of a team, so you make all the decisions yourself instead of deferring to a committee."
- Bernard Cornwell
(Related: Books, Committee, Decisions, Simplicity, Writing)
"What I mean by that is that the point of life, as I see it, is not to write books or scale mountains or sail oceans, but to achieve happiness, and preferably an unselfish happiness."
- Bernard Cornwell
(Related: Happiness, Life, Books, Mountains, Oceans)
"I'm fortunate that the books sell, but even more fortunate to live in Chatham, to be very happily married and to have, on the whole, a fairly clear conscience."
- Bernard Cornwell
(Related: Books, Conscience)
"Never loan a book to someone if you expect to get it back. Loaning books is the same as giving them away."
- Doug Coupland
(Related: Books, Giving)
"A man in a bookstore buys a book on loneliness and every woman in the store hits on him. A woman buys a book on loneliness and the store clears out."
- Doug Coupland
(Related: Loneliness, Man, Woman)
"It's a fact that more people watch television and get their information that way than read books. I find new technology and new ways of communication very exciting and would like to do more in this field."
- Stephen Covey
(Related: Technology, People, Books, Communication, Fact, Information, Television)
"Meditation here may think down hours to moments. Here the heart may give a useful lesson to the head and learning wiser grow without his books."
- William Cowper
(Related: Heart, Books, Learning, May, Meditation, Moments)
"Next, in importance to books are their titles."
- Frank Crane
(Related: Books, Importance, Titles)
"Books aren't written - they're rewritten. Including your own. It is one of the hardest things to accept, especially after the seventh rewrite hasn't quite done it."
- Michael Crichton
(Related: Books)
"It is one of the more striking generalizations of biochemistry - which surprisingly is hardly ever mentioned in the biochemical textbooks - that the twenty amino acids and the four bases, are, with minor reservations, the same throughout Nature."
- Francis Crick
(Related: Nature)
"The things that are really important to me are my man, my animals and my books. I don't need anything else."
- Mary Crosby
(Related: Animals, Books, Man)
"Books are the ever burning lamps of accumulated wisdom."
- George William Curtis
(Related: Wisdom, Books)
"Actually, the books were never a planned career path."
- Jamie Lee Curtis
(Related: Books, Career)
"Being an actor, you are recognized for being somebody else, whereas these books are distilled from me."
- Jamie Lee Curtis
(Related: Actor, Being, Books)
"Again, we turn down most books that have been self-published unless they have a special track record. We have taken a small number on, however, and sold them to major publishers for a nice sum. But that is an exception to the rule."
- Richard Curtis
(Related: Books, Self)
"I do send out information about my books. Very few people buy the books that way, but I always feel that if they want to know more about the process, they can get the information from my books."
- Richard Curtis
(Related: People, Books, Information, Want)
"I have no problem selling books to media franchises and we do it all the time. The author must understand that he/she is a writer for hire and has no control over copyright or over editorial changes made to the text."
- Richard Curtis
(Related: Time, Control, Selling, Books, Media, Writer)
"I tend to turn down books originally published as e-books. As for selling books directly to e-book publishers, I would do so only if all traditional publishers had turned them down."
- Richard Curtis
(Related: Selling, Books)
"We are forced by the major publishers to include electronic rights in the contracts we make with publishers for new books. And there's very little we can do about that."
- Richard Curtis
(Related: Books, Rights)
"I have had fans make me the big picture collages of the photo books; I have had fans send me birthday cakes... sing to me on my voicemail. I have had fans flash me. I have had older fans give me their bras and underwear onstage."
- Puff Daddy
(Related: Birthday, Books, Fans)
"Besides, most of the books I like involve people I could never play in a million years."
- Hugh Dancy
(Related: People, Books, Play, Years)
"I don't write down my experiences, but I have a very decent memory. I have tons of books in which I write down phrases as they occur to me. That's how I write songs. I'll need a line and I'll go through the books and find it, the right rhyme and everything."
- Evan Dando
(Related: Books, Memory, Right, Songs)
"The rules have changed. True power is held by the person who possesses the largest bookshelf, not gun cabinet or wallet."
- Anthony J. D'Angelo
(Related: Power, Rules)
"The wise are above books."
- Samuel Daniel
(Related: Books)
"We still have pretty good sales, especially for the art books."
- Glenn Danzig
(Related: Art, Books, Pretty, Sales)
"We probably put about four or five comic books out a year and probably about two or three art books and various trade paperbacks - maybe four or five of those a year - and that's what we do now."
- Glenn Danzig
(Related: Art, Books, Now, Trade)
"The books are funny and sad, and that's what people respond to."
- Paula Danziger
(Related: Funny, People, Books)
"I think my books talk about kids learning to like and respect themselves and each other. You can't write a message book; you just tell the best story you know how to tell."
- Paula Danziger
(Related: Books, Kids, Learning, Respect, Talk)
"In my next life, I want to be tall and thin, parallel park and make good coffee. But for now, I have lots of stuff to work out in my life, but I'll have that until the day I die. I want to write more books."
- Paula Danziger
(Related: Work, Life, Books, Coffee, Day, Now, Want)
"I'm very lucky. I'm very fortunate that my books have never gone out of print - none of them."
- Paula Danziger
(Related: Books)
"I wish I had had my books when I was a kid, I do."
- Paula Danziger
(Related: Books)
"Do not suppose, however, that I intend to urge a diet of classics on anybody. I have seen such diets at work. I have known people who have actually read all, or almost all, the guaranteed Hundred Best Books. God save us from reading nothing but the best."
- Robertson Davies
(Related: Diet, Work, God, People, Books, Nothing, Reading)
"I never heard of anyone who was really literate or who ever really loved books who wanted to suppress any of them."
- Robertson Davies
(Related: Books)
"But for me, being an editor I've been an editor of all kinds of books being an editor of poetry has been the way in which I could give a crucial part of my time to what I love most."
- Peter Davison
(Related: Love, Poetry, Time, Being, Books)
"The man who is fond of books is usually a man of lofty thought, and of elevated opinions."
- John Dawkins
(Related: Thought, Books, Man, Opinions)
"Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you because geography books no longer exist."
- Moshe Dayan
(Related: Blame, Books, Geography, Names)
"My books are primarily plot driven but the best plot in the world is useless if you don't populate them with characters that readers can care about."
- Jeffery Deaver
(Related: Books, Care, World)
"Readers are paramount. I live to write books for them."
- Jeffery Deaver
(Related: Books)
"Trying to write books with a subject matter or in a genre or style you're not familiar with is the best way to find the Big Block looming."
- Jeffery Deaver
(Related: Books, Style, Trying)
"Generally my typical books have lots of twists and turns a big surprise ending and then usually another surprise at the end and ideally, as in Garden of Beasts, we get to the very end and we find at the last few pages that there's yet another surprise."
- Jeffery Deaver
(Related: Books, End, Ending, Garden)
"Hardcover books are fairly expensive these days and to read one requires a significant commitment of time in our busy society. So I want to make sure that when readers buy one of my books they get something they're familiar with."
- Jeffery Deaver
(Related: Time, Society, Books, Commitment, Want)
"In other words, the people who populate my books are more than caricatures."
- Jeffery Deaver
(Related: People, Books, Words)
"The first book that they gave me was Jeannie, a young teenager. I went on with her maybe ten books."
- Dan DeCarlo
(Related: Books, First)
"About 75 percent of the crude oil marketed here is sold off the books, and they are doing trades that would be illegal if it was a regulated market, and of course they do not want to regulate it."
- Peter DeFazio
(Related: Books, Oil, Want)
"I think the reason working-class people don't write books is because they are encouraged to believe that only certain people are permitted to write books."
- Len Deighton
(Related: People, Books, Reason)
"The language of my books has shaped me as a man."
- Don DeLillo
(Related: Books, Language, Man)
"Books should to one of these fours ends conduce, for wisdom, piety, delight, or use."
- John Denham
(Related: Wisdom, Books, Delight, Piety)
"Currently I am working on another three books, doing a lot of magazine work, am shooting for fifteen stock agencies, plus my own photo library - all this keeps me quite busy!"
- Nigel Dennis
(Related: Work, Books)
"The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries."
- Rene Descartes
(Related: Books, Conversation, Past, Reading)
"The more I do bookstores, the more people come up to me from church groups. I spoke at Pittsburg State College and had 2 or 3 ministers and book groups from a couple of churches."
- Anita Diament
(Related: People, Church, Churches, College, State)
"November is Jewish book month, so Jewish Community Centers all around the country have book fairs where they invite authors and sell books in advance of the holidays."
- Anita Diament
(Related: Books, Community, Country, Holidays)
"My six handbooks to Jewish life and lifecycle events mostly followed the trajectory of my adult Jewish life."
- Anita Diament
(Related: Life, Events)
"The main thing that gives me hope is the media. We have radio, TV, magazines, and books, so we have the possibility of learning from societies that are remote from us, like Somalia. We turn on the TV and see what blew up in Iraq or we see conditions in Afghanistan."
- Jared Diamond
(Related: Hope, Possibility, Afghanistan, Books, Iraq, Learning, Media)
"My goal is two pages a day, five days a week. I never want to write, but I'm always glad that I have done it. After I write, I go to work at the bookstore."
- Kate DiCamillo
(Related: Work, Goal, Day, Want)
"I work full-time in a used bookstore. I get up. I drink a cup of coffee. I think, The last thing I want to do is write. Then I go to the computer and write."
- Kate DiCamillo
(Related: Work, Coffee, Computer, Want)
"I didn't start working on children's books until I got a job at a book warehouse on the children's floor. When I started reading some of the books, I was so impressed."
- Kate DiCamillo
(Related: Books, Children, Job, Reading)
"Every well-written book is a light for me. When you write, you use other writers and their books as guides in the wilderness."
- Kate DiCamillo
(Related: Books, Light, Wilderness, Writers)
"There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts."
- Charles Dickens
(Related: Books)
"Self-help books are for the birds. Self-help groups are where it's at."
- Janice Dickinson
(Related: Birds, Books, Self)
"The future? Like unwritten books and unborn children, you don't talk about it."
- Dietrich Fischer Dieskau
(Related: Books, Children, Future, Talk)
"Living wild species are like a library of books still unread. Our heedless destruction of them is akin to burning the library without ever having read its books."
- John Dingell
(Related: Books, Destruction, Living)
"There is more treasure in books than in all the pirate's loot on Treasure Island."
- Walt Disney
(Related: Books, Treasure)
"I can now focus on a huge audience through TV, books, cookware and foods."
- Rocco DiSpirito
(Related: Books, Focus, Now)
"Nine-tenths of the existing books are nonsense and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense."
- Benjamin Disraeli
(Related: Books, Nonsense)
"We cannot learn men from books."
- Benjamin Disraeli
(Related: Men, Books)
"An author who speaks about their own books is almost as bad as a mother who speaks about her own children."
- Benjamin Disraeli
(Related: Mother, Books, Children)
"Not as ours the books of old - Things that steam can stamp and fold; Not as ours the books of yore - Rows of type, and nothing more."
- Austin Dobson
(Related: Books, Nothing, Old)
"Well, I don't know. It's long, it's longer than both of the other books put together, so it's more ambitious. I think I get under the skin of the people a lot more than in the other books."
- Cory Doctorow
(Related: People, Books, Skin)
"It's weirder and more surprising than the other books. I think there are more places where it's just more reality bending, deliberately so. I think it's a lot more emotionally raw."
- Cory Doctorow
(Related: Books, Reality)
"I can walk into a bookstore and hand over my credit card and they don't know who the hell I am. Maybe that says something about bookstore clerks."
- E. L. Doctorow
(Related: Credit, Hell)
"I write reviews of science books for the Boston Globe, so I like to give science books."
- Anthony Doerr
(Related: Science, Books, Boston)
"Today's gasoline prices are taking a severe toll on Americans' pocketbooks. Consumers are anxious."
- Pete Domenici
(Related: Americans, Today)
"It's like why people read scary books or go see scary movies. Because it creates a distance. They're scared, but they're not going to get hurt."
- Vincent D'Onofrio
(Related: Movies, People, Books, Hurt)
"I've read some scripts, but I don't read as many books as I should."
- Stephen Dorff
(Related: Books)
"Ulysses could have done with a good editor. You know people are always putting Ulysses in the top 10 books ever written but I doubt that any of those people were really moved by it."
- Roddy Doyle
(Related: People, Books, Doubt)
"I'll be left writing picture books and fairy tales."
- Carol Ann Duffy
(Related: Books, Writing)
"I'm living out a childhood fantasy. Our house is in a historic district of a small town that I used to read about in storybooks."
- Patty Duke
(Related: Childhood, Fantasy, Living)
"I have two books that were published quite some time ago. I start to read about three sentences. I have to close it. I am so self-conscious. Who did I think I was?"
- Patty Duke
(Related: Time, Books, Self)
"Writing children's books gives a writer a very strong sense of narrative drive."
- Helen Dunmore
(Related: Books, Children, Sense, Writer, Writing)
"My first collection of poems was published by Bloodaxe Books, which was then a very new imprint."
- Helen Dunmore
(Related: Books, First, Poems)
"I hope that readers will tear through my books because they can't stop themselves - and then, maybe, read them again and find new things there."
- Helen Dunmore
(Related: Hope, Books, Will)
"Children will not pretend to be enjoying books, and they will not read books because they have been told that these books are good. They are looking for delight."
- Helen Dunmore
(Related: Books, Children, Delight, Will)
"My father is a well known artist, Ted Dyer, who has been painting for many years. Our work is very different, but growing up surrounded by paintings, paints, easels and art books does have an effect."
- John Dyer
(Related: Art, Work, Father, Artist, Books, Effect, Growing up, Painting, Years)
"In the dime stores and bus stations, people talk of situations, read books, repeat quotations, draw conclusions on the wall."
- Bob Dylan
(Related: People, Books, Quotations, Talk)
"One person who has mastered life is better than a thousand persons who have mastered only the contents of books, but no one can get anything out of life without God."
- Meister Eckhart
(Related: Life, God, Books)
"A book is a fragile creature, it suffers the wear of time, it fears rodents, the elements and clumsy hands. so the librarian protects the books not only against mankind but also against nature and devotes his life to this war with the forces of oblivion."
- Umberto Eco
(Related: Life, Nature, War, Time, Books, Mankind)
"If an army of monkeys were strumming on typewriters, they might write all the books in the British Museum."
- Arthur Eddington
(Related: Army, Books)
"We should be as careful of the books we read, as of the company we keep. The dead very often have more power than the living."
- Tryon Edwards
(Related: Power, Books, Company, Living)
"Isn't it strange that I who have written only unpopular books should be such a popular fellow?"
- Albert Einstein
(Related: Books, Popular)
"In the last 1,000 years, the Arabs have translated as many books as Spain translates in just one year."
- Larry Elder
(Related: Books, Spain, Years)
"Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counsellors, and the most patient of teachers."
- Charles W. Eliot
(Related: Books, Friends, Teachers)
"Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers."
- Charles William Eliot
(Related: Books, Friends, Teachers)
"And they write innumerable books; being too vain and distracted for silence: seeking every one after his own elevation, and dodging his emptiness."
- T. S. Eliot
(Related: Being, Books)
"I've been tremendously moved by a bunch of odd books. Ross McDonald is very important to me. I love the Lew Archer books."
- James Ellroy
(Related: Love, Books)
"Every one of my books is written from the viewpoint of cops, with the exception of my book Killer on the Road, which is written from the viewpoint of a serial killer."
- James Ellroy
(Related: Books, Road)
"Some books leave us free and some books make us free."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
(Related: Books)
"Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
(Related: Nature, Books, Eyes)
"Each age, it is found, must write its own books; or rather, each generation for the next succeeding."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
(Related: Age, Books)
"It's nice to be in a situation where the two books that I write for a sort of regular monthly income are also works that I enjoy immensely, rather than them being some kind of bread and butter, do it because you have to do it."
- Garth Ennis
(Related: Being, Books, Income)
"I'm sure you're aware, with the time it takes to put these books together, everything can suddenly start coming out at once even though I wrote anything between one and five years ago."
- Garth Ennis
(Related: Time, Books, Years)
"Most regular superhero books are designed to go on forever; of course, very few of them do, but the point is they are trying to throw mud against the wall and hope it will stick, and most of it slides off."
- Garth Ennis
(Related: Hope, Books, Trying, Will)
"When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes."
- Desiderius Erasmus
(Related: Food, Money, Books, Clothes)
"By burning Luther's books you may rid your bookshelves of him, but you will not rid men's minds of him."
- Desiderius Erasmus
(Related: Men, Books, May, Will)
"However, I survived and started to read all chemistry books that I could get a hand on, first some 19th century books from our home library that did not provide much reliable information, and then I emptied the rather extensive city library."
- Richard Ernst
(Related: Home, Books, First, Information)
"Lets tell young people the best books are yet to written; the best painting, the best government the best of everything is yet to be done by them."
- John Erskine
(Related: Government, People, Books, Painting)
"There's the typical books, Moby Dick and, I guess in my adult life I began to read biographies more than fiction. I started to want to relate to other people's lives, things that had really happened."
- Julius Erving
(Related: Life, People, Books, Fiction, Want)
"I feel less alone when I read the books of Ratzinger."
- Oriana Fallaci
(Related: Books)
"Textbooks are Soviet propaganda."
- Jerry Falwell
(Related: Propaganda)
"Perhaps they were right in putting love into books... Perhaps it could not live anywhere else."
- William Faulkner
(Related: Love, Books, Right)
"It is my aim, and every effort bent, that the sum and history of my life, which in the same sentence is my obit and epitaph too, shall be them both: He made the books and he died."
- William Faulkner
(Related: History, Life, Books, Effort)
"Books open your mind, broaden your mind, and strengthen you as nothing else can."
- William Feather
(Related: Books, Mind, Nothing, Open)
"I used to have all the Goosebumps books as a kid too."
- Tom Felton
(Related: Books)
"There are a couple of carp fishing books I've been reading. I'm very interested in that line of books, because I think they write very well, carp anglers, about the general environment."
- Tom Felton
(Related: Books, Environment, Fishing, Reading)
"We were just a one-room bookstore; we didn't have any money for lawyers."
- Lawrence Ferlinghetti
(Related: Money, Lawyers)
"Don't patronize the chain bookstores. Every time I see some author scheduled to read and sign his books at a chain bookstore, I feel like telling him he's stabbing the independent bookstores in the back."
- Lawrence Ferlinghetti
(Related: Time, Books)
"Books that distribute things... with as daring a freedom as we use in dreams, put us on our feet again."
- Marsilio Ficino
(Related: Dreams, Books, Feet, Freedom)
"Of the female black authors, I really like Morrison's early books a lot. But she's really become so much a clone of Faulkner. He did it better."
- Leslie Fiedler
(Related: Books)
"Henry Miller wrote novels, but he calls his protagonist Henry, often Henry Miller, and his books are in this gray area between memoir and novel."
- Leslie Fiedler
(Related: Books)
"We are as liable to be corrupted by books, as by companions."
- Henry Fielding
(Related: Books)
"My father assigned me to keep his scrapbooks. At first I was interested in reading only his rave notices, but I got interested in reading what the critics were saying about whether the play was good or not."
- Dorothy Fields
(Related: Father, First, Play, Reading, Saying)
"I've got a vendetta to destroy the Net, to make everyone go to the library. I love the organic thing of pen and paper, ink on canvas. I love going down to the library, the feel and smell of books."
- Joseph Fiennes
(Related: Love, Books, Pen)
"I admire the world of the books and the characters that she's created, but I'm not an addict of Harry Potter. I don't feel possessive about it."
- Ralph Fiennes
(Related: Books, World)
"The tendency of modern scientific teaching is to neglect the great books, to lay far too much stress upon relatively unimportant modern work, and to present masses of detail of doubtful truth and questionable weight in such a way as to obscure principles."
- Ronald Fisher
(Related: Work, Truth, Books, Detail, Neglect, Present, Principles, Stress, Teaching, Weight)
"Read much, but not many books."
- Gustave Flaubert
(Related: Books)
"I have said repeatedly that in this country we track library books better than we do sex offenders."
- Mark Foley
(Related: Sex, Books, Country)
"Without books I would not have become a vivacious reader, and if you are not a reader you are not a writer."
- Ken Follet
(Related: Books, Writer)
"Thrillers have been traditionally very masculine books; the women characters often rather decorative."
- Ken Follett
(Related: Women, Books)
"In my books, women often solve the problem. Even if the woman is not the hero, she's a strong character. She does change the plot. She'll often rescue the male character from some situation."
- Ken Follett
(Related: Change, Women, Character, Books, Woman)
"Most of my inspiration, if that's the word, came from books themselves."
- Shelby Foote
(Related: Inspiration, Books, Word)
"Getting close to books, and spending time by myself, I was obliged to think about things I would never have thought about if I was busy romping around with a brother and sister."
- Shelby Foote
(Related: Time, Sister, Brother, Thought, Books)
"Books are like a mirror. If an ass looks in, you can't expect an angel to look out."
- B. C. Forbes
(Related: Books)
"Books are only the shadow and life the real thing. I believe this as strongly as any belief I hold."
- Esther Forbes
(Related: Life, Belief, Books, Shadow)
"I teethed on books of heroes such as Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln and King David."
- Luke Ford
(Related: Books, Heroes)
"I have personally seen statements that were longer than some books I have read."
- Wendell H. Ford
(Related: Books)
"When I die there may be a paragraph or two in the newspapers. My name will linger in the British Museum Reading Room catalogue for a space at the head of a long list of books for which no one will ever ask."
- C. S. Forester
(Related: Books, May, Name, Newspapers, Reading, Space, Will)
"At night, when the curtains are drawn and the fire flickers, my books attain a collective dignity."
- E. M. Forster
(Related: Books, Dignity, Fire, Night)
"The only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little farther down our particular path than we have yet got ourselves."
- E. M. Forster
(Related: Books, Influence)
"Few are sufficiently sensible of the importance of that economy in reading which selects, almost exclusively, the very first order of books. Why, except for some special reason, read an inferior book, at the very time you might be reading one of the highest order?"
- John W. Foster
(Related: Time, Books, Economy, First, Importance, Order, Reading, Reason)
"For books are more than books, they are the life, the very heart and core of ages past, the reason why men lived and worked and died, the essence and quintessence of their lives."
- Gene Fowler
(Related: Men, Life, Heart, Books, Past, Reason)
"I'm the biggest nerd - I love comic books and stuff like that! I don't have any friends who are actresses. I only had one girlfriend when I was growing up. Most of my friends were boys. I was such a tomboy. I enjoyed doing guy things."
- Megan Fox
(Related: Love, Girlfriend, Books, Boys, Friends, Growing up)
"The books that everybody admires are those that nobody reads."
- Anatole France
(Related: Books)
"Never lend books, for no one ever returns them; the only books I have in my library are books that other folks have left me."
- Anatole France
(Related: Books)
"History books that contain no lies are extremely dull."
- Anatole France
(Related: History, Books, Lies)
"We must go beyond textbooks, go out into the bypaths and untrodden depths of the wilderness and travel and explore and tell the world the glories of our journey."
- John Hope Franklin
(Related: Travel, Journey, Wilderness, World)
"I wrote two plotted books, got some of the fundamentals of storytelling down, then... it's sort of like taking the training wheels off, trying to write a book that's fun in the same way without relying on quite such mechanical or external beats."
- Jonathan Franzen
(Related: Books, Fun, Training, Trying)
"People in my books tend to get their just deserts, even if not at the hands of the police."
- Antonia Fraser
(Related: People, Books, Police)
"The concentration in my book on Marie Antoinette's childhood and on her family influences. It is surprising how some books actually start with her arrival in France!"
- Antonia Fraser
(Related: Family, Books, Childhood)
"My books are water; those of the great geniuses are wine - everybody drinks water."
- Marilyn French
(Related: Books, Drinks, Water, Wine)
"What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages they would have burned me. Now they are content with burning my books."
- Sigmund Freud
(Related: Progress, Books, Content, Now)
"These days, there are many people around the world who listen to the songs that made me infamous and read the books that made me respectable."
- Kinky Friedman
(Related: People, Books, Songs, World)
"I am a writer of books in retrospect. I talk in order to understand; I teach in order to learn."
- Robert Frost
(Related: Books, Order, Talk, Writer)
"I've always had great respect for Paddington because he is amusingly English and eccentric. He is a great British institution and my generation grew up with the books and then Michael Horden's animations."
- Stephen Fry
(Related: Books, English, Respect)
"I don't think any good book is based on factual experience. Bad books are about things the writer already knew before he wrote them."
- Carlos Fuentes
(Related: Experience, Books, Writer)
"Learning hath gained most by those books by which the printers have lost."
- Thomas Fuller
(Related: Books, Learning)
"Every reader knows about the feeling that characters in books seem more real than real people."
- Cornelia Funke
(Related: People, Books, Feeling)
"Second, there are so many magical places in books that you can't go to, like Hogwarts and Middle Earth, so I wanted to set a story in a place where children can actually go."
- Cornelia Funke
(Related: Books, Children, Earth)
"Oh, I think every author is inspired by all of the books that she reads."
- Cornelia Funke
(Related: Books)
"I will try to write books until I drop dead."
- Cornelia Funke
(Related: Books, Will)
"I always thought it hadn't influenced me very much, but I heard from many people from England that many motives from German fairytales are to be found in my books."
- Cornelia Funke
(Related: Thought, People, Books, England, Motives)
"I basically only read books that are over 2,000 years old."
- Hans-Georg Gadamer
(Related: Books, Old, Years)
"How some of the writers I come across get through their books without dying of boredom is beyond me."
- William Gaddis
(Related: Books, Boredom, Dying, Writers)
"A bad book is the worse that it cannot repent. It has not been the devil's policy to keep the masses of mankind in ignorance; but finding that they will read, he is doing all in his power to poison their books."
- John Kenneth Galbraith
(Related: Power, Policy, Books, Devil, Ignorance, Mankind, Poison, Will)
"We do not need to proselytise either by our speech or by our writing. We can only do so really with our lives. Let our lives be open books for all to study."
- Mohandas Gandhi
(Related: Books, Open, Speech, Study, Writing)
"I don't think that Slaughterhouse-Five was successful movie material. In fact, Vonnegut's books mostly I don't feel are movie material."
- Jerry Garcia
(Related: Successful, Books, Fact)
"Also, if nothing else, writing this book has really changed the way I experience bookstores. I have a whole different appreciation for the amount of work packed into even the slimmest volume on the shelves."
- Jesse James Garrett
(Related: Experience, Work, Appreciation, Nothing, Writing)
"My office has been one of the most scrupulous in the country with regard to the protection of individual rights. I've been on record for years in law journals and books as championing the rights of the individual against the oppressive power of the state."
- Jim Garrison
(Related: Power, Books, Country, Rights, Law, Office, Protection, State, Years)
"Books follow morals, and not morals books."
- Theophile Gautier
(Related: Books, Morals)
"This hand is not very active always, because it was in this hand that I carried my books. My carrying hand was always my strongest. Now I think my other hand has developed more muscles from signing all those autographs."
- Haile Gebrselassie
(Related: Books, Now)
"I'm writing a review of three books on feminism and science, and it's about social constructionism. So I would say I'm a social constructionist, whatever that means."
- Clifford Geertz
(Related: Science, Books, Feminism, Writing)
"I've written a lot of books which are written from the moon - the view from nowhere."
- Clifford Geertz
(Related: Books, Moon)
"So, I am independently well-off and don't have to do anything, but I still do. I write books, lecture around the world, work with scientists and governments."
- Uri Geller
(Related: Work, Books, Scientists, World)
"And Michael likes to read a lot. People don't realize that about him but he reads a number of books per week and he's fascinated just about every subject."
- David Gest
(Related: People, Books)
"I was in Paris at an English-language bookstore. I picked up a volume of Dickinson's poetry. I came back to my hotel, read 2,000 of her poems and immediately began composing in my head. I wrote down the melodies even before I got to a piano."
- Gordon Getty
(Related: Poetry, English, Paris, Poems)
"Books, like proverbs, receive their chief value from the stamp and esteem of the ages through which they have passed."
- J. Paul Getty
(Related: Books, Value)
"You can read all the textbooks and listen to all the records, but you have to play with musicians that are better than you."
- Stan Getz
(Related: Musicians, Play)
"Books are those faithful mirrors that reflect to our mind the minds of sages and heroes."
- Edward Gibbon
(Related: Books, Heroes, Mind)
"A friend in the War Office warned me that I was in Kitchener's black books, and that orders had been given for my arrest next time I appeared in France."
- Philip Gibbs
(Related: Time, War, Friend, Books, France, Office)
"There are several books out on punk history, but I haven't read any of them. I was there."
- Greg Ginn
(Related: History, Books, Punk)
"In a Glasser Quality School there is no such thing as a closed book test. Students are told to get out their notes and open their books. There is no such thing as being forbidden to ask the teacher or another student for help."
- William Glasser
(Related: Quality, Being, Books, Forbidden, Help, Open, School, Students)
"When I became more involved in music, I had to give up some of my writing in the literary sense. However, on occasion, I would write something for my own pleasure or I would write notes and introductory remarks in the songbooks I put together."
- Tom Glazer
(Related: Music, Literary, Pleasure, Sense, Writing)
"I obtained a job at the Library of Congress. I loved books, so I felt at home. I was going to end up, I thought, majoring in English and teach at the college level."
- Tom Glazer
(Related: Home, Thought, Books, College, Congress, End, English, Job)
"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."
- Rumer Godden
(Related: Life, Books)
"It was 1966 by the time I started taking pictures seriously and books, newspapers and magazines of the time were full of great pictures that helped to inspire me."
- Fay Godwin
(Related: Time, Books, Newspapers)
"Look at lots of exhibitions and books, and don't get hung up on cameras and technical things. Photography is about images."
- Fay Godwin
(Related: Books, Photography)
"Read books. They are good for us."
- Natalie Goldberg
(Related: Books)
"And, uh, I've got about six thousand cartoons up there, also books and papers."
- Rube Goldberg
(Related: Books, Cartoons)
"One way an author dies a little each day is when his books go out of print."
- William Goldman
(Related: Books, Day)
"I love everything that's old, - old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wine."
- Oliver Goldsmith
(Related: Love, Books, Friends, Manners, Old, Wine)
"My wife and I love to read. We're going to have to move out to make room for the books! And we have our dogs."
- Gale Gordon
(Related: Love, Wife, Dogs)
"I'm not sure Kinsey has changed in these first twelve books. I think the reader learns more about her, but from Kinsey's perspective, only three years have passed while the rest of us have been getting older at a much faster clip."
- Sue Grafton
(Related: Books, First, Perspective, Rest, Years)
"I don't want to write formula. I don't want to crank these books out like sausages. Every book is different, which takes a hell of a lot of ingenuity on my part."
- Sue Grafton
(Related: Books, Formula, Hell, Want)
"Books are like movies of the mind and it's better to leave Kinsey where she is."
- Sue Grafton
(Related: Movies, Books, Mind)
"Even bad books are books and therefore sacred."
- Gunter Grass
(Related: Books)
"Prose books are the show dogs I breed and sell to support my cat."
- Robert Graves
(Related: Books, Dogs, Prose, Support)
"We may take it to be the accepted idea that the Mosaic books were not handed down to us for our instruction in scientific knowledge, and that it is our duty to ground our scientific beliefs upon observation and inference, unmixed with considerations of a different order."
- Asa Gray
(Related: Idea, Knowledge, Beliefs, Books, Duty, May, Observation, Order)
"I don't really have a lot of hobbies. I listen to a lot of spoken word. I get books on tape."
- Benny Green
(Related: Books, Hobbies, Word)
"Let us hope that good authors who are bad Christians will find salvation through the books they write."
- Julien Green
(Related: Hope, Books, Salvation, Will)
"One of the books we read a few years ago that had a big effect on us was Repeated Takes by Michael Chanan."
- Colin Greenwood
(Related: Books, Effect, Years)
"We used to root for the Indians against the cavalry, because we didn't think it was fair in the history books that when the cavalry won it was a great victory, and when the Indians won it was a massacre."
- Dick Gregory
(Related: History, Victory, Books)
"Well, before I knew there was going to be a film. I was the biggest Harry Potter fan. I read all the books."
- Rupert Grint
(Related: Books, Film)
"But I like all the books. You've got to read them all to get the complete Harry Potter experience."
- Rupert Grint
(Related: Experience, Books)
"I am a really big Harry Potter fan and I've seen all the sets, I've lived Harry Potter and I don't think it's destroyed the books at all, I think it's really spot on."
- Rupert Grint
(Related: Books)
"Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail."
- Alfred Whitney Griswold
(Related: Ideas, Books)
"I love the idea that we put in jokes the kids don't get. And that later, when they grow up and read a few books and go to college and watch the show again, they can get it on a completely different level."
- Matt Groening
(Related: Love, Idea, Books, College, Jokes, Kids)
"I've loved science fiction ever since I was a little kid, mainly from looking at the covers of science-fiction magazines and books, and I've read quite extensively as an adult."
- Matt Groening
(Related: Science, Books, Fiction)
"Then I found books that were written much later, as late as 15 years ago. It was very superficial material, but enough to tell me that the genesis of this story was worth exploring."
- Charles Guggenheim
(Related: Books, Worth, Years)
"Every ceremony or rite has a value if it is performed without alteration. A ceremony is a book in which a great deal is written. Anyone who understands can read it. One rite often contains more than a hundred books."
- G. I. Gurdjieff
(Related: Books, Ceremony, Value)
"Writing became an obsessive compulsive habit but I had almost no money so I thought about being an urban firefighter and having lots of free time in which to write or becoming an English teacher and thinking about books and writers on a daily basis. That swayed me."
- David Guterson
(Related: Money, Time, Thought, Habit, Being, Books, English, Thinking, Writers, Writing)
"I'm addicted to email, but other than that, there are practical things - being able to buy a book on the internet that you can't find in your local bookshop. This could be a lifeline if you live further from the sources."
- Marilyn Hacker
(Related: Being, Internet)
"I tend to come up with people more than situations - most of my books start with a character."
- Jane Haddam
(Related: People, Character, Books)
"I really hate those books where the murderer turns out to be somebody you never heard of who pops up in the last chapter."
- Jane Haddam
(Related: Books, Hate)
"The deadlines are much, much longer with books. When I was a reporter, a lot of times I'd come in at 8:30 a.m., get an assignment right away, interview somebody, turn the story in by 9:30, and have the finished story in the paper that landed on my desk by noon."
- Margaret Haddix
(Related: Books, Right)
"There's something about each of my books that I'm really proud of, and there's something about each of my books that I cringe over."
- Margaret Haddix
(Related: Books)
"I think I learned a lot from reading in general - even from reading badly written books."
- Margaret Haddix
(Related: Books, Reading)
"I loved to read when I was a kid, and as soon as I realized that an actual person got to make up the books I loved so much, I decided that that was the job for me."
- Margaret Haddix
(Related: Books, Job)
"I started writing books for children because I could illustrate them myself and because, in my innocence, I thought they'd be easier."
- Mark Haddon
(Related: Thought, Books, Children, Innocence, Writing)
"Children simply don't make the distinction; a book is either good or bad. And some of the books they think are good are very, very bad indeed."
- Mark Haddon
(Related: Books, Children)
"Reading is a conversation. All books talk. But a good book listens as well."
- Mark Haddon
(Related: Books, Conversation, Reading, Talk)
"Jane Austen was writing about boring people with desperately limited lives. We forget this because we've seen too many of her books on screen."
- Mark Haddon
(Related: People, Books, Forget, Writing)
"I've written 16 children's books and five unpublished novels. Some of the latter were breathtakingly bad."
- Mark Haddon
(Related: Books, Children)
"Writing for children is bloody difficult; books for children are as complex as their adult counterparts, and they should therefore be accorded the same respect."
- Mark Haddon
(Related: Books, Children, Respect, Writing)
"I look at my books the way parents look at their children. The fact that one becomes more successful than the others doesn't make me love the less successful one any less."
- Alex Haley
(Related: Love, Successful, Books, Children, Fact, Parents)
"I took up a sort of a hobby of just hanging around the local library. I'd pick out an author and I would read all their books."
- Tom T. Hall
(Related: Books)
"When I talked to my medical friends about the strange silence on this subject in American medical magazines and textbooks, I gained the impression that here was a subject tainted with Socialism or with feminine sentimentality for the poor."
- Alice Hamilton
(Related: Medical, Impression, American, Friends, Poor, Sentimentality, Silence, Socialism)
"Two things I do well in books are sex and violence, but I don't want gratuitous sex or violence. The sex and violence are only as graphic as need be. And never included unless it furthers the plot or character development."
- Laurell K. Hamilton
(Related: Sex, Development, Character, Books, Violence, Want)
"I try not to worry about rewriting books that worked well the first time. I'm too busy writing new books to worry about things that are already in print."
- Laurell K. Hamilton
(Related: Time, Books, First, Worry, Writing)
"If there was no Bible, it would be no matter whether you could read or not. Reading other books would do you no good."
- Jupiter Hammon
(Related: Bible, Books, Reading)
"You are welcome to your intellectual pastimes and books and art and newspapers; welcome, too, to your bars and your whisky that only makes me ill. Here am I in the forest, quite content."
- Knut Hamsun
(Related: Art, Books, Content, Newspapers)
"I may be only a fish and chip shop lady, but some of these economists need to get their heads out of the textbooks and get a job in the real world. I would not even let one of them handle my grocery shopping."
- Pauline Hanson
(Related: Fish, Lady, Job, May, World)
"Books give not wisdom where none was before. But where some is, there reading makes it more."
- Elizabeth Hardwick
(Related: Wisdom, Books, Reading)
"Young men should prove theorems, old men should write books."
- G. H. Hardy
(Related: Men, Books, Old)
"There's more fiction in my life than in books, so I don't bother with them."
- Richard Harris
(Related: Life, Books, Fiction)
"I enjoy about 1 out of 100 movies, it's about the same proportion to books published that I care to read."
- Jim Harrison
(Related: Movies, Books, Care)
"I asked a French critic a couple of years ago why my books did so well in France. He said it was because in my novels people both act and think. I got a kick out of that."
- Jim Harrison
(Related: People, Act, Books, France, Years)
"Painters of paintings, writers of books, never could tell the half."
- Lorenz Hart
(Related: Books, Writers)
"I have to go make books. Sorry about that."
- Teresa Nielsen Hayden
(Related: Books)
"From your parents you learn love and laughter and how to put one foot before the other. But when books are opened you discover that you have wings."
- Helen Hayes
(Related: Love, Books, Laughter, Parents)
"Books let us into their souls and lay open to us the secrets of our own."
- William Hazlitt
(Related: Books, Open, Secrets)
"One of the great defects of English books printed in the last century is the want of an index."
- Lafcadio Hearn
(Related: Books, English, Want)
"I've learned to look like I'm listening to long confusing plots of cartoons and comic books when I'm actually sound asleep or making grocery shopping lists in my head."
- Patricia Heaton
(Related: Books, Cartoons, Listening, Sound)
"Before we had the kids, my husband and I were traveling a lot and working and really enjoying our lives and each other. We both love the theater and books and travel and so we were really having a lot of fun."
- Patricia Heaton
(Related: Love, Travel, HusbBooks, Fun, Kids, Theater, Traveling)
"Whenever books are burned, men also in the end are burned."
- Heinrich Heine
(Related: Men, Books, End)
"Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings."
- Heinrich Heine
(Related: Books, End, Will)
"What a word is truth. Slippery, tricky, unreliable. I tried in these books to tell the truth."
- Lillian Hellman
(Related: Truth, Books, Word)
"To limit the press is to insult a nation; to prohibit reading of certain books is to declare the inhabitants to be either fools or slaves."
- Claud-Adrian Helvetius
(Related: Books, Fools, Insult, Nation, Press, Reading)
"All good books have one thing in common - they are truer than if they had really happened."
- Ernest Hemingway
(Related: Books)
"The Bible is worth all the other books which have ever been printed."
- Patrick Henry
(Related: Bible, Books, Worth)
"I don't like Communism because it hands out wealth through rationing books."
- Omar Torrijos Herrera
(Related: Wealth, Books, Communism)
"Without words, without writing and without books there would be no history, there could be no concept of humanity."
- Hermann Hesse
(Related: History, Books, Humanity, Words, Writing)
"These are not books, lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on the shelves."
- Gilbert Highet
(Related: Books)
"I don't think Ripley is gay. He appreciates good looks in other men, that's true. But he's married in later books. I'm not saying he's very strong in the sex department. But he makes it in bed with his wife."
- Patricia Highsmith
(Related: Men, Sex, Wife, Bed, Books, Gay, Saying)
"Some books claim I have already clocked up a century of Grands Prix, but let me put the record straight. Australia will be my 100th start, and I aim to mark the milestone with a cracking performance. It could even be celebrated with a victory."
- Damon Hill
(Related: Performance, Victory, Books, Will)
"Books on horse racing subjects have never done well, and I am told that publishers had come to think of them as the literary version of box office poison."
- Laura Hillenbrand
(Related: Books, Literary, Office, Poison, Racing)
"I try to make my books reflect humanity as I see it."
- Tony Hillerman
(Related: Books, Humanity)
"Movies can't ruin books. They can only ruin movies."
- S. E. Hinton
(Related: Movies, Books, Ruin)
"I've been a screenwriter for twenty-five years. Every one of my books have been optioned for movies and I have written a few of those screenplays."
- Alice Hoffman
(Related: Movies, Books, Years)
"They were written on cheap blue notebooks bought by poor women. I'm interested in folk tales in the way that medicine and magic in women's stories are all kind of combined."
- Alice Hoffman
(Related: Women, Folk, Magic, Medicine, Poor)
"Even in times when it's difficult to figure out, how do you go forward, art - and books - always help."
- Alice Hoffman
(Related: Art, Books, Help)
"All the characters in my books are imagined, but all have a bit of who I am in them - much like the characters in your dreams are all formed by who you are."
- Alice Hoffman
(Related: Dreams, Books)
"I've always loved words. I ate up all the books I could get my hands on, and when I couldn't get books, I read candy wrappers and labels on cereal and toothpaste boxes."
- Judy Holliday
(Related: Books, Words)
"The advice of the elders to young men is very apt to be as unreal as a list of the hundred best books."
- Oliver Wendell Holmes
(Related: Men, Advice, Books)
"Some people act as though art that is for a mass audience is not good art, and I think this has been a very negative thing. I know that I have wanted very much to write books that are accessible to the widest audience possible."
- Bell Hooks
(Related: Art, People, Negative, Act, Books)
"Life-transforming ideas have always come to me through books."
- bell hooks
(Related: Life, Ideas, Books)
"We must get beyond textbooks, go out into the bypaths... and tell the world the glories of our journey."
- John Hope
(Related: Journey, World)
"Wisdom is not wisdom when it is derived from books alone."
- Horace
(Related: Wisdom, Books)
"I don't want my books to exclude anyone, but if they have to, then I would rather they excluded the people who feel they are too smart for them!"
- Nick Hornby
(Related: People, Books, Want)
"If I loved all the world as I do you, I shouldn't write books to it: I should only write letters to it, and that would be only a clumsy stage on the way to entire telepathy."
- Laurence Housman
(Related: Books, Letters, World)
"My brother used to say that I wrote faster than he could read. He wrote two books - of poems - better than all mine put together."
- Laurence Housman
(Related: Brother, Books, Poems)
"It is right and natural that generous minds while in the twenties should think the books which try to reform the world's wrong the greatest of all."
- Laurence Housman
(Related: Books, Reform, Right, World, Wrong)
"Two more years were to go by before I knew anything about William Blake. Many years later, when his wife died, my godfather gave me the two books as a remembrance."
- Laurence Housman
(Related: Wife, Books, Remembrance, Years)
"My books are very few, but then the world is before me - a library open to all - from which poverty of purse cannot exclude me - in which the meanest and most paltry volume is sure to furnish something to amuse, if not to instruct and improve."
- Joseph Howe
(Related: Books, Open, Poverty, World)
"I take refuge in my books."
- Julia Ward Howe
(Related: Books)
"The mortality of all inanimate things is terrible to me, but that of books most of all."
- William Dean Howells
(Related: Books, Mortality)
"This will never be a civilized country until we spend more money for books than we do for chewing gum."
- Elbert Hubbard
(Related: Money, Books, Country, Will)
"I learned easily and had time to follow my inclination for sports (light athletics and skiing) and chemistry, which I taught myself by reading all textbooks I could get."
- Robert Huber
(Related: Sports, Time, Reading)
"It is from books that wise people derive consolation in the troubles of life."
- Victor Hugo
(Related: Life, People, Books)
"I think that's not a question that one can answer accurately. I read a whole range of books, quite a lot of history at the time, and still do read a lot. I read very widely."
- John Hume
(Related: History, Time, Books, Question)
"It is books that teach us to refine our pleasures when young, and to recall them with satisfaction when we are old."
- Leigh Hunt
(Related: Books, Old, Satisfaction)
"Your second-hand bookseller is second to none in the worth of the treasures he dispenses."
- Leigh Hunt
(Related: Worth)
"I feel I've got 10 books in me."
- Robert Hunter
(Related: Books)
"I regret all of my books."
- Zora Neale Hurston
(Related: Books, Regret)
"We can put television in its proper light by supposing that Gutenberg's great invention had been directed at printing only comic books."
- Robert M. Hutchins
(Related: Books, Invention, Light, Printing, Television)
"The proper study of mankind is books."
- Aldous Huxley
(Related: Books, Mankind, Study)
"Books are the money of Literature, but only the counters of Science."
- Thomas Huxley
(Related: Money, Science, Books, Literature)
"I have assiduously avoided calling my books novels."
- Guillermo Cabrera Infante
(Related: Books)
"I describe my works as books, but my publishers in Spain, in the United States, and elsewhere insist on calling them novels."
- Guillermo Cabrera Infante
(Related: Books, Spain, states, United)
"Many of my books have begun with the title, because naming a work already in progress makes no sense to me."
- Guillermo Cabrera Infante
(Related: Work, Progress, Books, Sense)
"When I was still in prep school - 14, 15 - I started keeping notebooks, journals. I started writing, almost like landscape drawing or life drawing. I never kept a diary, I never wrote about my day and what happened to me, but I described things."
- John Irving
(Related: Life, Day, School, Writing)
"What irritates me is the bland way people go around saying, 'Oh, our attitude has changed. We don't dislike these people any more.' But by the strangest coincidence, they haven't taken away the injustice; the laws are still on the books."
- Christopher Isherwood
(Related: People, Attitude, Books, Injustice, Laws, Saying)
"Screenplays I didn't really care about, journalism, travel books, getting my writer friends to write about their dreams or something. I just determined to write the books I had to write."
- Kazuo Ishiguro
(Related: Dreams, Travel, Books, Care, Friends, Journalism, Writer)
"Books can now be on the stands within days from delivery of a formatted manuscript, and often are."
- Bruce Jackson
(Related: Books, Now)
"The end of reading is not more books but more life."
- Holbrook Jackson
(Related: Life, Books, End, Reading)
"When the Supreme Court moved to Washington in 1800, it was provided with no books, which probably accounts for the high quality of early opinions."
- Robert Jackson
(Related: Quality, Books, Court, Opinions, Washington)
"I cannot live without books."
- Thomas Jefferson
(Related: Books)
"Books constitute capital. A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not, then, an article of mere consumption but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital."
- Thomas Jefferson
(Related: Life, Men, Books, Years)
"While writing my first 90 books, I was magazine editor, publisher, book publisher, executive, etc., so I was established in publishing. three of my seven or so books were biographies of sports stars and really opened doors for me in that area."
- Jerry B. Jenkins
(Related: Sports, Books, First, Publishing, Stars, Writing)
"I've written enough books with real celebrities, such as Walter Payton and Hank Aaron and Billy Graham, to know that fame looks good only to people who don't have it."
- Jerry B. Jenkins
(Related: People, Books, Fame)
"Books that do a tenth of what Left Behind has done are smashing successes."
- Jerry B. Jenkins
(Related: Books)
"Books stay with me and have shaped me and made huge impacts on my life."
- Stephan Jenkins
(Related: Life, Books)
"I was drawn to boxing because I got beat up as a kid. I was the kid with the piano books in a New York neighbourhood."
- Billy Joel
(Related: Books, Boxing)
"And so for a couple of years my life was divided between my music and my school books."
- James Weldon Johnson
(Related: Life, Music, Books, School, Years)
"We have talked long enough in this country about equal rights. It is time now to write the next chapter - and to write it in the books of law."
- Lyndon B. Johnson
(Related: Time, Books, Country, Rights, Law, Now)
"Books that you carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are most useful after all."
- Samuel Johnson
(Related: Books, Fire)
"Books like friends, should be few and well-chosen."
- Samuel Johnson
(Related: Books, Friends)
"If I was in love with someone, I would get their picture out of the school yearbook and do portraits. If I was curious about sex, I would draw pictures of it. There were no books for me to look at. Then I would go find my father's matches to burn the paper."
- Lynn Johnston
(Related: Love, Sex, Father, Books, Portraits, School)
"Reading was a big thing, yes. Books were a big thing. But the things that stick out were the newspapers."
- James Earl Jones
(Related: Books, Newspapers, Reading)
"There was a time when the world acted on books; now books act on the world."
- Joseph Joubert
(Related: Time, Act, Books, Now, World)
"The Bible remained for me a book of books, still divine - but divine in the sense that all great books are divine which teach men how to live righteously."
- Joseph Joubert
(Related: Men, Bible, Books, Sense)
"Who has fully realized that history is not contained in thick books but lives in our very blood?"
- Carl Jung
(Related: History, Blood, Books)
"It was really written as most, I think, books are by writers - for themselves. There was something that just had to be written, in a way that it had to be written. If you know what I mean."
- Norton Juster
(Related: Books, Writers)
"There are good books and there are bad books, period, that's the distinction."
- Norton Juster
(Related: Books)
"I think really good books can be read by anybody."
- Norton Juster
(Related: Books)
"Books are men of higher stature; the only men that speak aloud for future times to hear."
- Garson Kanin
(Related: Men, Books, Future)
"I think Americans like the practical; they like the human. And I like both those things myself, and I try and put them into my books."
- John Keegan
(Related: Americans, Books)
"If I don't tell it all now, the story in the history books will always be imperfect and that would be wrong."
- Christine Keeler
(Related: History, Books, Now, Will, Wrong)
"A society in which vocation and job are separated for most people gradually creates an economy that is often devoid of spirit, one that frequently fills our pocketbooks at the cost of emptying our souls."
- Sam Keen
(Related: Society, People, Economy, Job, Spirit, Vocation)
"Then I heard this genius teacher Stella Adler - I recommend you read anything you might find about her and if you have anyone interested in theatre, you get them one of her books."
- Harvey Keitel
(Related: Genius, Books, Theatre)
"You're getting to know who the great chefs are through their books."
- Thomas Keller
(Related: Books)
"We tend to read each other's books in sizeable chunks as they are written. I don't know that you could say we are ruthless with each other - in fact, I suppose we are very kind. There are ways to make suggestions which are not destructive."
- Jonathan Kellerman
(Related: Books, Fact)
"It didn't feel difficult at the time because I was so charged up about both books. Afterward, however, I was pretty tired. In a good way, like after a great workout."
- Jonathan Kellerman
(Related: Time, Books, Pretty)
"There are many little ways to enlarge your child's world. Love of books is the best of all."
- Jackie Kennedy
(Related: Love, Books, World)
"If you want to read about love and marriage, you've got to buy two separate books."
- Alan King
(Related: Love, Marriage, Books, Want)
"I know at my church a lot of the times we sung from hymn books and as we got older we started to change with time. I can honestly say that I was never influenced to write for the church."
- Charles King
(Related: Change, Time, Church, Books)
"I'm all for selling books, but when guys are burning my house down, that's where I draw the line."
- Robert Kirkman
(Related: Selling, Books)
"Well see, I'm a good enough writer that not everybody in my books talks exactly like I do."
- Robert Kirkman
(Related: Books, Writer)
"Last year I think I made more from my Image books than anywhere else."
- Robert Kirkman
(Related: Books)
"I think Walking Dead is one of the friendliest new reader type books in that every time a new trade is shipped out, a new issue is shipped out at the same time."
- Robert Kirkman
(Related: Time, Books, Trade, Walking)
"We go to school to learn to work hard for money. I write books and create products that teach people how to have money work hard for them."
- Robert Kiyosaki
(Related: Money, Work, People, Books, School)
"I read one or two other books which gave me a background in mathematics other than logic."
- Stephen Cole Kleene
(Related: Books, Logic, Mathematics)
"Sometimes I miss out the morning's painting session and instead study my Japanese books in the open."
- Gustav Klimt
(Related: Books, Open, Painting, Study)
"On my first days here I did not start work immediately but, as planned, I took it easy for a few days - flicked through books, studied Japanese art a little."
- Gustav Klimt
(Related: Art, Work, Books, First)
"We don't perceive a contradiction between writing books, making films or producing a television program. These days you can't choose how you want to express yourself anymore."
- Alexander Kluge
(Related: Books, Contradiction, Television, Want, Writing)
"I believe that it is my job not only to write books but to have them published. A book is like a child. You have to defend the life of a child."
- George Konrad
(Related: Life, Books, Job)
"I've got a long list of books I wish I'd never written-and I've kept them all out of print for the past 20 years."
- Dean Koontz
(Related: Books, Past, Years)
"In my books, I never portray violence as a reasonable solution to a problem. If the lead characters in the story are driven to it, it's at the extreme end of their experience."
- Dean Koontz
(Related: Experience, Books, End, Extreme, Solution, Violence)
"If you want to publish two books a year under your own name and your publisher doesn't, maybe you need a different publisher."
- Dean Koontz
(Related: Books, Name, Want)
"Books were this wonderful escape for me because I could open a book and disappear into it, and that was the only way out of that house when I was a kid."
- Dean Koontz
(Related: Books, Open)
"I do give books as gifts sometimes, when people would rather have one than a new Ferrari."
- Dean Koontz
(Related: People, Books, Gifts)
"I like to deal with EVERY aspect of our condition, and that means terror and humor in equal mix. Some books have more room for humor than others."
- Dean Koontz
(Related: Humor, Books, Terror)
"Take a look at the books other people have in their homes."
- Jerzy Kosinski
(Related: People, Books)
"I think a lot of people don't have any idea of how deeply segregated our schools have become all over again. Most textbooks are not honest in what they teach our high school students."
- Jonathan Kozol
(Related: People, Idea, School, Schools, Students)
"I remember being in the public library and my jaw just aching as I looked around at all those books I wanted to read. There just wasn't time enough to read everything I wanted to read."
- Charles Kuralt
(Related: Time, Being, Books, Public)
"The first books I was interested in were all about baseball. But I can't think of one single book that changed my life in any way."
- Charles Kuralt
(Related: Life, Baseball, Books, First)
"Going out in Paris was like going out in the '30s dressed like the Andrews Sisters. It was everything I'd seen in books at my grandparents' house, only it was our generation."
- Christian Lacroix
(Related: Books, Grandparents, Paris, Sisters)
"I'd experienced the '40s and '50s by looking at my grandparents' old clothes, books, and magazines."
- Christian Lacroix
(Related: Books, Clothes, Grandparents, Old)
"Home base is the support system where we have a culinary team, my own writers because of the shows and the books and stuff, we have a culinary team of about six people. Marketing, public relations, accounting and all that sort of stuff."
- Emeril Lagasse
(Related: Home, People, Books, Marketing, Public, Support, Writers)
"All people, even secular people, are seeing books on the market like The End of History."
- Tim LaHaye
(Related: History, People, Books, End)
"I've written many nonfiction books, but that's a special gift."
- Tim LaHaye
(Related: Books)
"Winning the Pulitzer is wonderful and it's an honor and I feel so humbled and so grateful, but I think that I'll think of it very much as the final sort of final moment for this book and put it behind me along with the rest of the book, as I write more books."
- Jhumpa Lahiri
(Related: Winning, Books, Honor, Rest)
"Shakespeare is one of the last books one should like to give up, perhaps the one just before the Dying Service in a large Prayer book."
- Charles Lamb
(Related: Books, Dying, Prayer, Service, Shakespeare)
"I bought some books in order to learn the first principles of philosophy."
- Johann Heinrich Lambert
(Related: Books, First, Order, Philosophy, Principles)
"The institution of a public library, containing books on education, would be well adapted for the information of teachers, many of whom are not able to purchase expensive publications on those subjects."
- Joseph Lancaster
(Related: Education, Books, Information, Public, Teachers)
"There's a great deal of attention paid and books written about this change of life in a woman, and really very little written about a man's change of life."
- Frank Langella
(Related: Change, Life, Attention, Books, Man, Woman)
"I started to write in 2001. I wrote the books for the fun of it. It was an old idea I had had since the nineties."
- Steig Larsson
(Related: Idea, Books, Fun, Old)
"The 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. There's an action side to it, which I love, and there are werewolves now. There aren't just vampires. There's a wolf pack."
- Taylor Lautner
(Related: Love, Action, Books, Fans, Now, Silly, Want)
"One sheds one's sicknesses in books - repeats and presents again one's emotions, to be master of them."
- David Herbert Lawrence
(Related: Books, Emotions)
"Nine-tenths of tactics are certain, and taught in books: but the irrational tenth is like the kingfisher flashing across the pool, and that is the test of generals."
- T. E. Lawrence
"We went to the British Museum, and I was looking up my family in the books - pages and pages on it."
- Nicholas Lea
(Related: Family, Books)
"The pleasure of reading is doubled when one lives with another who shares the same books."
- Stanislaw Lec
(Related: Books, Pleasure, Reading)
"By the time I was 12 or 13, I was studying biochemistry textbooks."
- Joshua Lederberg
(Related: Time)
"Anywhere you go in the world is what you make of it, not what you read in books."
- Alvin Lee
(Related: Books, World)
"You've really got to start hitting the books because it's no joke out here."
- Harper Lee
(Related: Books)
"With each book I write, I become more and more convinced that the books have a life of their own, quite apart from me."
- Madeleine L'Engle
(Related: Life, Books)
"I like to have books around to give me ideas-to get the verbal part of my brain to start working."
- Sean Lennon
(Related: Ideas, Books)
"I have no memory for what happens in what books. I don't know when I might remember a scene, but beats me what book it's in because there are 14 of them now."
- Donna Leon
(Related: Books, Memory, Now)
"Books fall from Garry Wills like leaves from a maple tree in a sort of permanent October."
- John Leonard
(Related: Books, October)
"Many of you might already recognize me as the guy in the question-mark suits appearing in the late night TV commercials and on the cover of educational books and CDs."
- Matthew Lesko
(Related: Books, Night, Question)
"I've had the odd good luck of starting slowly and building gradually, something few writers are allowed anymore. As a result I've seen each of my books called the breakthrough. And each was, in its way."
- Jonathan Lethem
(Related: Books, Building, Luck, Result, Writers)
"I've given up reading books. I find it takes my mind off myself."
- Oscar Levant
(Related: Books, Mind, Reading)
"I have given up reading books; I find it takes my mind off myself."
- Oscar Levant
(Related: Books, Mind, Reading)
"Any kid who has two parents who are interested in him and has a houseful of books isn't poor."
- Sam Levenson
(Related: Books, Parents, Poor)
"Books have become our dearest companions, yielding exquisite delights and inspiring lofty aims."
- George Henry Lewes
(Related: Books, Inspiring)
"Books minister to our knowledge, to our guidance, and to our delight, by their truth, their uprightness, and their art."
- George Henry Lewes
(Related: Art, Truth, Knowledge, Books, Delight, Guidance)
"Well, it was actually - I brought the idea of doing a documentary to HBO back in 2000, when there were some press reports sort of were bandied about that there were going to TV movies based on some of the books that were out."
- Monica Lewinsky
(Related: Movies, Idea, Books, Press)
"The burning of an author's books, imprisonment for opinion's sake, has always been the tribute that an ignorant age pays to the genius of its time."
- Joseph Lewis
(Related: Age, Time, Genius, Books, Imprisonment, Opinion, Tribute)
"I became interested in making books, starting about 1965, when I did the Serial Project #1, deciding that I needed a small book to show how the work could be understood and how the system worked."
- Sol LeWitt
(Related: Work, Books, Project)
"Buying books was a way anyone could acquire a work of art for very little."
- Sol LeWitt
(Related: Art, Work, Books, Buying)
"As a kid I was fascinated with sports, and I loved sports more than anything else. The first books I read were about sports, like books about Baseball Joe, as one baseball hero was called."
- Robert Jay Lifton
(Related: Sports, Baseball, Books, First)
"I don't have the feeling that as a very young person I read books that absolutely made their mark on my mind."
- Robert Jay Lifton
(Related: Books, Feeling, Mind)
"The things I want to know are in books; my best friend is the man who'll get me a book I ain't read."
- Abraham Lincoln
(Related: Friend, Books, Man, Want)
"Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new at all."
- Abraham Lincoln
(Related: Thoughts, Books, Man)
"A friend of mine once told me that I can't screw up when I play my own music. I also take voice lessons, play other peoples' songs out of music books, and occasionally figure out how to play other people's music from records. This keeps my ears, fingers, and mind working."
- Lisa Loeb
(Related: Music, People, Friend, Books, Mind, Play, Songs, Voice)
"The guys in my band are great-we watch movies, we eat pizza, take walks, read books. Everybody has a really great sense of humor. And my boyfriend comes and visits me on the road."
- Lisa Loeb
(Related: Humor, Movies, Boyfriend, Books, Road, Sense)
"No, I'm not a comic book guy. I'm pretty fascinated with the subculture though and I do think that the world of comic books is such a natural transition into film."
- Donal Logue
(Related: Books, Film, Pretty, World)
"A single conversation across the table with a wise man is better than ten years mere study of books."
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
(Related: Books, Conversation, Man, Study, Years)
"The love of learning, the sequestered nooks, And all the sweet serenity of books."
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
(Related: Love, Books, Learning, Serenity)
"My books were always full of ink blots, always stained and covered with smeared sketches and pictures, which one draws idly when his attention wanders from his task."
- Pierre Loti
(Related: Attention, Books)
"But more wonderful than the lore of old men and the lore of books is the secret lore of ocean."
- H. P. Lovecraft
(Related: Men, Books, Ocean, Old)
"I couldn't live a week without a private library - indeed, I'd part with all my furniture and squat and sleep on the floor before I'd let go of the 1500 or so books I possess."
- H. P. Lovecraft
(Related: Books, Sleep)
"All books are either dreams or swords, you can cut, or you can drug, with words."
- Amy Lowell
(Related: Dreams, Books, Words)
"For books are more than books, they are the life, the very heart and core of ages past, the reason why men worked and died, the essence and quintessence of their lives."
- Amy Lowell
(Related: Men, Life, Heart, Books, Past, Reason)
"Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind."
- James Russell Lowell
(Related: Bees, Books, Mind)
"Earth and sky, woods and fields, lakes and rivers, the mountain and the sea, are excellent schoolmasters, and teach some of us more than we can ever learn from books."
- John Lubbock
(Related: Books, Earth, Rivers, Sea, Sky)
"I'll look at the script and I'll try to find as many books, movies, and pieces of music that I think are going to feed each scene or the character as a whole."
- Josh Lucas
(Related: Music, Movies, Character, Books)
"I have friends who read my books in Greek."
- Brian Lumley
(Related: Books, Friends)
"Our Lord has written the promise of resurrection, not in books alone, but in every leaf in springtime."
- Martin Luther
(Related: Books, Promise)
"I didn't have time for talent shows and stuff like that. I was into books and studying real hard."
- Cheryl Lynn
(Related: Time, Talent, Books)
"My idea of going to hell is going somewhere where there are no books."
- James MacArthur
(Related: Idea, Books, Hell)
"I would rather be poor in a cottage full of books than a king without the desire to read."
- Thomas B. Macaulay
(Related: Books, Desire, Poor)
"I only keep books that I like very much. Otherwise I'd throw them out."
- Norman MacCaig
(Related: Books)
"There are some friends you don't meet for twenty years and when you meet them again it's as if no twenty years has happened - you're lucky when that happens. I feel the same about books."
- Norman MacCaig
(Related: Books, Friends, Years)
"All those authors there, most of whom of course I've never met. That's the poetry side, that's the prose side, that's the fishing and miscellaneous behind me. You get an affection for books that you've enjoyed."
- Norman MacCaig
(Related: Poetry, Affection, Books, Fishing, Miscellaneous, Prose)
"But I hang on to books. I love them. I even think they're very nice decor in a room - far better than paintings... That's not quite true!"
- Norman MacCaig
(Related: Love, Books)
"When I was a teacher, teachers would come into my classroom and admire my desk on which lay nothing whatever, whereas theirs were heaped with papers and books."
- Norman MacCaig
(Related: Books, Classroom, Nothing, Teachers)
"The copycat effects of media violence, similar to those previously attributed to westerns, radio serials and comic books, are easy to exaggerate."
- Hugh Mackay
(Related: Books, Media, Violence)
"I want to make a summing up, brief and to the point, but thorough. I have never suppressed a word in my books out of regard for other people and their prejudices."
- John Henry Mackay
(Related: People, Books, Want, Word)
"I want to write such things as compel the admiring acclamation of the world at large, such things as are written but once in years, things subtle but distinctly different from the books written every day."
- Mary MacLane
(Related: Books, Day, Want, World, Years)
"If you think you have it tough, read history books."
- Bill Maher
(Related: History, Books)
"I was reading a lot of books I admired, and thought that I would like to write something like that someday."
- Naguib Mahfouz
(Related: Thought, Books, Reading)
"I started writing while I was a little boy. Maybe it's because I was reading a lot of books I admired, and thought that I would like to write something like that someday. Also, my love for good writing pushed me."
- Naguib Mahfouz
(Related: Love, Thought, Books, Reading, Writing)
"When you are writing, of course, you have to do all that writing and correcting for yourself. When I was a librarian it was expected that I would know about a wide range of books."
- Margaret Mahy
(Related: Books, Writing)
"It is a good idea to know which publishers publish which stories. For example, there is no sense in sending a picture book text to a publisher who does not publish picture books."
- Margaret Mahy
(Related: Idea, Books, Example, Sense)
"Anyone interested in the world generally can't help being interested in young adult culture - in the music, the bands, the books, the fashions, and the way in which the young adult community develops its own language."
- Margaret Mahy
(Related: Music, Being, Books, Community, Culture, Help, Language, World)
"At the same time, I think books create a sort of network in the reader's mind, with one book reinforcing another. Some books form relationships. Other books stand in opposition. No two writers or readers have the same pattern of interaction."
- Margaret Mahy
(Related: Time, Books, Mind, Network, Opposition, Relationships, Writers)
"Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing."
- Norman Mailer
(Related: Men, Books, Writing)
"Do not consider it proof just because it is written in books, for a liar who will deceive with his tongue will not hesitate to do the same with his pen."
- Maimonides
(Related: Books, Pen, Proof, Tongue, Will)
"When I came out, and for many years afterwards, it had become a habit for me to sit and read and read and read, like an obsession. I would take 20 books, and not come out until I'd finished them. It took me a while to change that habit."
- Mohsen Makhmalbaf
(Related: Change, Habit, Books, Obsession, Years)
"My Alma mater was books, a good library... I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity."
- Malcolm X
(Related: Life, Books, Curiosity, Reading, Rest)
"The flesh, alas, is sad, and I have read all the books."
- Stephane Mallarme
(Related: Books)
"A house without books is like a room without windows. No man has a right to bring up his children without surrounding them with books, if he has the means to buy them."
- Horace Mann
(Related: Books, Children, Man, Right, Windows)
"The pleasure of all reading is doubled when one lives with another who shares the same books."
- Katherine Mansfield
(Related: Books, Pleasure, Reading)
"I always read all these books about the slaves. My mother is very educated. My father would talk to us like we were grown men. We never knew what he was talking about half the time."
- Wynton Marsalis
(Related: Time, Men, Mother, Father, Books, Talk, Talking)
"I'm more of a visual person, but I think that reading's extremely important. But I'm very easily distracted. It takes certain books to really grab you in."
- Jason Marsden
(Related: Books, Reading)
"If the First Amendment means anything, it means that a state has no business telling a man, sitting alone in his house, what books he may read or what films he may watch."
- Thurgood Marshall
(Related: Business, Books, First, Man, May, State)
"I am not a total, complete nitwit when it comes to selling books. I promise you there will be unexpected things. Some of them I don't know yet. She's writing it all herself."
- Mary Matalin
(Related: Selling, Books, Promise, Will, Writing)
"I also met, early on Ella Fitzgerald. Her songbooks are some of the most amazing bodies of work."
- Johnny Mathis
(Related: Work)
"Sarah Palin - now don't laugh - is writing a book. Not just reading a book, writing a book. Actually, in the word of the publisher, she's 'collaborating' on a book. What an embarrassment! It's one of these 'I told you,' books that jocks do."
- Chris Matthews
(Related: Books, Now, Reading, Word, Writing)
"When I'm in the field, when I'm working, I keep very careful notes. I wear big shirts with big breast pockets, and I carry in them two little spiral notebooks."
- Peter Matthiessen
"And I don't like books which are full of name dropping."
- Daphne du Maurier
(Related: Books, Name)
"I have a shelf of comfort books, which I read when the world closes in on me or something untoward happens."
- Anne McCaffrey
(Related: Books, Comfort, World)
"I don't often reread my own books, unless I am going into another in the series and need to refresh my mood when originating the concept."
- Anne McCaffrey
(Related: Books)
"I've been writing in notebooks for 40 years or so."
- Frank McCourt
(Related: Writing, Years)
"To me, I was always just standing on the sidelines because up until issue 50, we were just doing Spawn. I wasn't recruiting anybody because I didn't have any books for people to work on."
- Todd McFarlane
(Related: Work, People, Books)
"I think people would actually be surprised by what we put out. Unfortunately the shadow that the original founders cast was that they were just artists that can't write books so people swept the whole of Image with that paintbrush."
- Todd McFarlane
(Related: People, Artists, Books, Shadow)
"That became a big time in comic books because it's when people were starting to break out into independent stuff, the market was getting choked with speculators and everybody was trying to do their own trick covers."
- Todd McFarlane
(Related: Time, People, Books, Trying)
"I used to take five or six books away and bring five or six books back. Nobody gave me direction or advice and I read much in the way that a boy might watch television."
- John McGahern
(Related: Advice, Books, Direction, Television)
"I think there's a great difference in consciousness in that same way in that when we're young we read books for the story, for the excitement of the story - and there comes a time when you realise that all stories are more or less the same story."
- John McGahern
(Related: Time, Books, Consciousness, Difference, Excitement)
"There's a whole bunch of unfinished stuff. Then I've got books of lyrics. I find it frustrating to finish a song and not be able to record it... so I don't write a million songs."
- Christine McVie
(Related: Books, Song, Songs)
"Schools and libraries are the twin cornerstones of a civilized society. Libraries are only good if people use them, like books only exist when someone reads them."
- Nicholas Meyer
(Related: Society, People, Books, Libraries, Schools)
"Everything was going my way. I was happily marching into the history books. Then it all just fell apart."
- George Michael
(Related: History, Books)
"If sex is such a natural phenomenon, how come there are so many books on how to do it?"
- Bette Midler
(Related: Sex, Books)
"We've had really good mainstream publicity for these books and both Wanted and Chosen were snapped up as movie deals before each series even ended so I'm honestly just pinching myself."
- Mark Millar
(Related: Books, Deals, Publicity)
"The books are all very, very different so the publishers really had to be different too."
- Mark Millar
(Related: Books)
"The animated books pay the lowest rates at the Big Two and you can forget about royalties."
- Mark Millar
(Related: Books, Forget)
"Marvel books also feed into the smaller publishers and the fact that this is happening in the same month we're launching Ultimate Fantastic Four is no coincidence."
- Mark Millar
(Related: Books, Fact)
"However, if I can expand this to Top Cow or Avatar I'm helping the sales, however small, on my Marvel books because I'm almost certain to pick up some new readers."
- Mark Millar
(Related: Books, Sales)
"Being the first to do something like this also registers a lot of attention that the line might not have gotten if all four books had just appeared from one company."
- Mark Millar
(Related: Attention, Being, Books, Company, First)
"At the moment, I have it planned as a six or seven year experiment, but the books will only ever appear in bursts like this every couple of years and only with the best quality artists."
- Mark Millar
(Related: Quality, Artists, Books, Will, Years)
"As a strong supporter of our 2nd Amendment rights, I believe tougher enforcement of our nation's existing gun laws must be done before any more laws are enacted and put on the books."
- Jeff Miller
(Related: Books, Rights, Laws, Nation)
"Deep-versed in books and shallow in himself."
- John Milton
(Related: Books, Deep)
"A man loses contact with reality if he is not surrounded by his books."
- Francois Mitterrand
(Related: Books, Man, Reality)
"All the ills of mankind, all the tragic misfortunes that fill the history books, all the political blunders, all the failures of the great leaders have arisen merely from a lack of skill at dancing."
- Moliere
(Related: History, Books, Dancing, Leaders, Mankind, Skill)
"Books and marriage go ill together."
- Moliere
(Related: Marriage, Books)
"Some of the most famous books are the least worth reading. Their fame was due to their having done something that needed to be doing in their day. The work is done and the virtue of the book has expired."
- Moliere
(Related: Work, Virtue, Books, Day, Fame, Famous, Reading, Worth)
"However, poetry does not live solely in books or in school anthologies."
- Eugenio Montale
(Related: Poetry, Books, School)
"So while it is true that I find really dark stuff funny sometimes, it's also true that as a writer of books I want to have the whole range of human emotions."
- Rick Moody
(Related: Funny, Books, Emotions, Want, Writer)
"I judged about a zillion awards this year so I've been reading a lot of books that just came out."
- Rick Moody
(Related: Awards, Books, Reading)
"Genre is a bookstore problem, not a literary problem."
- Rick Moody
(Related: Literary)
"I love comic books and always did as a kid."
- Rick Moody
(Related: Love, Books)
"Other people, including me, have written books with main characters who were old and rich. Or old and brilliant. Old sages, old wizards, old rich people."
- Elizabeth Moon
(Related: People, Books, Old)
"There are relatively few science fiction or fantasy books with the main character being an old person."
- Elizabeth Moon
(Related: Science, Character, Being, Books, Fantasy, Fiction, Old)
"When I was starting out, I did not do short fiction well, because I kept wanting to write books."
- Elizabeth Moon
(Related: Books, Fiction)
"To paint comic books as childish and illiterate is lazy. A lot of comic books are very literate - unlike most films."
- Alan Moore
(Related: Books)
"They want a lip print for their autograph books. I'm a sport; I go along."
- Cleo Moore
(Related: Books, Want)
"There's nothing definite yet. Of course, any time you have a book, there's going to be book signings and stuff. We'll do bookstores that handle both audio and video. And some of the stores want to have the CDs available at the same time. So that part looks real good."
- Scotty Moore
(Related: Time, Nothing, Want)
"It is over with; I am in the history books."
- Michael Moorer
(Related: History, Books)
"One thing that's coming up a lot is: are you as grumpy as you appear from this Black Books thing."
- Dylan Moran
(Related: Books)
"Black Books adheres to a more old fashioned, traditional sitcom format, which I think works, because in its own way, it's quite theatrical."
- Dylan Moran
(Related: Books, Old)
"My only books were woman's looks, and folly's all they've taught me."
- Thomas More
(Related: Books, Folly, Woman)
"The best books of our times have included the three mature volumes of Philip Larkin. They're very short books of poems, and very carefully arranged."
- Robert Morgan
(Related: Books, Poems)
"I love chapbooks. They're in some ways the ideal form in which to publish and read poems. You can read 19 poems in a way you can't sit down and read 60 to 70 pages of poems."
- Robert Morgan
(Related: Love, Poems)
"In the later books I am much more at home in the use of language to describe things. I had never thought of that until a critic pointed that out."
- Robert Morgan
(Related: Home, Thought, Books, Language)
"The way I create music is maybe like a painting, to compose in a more visual way. Basically it's the music that I want to hear- that's my inspiration and bottom line. I just try to get ideas from books, movies, paintings."
- Ikue Mori
(Related: Music, Movies, Inspiration, Ideas, Books, Painting, Want)
"The real purpose of books is to trap the mind into doing its own thinking."
- Christopher Morley
(Related: Purpose, Books, Mind, Thinking)
"You've got all these books on self help, getting to know yourself, doing the right thing, eating the so-called right foods, even down to what books you have on your shelves. People are encouraged to look to themselves first as opposed to being a part of society."
- Samantha Morton
(Related: Society, People, Being, Books, Eating, First, Help, Right, Self)
"I'm totally into new age and self-help books. I used to work in a bookstore and that's the section they gave me, and I got way into it. I just loved the power of positive thinking, letting yourself go."
- Jason Mraz
(Related: Age, Power, Work, Positive, Books, Positive thinking, Self)
"I spend my happiest hours in reading Vedantic books. They are to me like the light of the morning, like the pure air of the mountains - so simple, so true, if once understood."
- Max Muller
(Related: Books, Light, Mountains, Reading)
"Anyway, in the mid 80's I was spending a fortune buying old Golden Age books from the late 30's and 40's and I was making personal appearances at a lot of sci fi and comic book conventions all around the country here so that I could find books for my collection."
- Bill Mumy
(Related: Age, Books, Buying, Country, Fortune, Old)
"Well, I've been a big fan of comic books since I was a little kid. In fact, I used to write and draw my own comic books when I was on the old Lost in Space series."
- Bill Mumy
(Related: Books, Fact, Old, Space)
"A man can stand a lot as long as he can stand himself. He can live without hope, without friends, without books, even without music, as long as he can listen to his own thoughts."
- Axel Munthe
(Related: Music, Hope, Thoughts, Books, Friends, Man)
"I am 55 years old now. It takes three years to write one book. I don't know how many books I will be able to write before I die. It is like a countdown. So with each book I am praying - please let me live until I am finished."
- Haruki Murakami
(Related: Books, Now, Old, Will, Years)
"I think that the online world has actually brought books back. People are reading because they're reading the damn screen. That's more reading than people used to do."
- Bill Murray
(Related: People, Books, Reading, World)
"Even the people who have had success and made money writing these books of fiction seem to feel the need to pretend it's no big deal, or part of a natural progression from poetry to fiction, but often it's really just about the money, the perceived prestige."
- George Murray
(Related: Money, Poetry, Success, People, Books, Fiction, Writing)
"I guess there is also an element of deliberate change involved. Each of my books has been, at least from my point of view, radically different from the last."
- George Murray
(Related: Change, Books)
"I never read a single book as a child. I did not read as a child. I worked on the farm. I had books in the classroom, but that was it. I never read a single book outside of the classroom."
- Story Musgrave
(Related: Books, Classroom)
"The Bible and several other self help or enlightenment books cite the Seven Deadly Sins. They are: pride, greed, lust, envy, wrath, sloth, and gluttony. That pretty much covers everything that we do, that is sinful... or fun for that matter."
- Dave Mustaine
(Related: Bible, Books, Envy, Fun, Gluttony, Greed, Help, Lust, Pretty, Pride, Self, Wrath)
"My parents would read those books to me as well but they used to make me starving when I was a kid because they were always eating ham sandwiches with the crusts off and drinking ginger beer."
- Mike Myers
(Related: Beer, Books, Drinking, Eating, Parents)
"But everything of value about me is in my books."
- V. S. Naipaul
(Related: Books, Value)
"I will say I am the sum of my books."
- V. S. Naipaul
(Related: Books, Will)
"The books that help you most are those which make you think that most. The hardest way of learning is that of easy reading; but a great book that comes from a great thinker is a ship of thought, deep freighted with truth and beauty."
- Pablo Neruda
(Related: Beauty, Truth, Thought, Books, Deep, Help, Learning, Reading)
"I first began to read religious books at school, and especially the Bible, when I was eleven years old; and almost immediately commenced a habit of secret prayer."
- Francis W. Newman
(Related: Habit, Bible, Books, First, Old, Prayer, Religious, School, Years)
"Like any small business owner, I experienced the pressures of building a company from the ground up - developing a business plan, balancing the books, meeting payroll and building a customer base."
- Gavin Newsom
(Related: Business, Books, Building, Company, Customer, Meeting)
"I never buy magazines, I never even buy books."
- Marc Newson
(Related: Books)
"I spend a lot of time preparing. I think a lot about what I want to do. I have prep books, little notebooks in which I write everything down before a sitting. Otherwise I would forget my ideas."
- Helmut Newton
(Related: Time, Ideas, Books, Forget, Want)
"In between that time, I've done book narrating, you know, books on tape for Dove Audio."
- Juice Newton
(Related: Time, Books)
"If people are going to be cooking the books, you're in trouble."
- Don Nickles
(Related: People, Books, Cooking, Trouble)
"My last comment was, though, that Congress has cooked the books."
- Don Nickles
(Related: Books, Congress)
"This time, there have been a lot of interesting discussion about the subject matter and I've had a good time talking about it. And in some of the cases, I'm not just signing books; I'm showing slides and talking about the work."
- Leonard Nimoy
(Related: Time, Work, Books, Talking)
"Books are standing counselors and preachers, always at hand, and always disinterested; having this advantage over oral instructors, that they are ready to repeat their lesson as often as we please."
- Louis Nizer
(Related: Books)
"Readers always seem to think that the author has some control over the design of their books."
- Donald Norman
(Related: Design, Control, Books)
"I'm kind of surprised that so many of those other books were almost exactly like mine. They even follow the form. There were some books that even copied the stamp. It shows so little imagination."
- Don Novello
(Related: Imagination, Books)
"I never thought I'd be a writer. I never thought I'd be able to read a book, let alone write one. So if books like this inspire kids to write, or even read a whole book, I think it's good."
- Don Novello
(Related: Thought, Books, Kids, Writer)
"Whites were the winners, blacks were the losers, we wrote the history books, and they didn't feature."
- Phillip Noyce
(Related: History, Books)
"When people say there is too much violence in my books, what they are saying is there is too much reality in life."
- Joyce Carol Oates
(Related: Life, People, Books, Reality, Saying, Violence)
"It's always hard when you're playing someone for a lot of people out there who are going to see the movie after reading the books. There's a communion between a reader and the writer, so people will have an idea who Sirius Black is and I might not be everyone's idea of that."
- Gary Oldman
(Related: People, Idea, Books, Reading, Will, Writer)
"I have three kids who like Harry Potter so I was sort of aware of it. You can't really move from it: it's on buses, in stores, it's everywhere. One of my kids has read the books; the other two are too small but they like the movies."
- Gary Oldman
(Related: Movies, Books, Kids)
"There are some fine books and essays about that. Lewis Hyde has written about alcoholism and poets and the role that society gives its writers - encouraging them to die."
- Sharon Olds
(Related: Society, Encouraging, Books, Poets, Writers)
"The decision for me was whether to have "The Father" be a book that told a story - from the point of view of this speaker, the daughter - without, as in the earlier books, then having a section on something else and a section on something else."
- Sharon Olds
(Related: Daughter, Decision, Books)
"Many poets write books. They'll tell you: Well, I've got my next book, but there are two poems I need to write, one about x, one about y. This is a wonder to me."
- Sharon Olds
(Related: Books, Poems, Poets, Wonder)
"My first two books are out of print and, okay, they can sleep there comfortably. It's early work, derivative work."
- Mary Oliver
(Related: Work, Books, First, Sleep)
"The last three books are much more a case of a moment of history, what happened almost by accident or coincidence, like being in the same elevator or lifeboat."
- Michael Ondaatje
(Related: History, Accident, Being, Books)
"A book is always a dialogue with other readers and other books."
- Tim O'Reilly
(Related: Books)
"It's one thing for the people in the industry to know who you are, because they've heard about you earlier. I have friends calling me from the Christian bookstore because there's a poster on the wall. It's just weird."
- Stacie Orrico
(Related: People, Christian, Friends)
"The best books... are those that tell you what you know already."
- George Orwell
(Related: Books)
"Prolonged, indiscriminate reviewing of books is a quite exceptionally thankless, irritating and exhausting job. It not only involves praising trash but constantly inventing reactions towards books about which one has no spontaneous feeling whatever."
- George Orwell
(Related: Books, Feeling, Job)
"Why do I do this every Sunday? Even the book reviews seem to be the same as last week's. Different books same reviews."
- John Osborne
(Related: Books)
"He who studies medicine without books sails an uncharted sea, but he who studies medicine without patients does not go to sea at all."
- William Osler
(Related: Books, Medicine, Sea)
"To study the phenomena of disease without books is to sail an uncharted sea, while to study books without patients is not to go to sea at all."
- William Osler
(Related: Books, Disease, Study)
"It is much simpler to buy books than to read them and easier to read them than to absorb their contents."
- William Osler
(Related: Books)
"I have some shorter stories coming out in other books early next year. I might be pitching a re-vamp of Ghost Rider in the spring. We'll see."
- Patton Oswalt
(Related: Books, Spring)
"MAY it please your Honors: I was desired by one of the court to look into the books, and consider the question now before them concerning Writs of Assistance."
- James Otis
(Related: Books, Court, May, Now, Question)
"To see this place would truly be worth a trip to India in itself, and from the spirit of the religion that lived here one can learn more in an hour of viewing than from all the books ever written."
- Rudolf Otto
(Related: Religion, Books, Spirit, Worth)
"I like to browse in occult bookshops if for no other reason than to refresh my commitment to science."
- Heinz R. Pagels
(Related: Science, Commitment, Reason)
"Television is actually closer to reality than anything in books. The madness of TV is the madness of human life."
- Camille Paglia
(Related: Life, Books, Madness, Reality, Television)
"One of the things I learned, one of the strangest things, is how to think. There was nothing else to do. I couldn't see people, or go for a walk in the forest. All I had was my head and my books, and I thought a lot."
- Abraham Pais
(Related: Thought, People, Books, Nothing)
"Most people don't have the money to spend on advertising to create awareness among readers, nor do they have the contacts at newspapers or magazines to get their books reviewed."
- Sara Paretsky
(Related: Money, People, Advertising, Awareness, Books, Newspapers)
"In 1986 we were trying to help women get in print, stay in print, and come to the attention of booksellers and libraries. At that time, books by men mystery writers were reviewed seven times as often as books by women."
- Sara Paretsky
(Related: Men, Women, Time, Attention, Books, Help, Libraries, Mystery, Trying, Writers)
"Very few of my books are about who stole the Maltese Falcon."
- Robert B. Parker
(Related: Books)
"The books that help you the most are those which make you think the most."
- Theodore Parker
(Related: Books, Help)
"Who knows for what we live, and struggle, and die? Wise men write many books, in words too hard to understand. But this, the purpose of our lives, the end of all our struggle, is beyond all human wisdom."
- Alan Paton
(Related: Men, Wisdom, Purpose, Books, End, Struggle, Words)
"For many years I had heard about an underworld consisting of people who act out a vampire fantasy while I was living in New York. Fortunately for me there are also several books on the phenomena."
- James Patterson
(Related: People, Act, Books, Fantasy, Living, Years)
"I think the people who would be the least interested in my work would be people who read lots of comic books."
- Harvey Pekar
(Related: Work, People, Books)
"People who are readers of fiction aren't particularly interested in comic books."
- Harvey Pekar
(Related: People, Books, Fiction)
"Naturally, I have compensated in my adult years by owning very large numbers of books."
- Martin Lewis Perl
(Related: Books, Numbers, Years)
"There were two free public libraries within walking distance of my home; I remember taking six books home from every visit, the limit set by the library."
- Martin Lewis Perl
(Related: Home, Books, Libraries, Public, Visit, Walking)
"Keeping books on social aid is capitalistic nonsense. I just use the money for the poor. I can't stop to count it."
- Evita Peron
(Related: Money, Books, Nonsense, Poor)
"Yes, in my books I do edit myself to keep from becoming the Village Explainer."
- Thomas Perry
(Related: Books)
"You have very accurately described the difficulty of presenting my books on film: many of my characters are alone most of the time, and when they do talk, what they say is mostly lies. That can make for a pretty confusing film."
- Thomas Perry
(Related: Time, Books, Difficulty, Film, Lies, Pretty, Talk)
"I think we did a great job of putting together a program that would have made good e-books available had people been buying e-books in any real numbers."
- Thomas Perry
(Related: People, Buying, Job, Numbers)
"I don't think the problem is that people don't read enough mystery books, but that people don't read."
- Thomas Perry
(Related: People, Books, Mystery)
"I do like to explore evil characters in my books."
- Thomas Perry
(Related: Books, Evil)
"Books have led some to learning and others to madness."
- Petrarch
(Related: Books, Learning, Madness)
"Those who decide to use leisure as a means of mental development, who love good music, good books, good pictures, good plays, good company, good conversation - what are they? They are the happiest people in the world."
- William Lyon Phelps
(Related: Love, Music, People, Development, Books, Company, Conversation, Leisure, World)
"A bibliophile of little means is likely to suffer often. Books don't slip from his hands but fly past him through the air, high as birds, high as prices."
- William Lyon Phelps
(Related: Birds, Books, Past)
"All my books were easy to write - doesn't it show?"
- Daniel Pinkwater
(Related: Books)
"I agreed on condition that we found a completely new concept that had nothing to do with the latest books."
- Bernard Pivot
(Related: Books, Nothing)
"Movies and television shows based on comic books constitute the worst single genre in the history of filmed entertainment (with the exception of porn)."
- John Podhoretz
(Related: History, Movies, Books, Entertainment, Television)
"People, and especially theologians, should try to familiarize themselves with scientific ideas. Of course, science is technical in many respects, but there are some very good books that try to set out some of the conceptual structure of science."
- John Polkinghorne
(Related: Science, People, Ideas, Books)
"I read everything and anything. I love books."
- Gail Porter
(Related: Love, Books)
"Men do not understand books until they have a certain amount of life, or at any rate no man understands a deep book, until he has seen and lived at least part of its contents."
- Ezra Pound
(Related: Men, Life, Books, Deep, Man)
"Books do furnish a room."
- Anthony Powell
(Related: Books)
"Books themselves need no defense. Their spokesmen come and go, their readers live and die, they remain constant."
- Lawrence Clark Powell
(Related: Books, Defense)
"We are the children of a technological age. We have found streamlined ways of doing much of our routine work. Printing is no longer the only way of reproducing books. Reading them, however, has not changed."
- Lawrence Clark Powell
(Related: Age, Work, Books, Children, Printing, Reading, Routine)
"Unless their use by readers bring them to life, books are indeed dead things."
- Lawrence Clark Powell
(Related: Life, Books)
"There's not too much difference between writing a picture book and writing a collection of a hundred poems or so, except that the bigger books take a lot longer to do."
- Jack Prelutsky
(Related: Books, Difference, Poems, Writing)
"My reading is extremely eclectic. Lately I've been teaching myself computer graphics, so I'm reading a lot about that. I read books of trivia, of facts."
- Jack Prelutsky
(Related: Books, Computer, Facts, Reading, Teaching)
"When I was a boy, I always saw myself as a hero in comic books and in movies. I grew up believing this dream."
- Elvis Presley
(Related: Movies, Dream, Books)
"A novelist who writes nothing for 10 years finds his reputation rising. Because I keep on producing books they say there must be something wrong with this fellow."
- J. B. Priestley
(Related: Books, Nothing, Reputation, Wrong, Years)
"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."
- Manuel Puig
(Related: Books, Information, Mind, Reading)
"We don't need lists of rights and wrongs, tables of do's and don'ts: we need books, time, and silence. Thou shalt not is soon forgotten, but Once upon a time lasts forever."
- Philip Pullman
(Related: Time, Books, Rights, Silence, Wrongs)
"I would be the most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves."
- Anna Quindlen
(Related: People, Building, Children, Content)
"I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves."
- Anna Quindlen
(Related: People, Building, Children, Content)
"If God had meant Harvard professors to appear in People magazine, She wouldn't have invented The New York Review of Books."
- Anna Quindlen
(Related: God, People, Books)
"Ideas are only lethal if you suppress and don't discuss them. Ignorance is not bliss, it's stupid. Banning books shows you don't trust your kids to think and you don't trust yourself to be able to talk to them."
- Anna Quindlen
(Related: Trust, Ideas, Books, Ignorance, Kids, Talk)
"By then I was in Brooklyn and drank my way through that summer. I stopped when I got sick of that and got a job at the Strand bookstore, which was a little better than the tax job."
- Robert Quine
(Related: Tax, Job, Summer)
"Many good sayings are to be found in holy books, but merely reading them will not make one religious."
- Ramakrishna
(Related: Books, Reading, Religious, sayings, Will)
"Scholarship was one thing, drudgery another. I very soon concluded that nothing would induce me to read, let alone make notes on, hundreds and hundreds of very, very, very boring books."
- Simon Raven
(Related: Books, Nothing)
"Our home had many books due principally to the educational interests of my sister and two brothers, all of whom where serious students engaged in professional studies; my sister became a doctor of medicine and my brothers became lawyers."
- Frederick Reines
(Related: Home, Sister, Books, Brothers, Lawyers, Medicine, Students)
"Our libraries are valuable centers of education, learning and enrichment for people of all ages. In recent years, libraries have taken on an increasingly important role. today's libraries are about much more than books."
- Jodi Rell
(Related: Education, People, Books, Learning, Libraries, Today, Years)
"Stephen King in many respects is a wonderful writer. He has made a contribution. People in the future will be able to pick up Stephen King's books and learn a lot about who we were by reading those books."
- Anne Rice
(Related: People, Books, Future, Reading, Will, Writer)
"I have a real soft spot in my heart for librarians and people who care about books."
- Ann Richards
(Related: People, Heart, Books, Care)
"We live in the country, and I have a huge library there. When we go to London for the winter I never know which books to take. I never know what I am going to need. That's the only disadvantage."
- Mordecai Richler
(Related: Books, Country, London, Winter)
"Books have become products, like cereal or perfume or deodorant."
- Alexandra Ripley
(Related: Books)
"Mary Stewart will always be my goddess. I can pick up one of her early books - one I've read a dozen times - and still slide right into the story."
- Nora Roberts
(Related: Books, Right, Will)
"Make sure you meet the right people, people who know that industry and are willing to help you. Do your homework - read books about the industry, talk to people. If you don't know something, ask."
- Anwar Robinson
(Related: People, Books, Help, Right, Talk)
"Frank is such a great visual storyteller, that if you study his artwork you see that his Sin City books are already the best movies never seen on the big screen."
- Robert Rodriguez
(Related: Movies, Books, Sin, Study)
"Movies are not scripts - movies are films; they're not books, they're not the theatre."
- Nicolas Roeg
(Related: Movies, Books, Theatre)
"Books and opinions, no matter from whom they came, if they are in opposition to human rights, are nothing but dead letters."
- Ernestine L. Rose
(Related: Books, Rights, Human rights, Letters, Nothing, Opinions, Opposition)
"Wherever you look there are inspirations, books, literature, paintings, landscapes, everything. Just living is an inspiration."
- Gavin Rossdale
(Related: Inspiration, Books, Literature, Living)
"I prefer the honest jargon of reality to the outright lies of books."
- Jean Rostand
(Related: Books, Jargon, Lies, Reality)
"The books one has written in the past have two surprises in store: one couldn't write them again, and wouldn't want to."
- Jean Rostand
(Related: Books, Past, Surprises, Want)
"I hate books; they only teach us to talk about things we know nothing about."
- Jean Jacques Rousseau
(Related: Books, Hate, Nothing, Talk)
"I hate books; they only teach us to talk about what we don't know."
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau
(Related: Books, Hate, Talk)
"At present, however, I don't think the Net is a very good medium for books, books should really be inexpensive lightweight paperbacks you can bang around."
- Rudy Rucker
(Related: Books, Present)
"I want to warn potential victims. Many of them are women, and many of them are battered women. It's a cause for me. When I look back, though, so many of the books I've written are about wives who just couldn't get away."
- Ann Rule
(Related: Women, Books, Cause, Potential, Victims, Want, Wives)
"Have you ever heard the expression: Walk a mile in my shoes, and then judge me? And write your own books."
- Ann Rule
(Related: Books)
"All of my books now come from readers' ideas."
- Ann Rule
(Related: Ideas, Books, Now)
"Books choose their authors; the act of creation is not entirely a rational and conscious one."
- Salman Rushdie
(Related: Act, Books, Creation)
"What do we, as a nation, care about books? How much do you think we spend altogether on our libraries, public or private, as compared with what we spend on our horses?"
- John Ruskin
(Related: Books, Care, Horses, Libraries, Nation, Public)
"Books are divided into two classes, the books of the hour and the books of all time."
- John Ruskin
(Related: Time, Books)
"All books are divisible into two classes, the books of the hour, and the books of all time."
- John Ruskin
(Related: Time, Books)
"Life being very short, and the quiet hours of it few, we ought to waste none of them in reading valueless books."
- John Ruskin
(Related: Life, Being, Books, Quiet, Reading, Waste)
"It's no secret that in my books I'm trying to make the comic and the serious rub up against each other just as closely and uncomfortably as I can."
- Richard Russo
(Related: Books, Trying)
"My books are elegiac in the sense that they're odes to a nation that even I sometimes think may not exist anymore except in my memory and my imagination."
- Richard Russo
(Related: Imagination, Books, May, Memory, Sense)
"A lot of my characters in all of my books have a self-destructive urge. They'll do precisely the thing that they know is wrong, take a perverse delight in doing the wrong thing."
- Richard Russo
(Related: Books, Delight, Self, Wrong)
"I have to have a character worth caring about. I tend not to start writing books about people I don't have a lot of sympathy for because I'm just going to be with them too long."
- Richard Russo
(Related: Sympathy, People, Character, Books, Caring, Worth, Writing)
"My parents came to visit every two months and brought plenty of books."
- Mathias Rust
(Related: Books, Months, Parents, Visit)
"There have been more books alone written about Hamlet than have been written about the Bible."
- Mark Rylance
(Related: Bible, Books)
"Probably all the books I've ever written have been efforts to define the boundaries of humanity."
- Fred Saberhagen
(Related: Books, Humanity)
"My gut feeling is that paper and ink are going to be with us for a long time yet, and in substantial quantities, though certainly books are now going to be available in other forms."
- Fred Saberhagen
(Related: Time, Books, Feeling, Now)
"The comments I most appreciate come from ordinary readers who've happened on one of my books at some time of stress in their lives, and who actually credit the book with helping them through a bad time. It's happened a few times in forty years."
- Fred Saberhagen
(Related: Time, Books, Credit, Stress, Years)
"I guess if one set of my books was selling like Stephen King's, and the other wasn't selling at all, editors would want me to do the ones that sold like Stephen King's. But they seem to be willing to let me pick what I want to do next."
- Fred Saberhagen
(Related: Selling, Books, Editors, Want)
"There's probably one more story about Bosnia that I'd like to do, because I spent a fair amount of time on the Serb side of the lines, which isn't apparent in the other books."
- Joe Sacco
(Related: Time, Books)
"All of the books in the world contain no more information than is broadcast as video in a single large American city in a single year. Not all bits have equal value."
- Carl Sagan
(Related: American, Books, Information, Value, World)
"The one thing I regret is that I will never have time to read all the books I want to read."
- Francoise Sagan
(Related: Time, Books, Regret, Want, Will)
"Kids just don't read any more. They spend much more time with video games. It's just hard to get kids to read anything. Book sales have dropped dramatically, too. I think 90% of the books are bought only by 5% of the US population."
- Stan Sakai
(Related: Time, Books, Games, Kids, Population, Sales)
"I loved to read and to write, but then something happened. As I made my way through school, I kept getting handed books to read that didn't excite me and didn't even remotely connect to the realities of my life."
- R. A. Salvatore
(Related: Life, Books, School)
"My room for books and study or for sitting and thinking about nothing in particular to see what would happen was at the end of a hall."
- Carl Sandburg
(Related: Books, End, Nothing, Study, Thinking)
"I knew I would read all kinds of books and try to get at what it is that makes good writers good. But I made no promises that I would write books a lot of people would like to read."
- Carl Sandburg
(Related: People, Books, Promises, Writers)
"I had no books at home. I started to frequent a public library in Lisbon. It was there, with no help except curiosity and the will to learn, that my taste for reading developed and was refined."
- Jose Saramago
(Related: Home, Books, Curiosity, Help, Public, Reading, Taste, Will)
"All that I know about my life, it seems, I have learned in books."
- Jean-Paul Sartre
(Related: Life, Books)
"I certainly grew up seeing more movies and television than I read books, but when it came time to do the thing itself you don't have to hire a lot of people to sit down and write a book, so that was the story-telling medium that was available to me."
- John Sayles
(Related: Movies, Time, People, Books, Television)
"Christ himself wrote nothing, but furnished endless material for books and songs of gratitude and praise."
- Philip Schaff
(Related: Gratitude, Books, Christ, Nothing, Praise, Songs)
"What makes cookbooks interesting is to find out about the people and the culture that invented the food."
- Vincent Schiavelli
(Related: Food, People, Culture)
"There are writers in Germany who drink the Absolute like water; and there are books in which even the dogs make references to the Infinite."
- Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
(Related: Books, Dogs, Germany, Infinite, Water, Writers)
"To buy books would be a good thing if we also could buy the time to read them."
- Arthur Schopenhauer
(Related: Time, Books)
"Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them in: but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents."
- Arthur Schopenhauer
(Related: Time, Books, Buying)
"I would like to read some books: I don't have time; I would like to continue working on my autobiography."
- Gunther Schuller
(Related: Time, Autobiography)
"What these books have conclusively proven is that the diffence between men and women is exactly 38 pages."
- Paul Scofield
(Related: Men, Women, Books)
"Most of us... are simply just trying to get through the day. And wait for those times in their life that are markers, that put things into relief. That's why we like movies and books so much."
- Campbell Scott
(Related: Life, Movies, Books, Day, Trying)
"In my books I might hold the mirror to my own face. If others would like to borrow the mirror, they're welcome. The books aren't there to accuse others - merely to raise issues and keep the debates alive."
- John Scott
(Related: Books)
"Here, you can walk into a bookstore and pick up a Bible or Christian literature and learn. Over there, they are lucky if they have one Bible for a whole village."
- Michael Scott
(Related: Christian, Bible, Literature)
"Books are challenging and inspirational to me."
- Amy Sedaris
(Related: Inspirational, Books)
"Conducting! A subject, truly, concerning which much might be written, yet scarcely anything of real importance is to be found in books."
- Anton Seidl
(Related: Books, Importance)
"A bookstore is one of the only pieces of evidence we have that people are still thinking."
- Jerry Seinfeld
(Related: People, Thinking)
"In quoting of books, quote such authors as are usually read; others you may read for your own satisfaction, but not name them."
- John Selden
(Related: Books, May, Name, Satisfaction)
"You cannot write for children They're much too complicated. You can only write books that are of interest to them."
- Maurice Sendak
(Related: Books, Children, Interest)
"I make money using my brains and lose money listening to my heart. But in the long run my books balance pretty well."
- Kate Seredy
(Related: Money, Heart, Balance, Books, Listening, Pretty)
"At each of these northern posts there were interesting experiences in store for me, as one who had read all the books of northern travel and dreamed for half a lifetime of the north; and that was - almost daily meeting with famous men."
- Ernest Thompson Seton
(Related: Men, Travel, Books, Famous, Meeting)
"Preachers in pulpits talked about what a great message is in the book. No matter what you do, somebody always imputes meaning into your books."
- Dr. Seuss
(Related: Books, Meaning)
"I think plays, like books, are endemic. They grow out of the soil of the writer and the place he's writing about. I think, you just can't move them about, you know."
- Peter Shaffer
(Related: Books, Writer, Writing)
"And this, our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything."
- William Shakespeare
(Related: Life, Books, Brooks, Public, Running, Sermons, Trees)
"If 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 Shatner
(Related: Books, Quest, Questions, Tomorrow)
"Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody reads."
- George Bernard Shaw
(Related: Books, Censorship)
"There are too many books I haven't read, too many places I haven't seen, too many memories I haven't kept long enough."
- Irwin Shaw
(Related: Books, Memories)
"My attitudes have changed, but somebody would have to read all my books to find out how they have."
- Irwin Shaw
(Related: Books)
"The part of my writing I find the most rewarding is when people write to me or speak to me in public to tell me how his or her life has been changed by my books."
- Sidney Sheldon
(Related: Life, People, Books, Public, Writing)
"His knowledge of books had in some degree diminished his knowledge of the world."
- William Shenstone
(Related: Knowledge, Books, World)
"I was lucky enough to be given books that weren't top sellers; books that were kind of under the radar."
- Bill Sienkiewicz
(Related: Books)
"People who think my books are autobiographical, which they're not, credit me with having a much better memory than I do. I do, however, have a powerful imagination."
- Curtis Sittenfeld
(Related: Imagination, People, Books, Credit, Memory)
"Probably I, like a lot of people, became a writer in imitation of or in homage to the books I enjoyed. When you're so captivated by something, you think, could I do that? Hmm, let me try."
- Curtis Sittenfeld
(Related: People, Books, Imitation, Writer)
"We shouldn't teach great books; we should teach a love of reading."
- B. F. Skinner
(Related: Love, Books, Reading)
"I think these days an SF connection would be a boost to other books; I'm sure more people have read my two little detective puzzles because of the SF connection."
- John Sladek
(Related: People, Books, Connection)
"It's almost like these games are the modern day comic books, especially when you play Alone in the Dark. There's a real story that goes along with it and a movie seemed like the right kind of transition to make."
- Christian Slater
(Related: Books, Day, Games, Play, Right)
"Well, obviously, as soon as I'd finished the script I read a lot of books on Winston Churchill, and started to gain weight and really prepare emotionally, mentally and physically for the role."
- Christian Slater
(Related: Books, Gain, Weight)
"The experience gathered from books, though often valuable, is but the nature of learning; whereas the experience gained from actual life is one of the nature of wisdom."
- Samuel Smiles
(Related: Experience, Life, Nature, Wisdom, Books, Learning)
"Books are a finer world within the world."
- Alexander Smith
(Related: Books, World)
"You know, he would go and look at different funny books because he wanted his character to be different and make different faces. I saw a funny book in his room and it looked like the same character he was playing. It was about a duck."
- Bubba Smith
(Related: Funny, Character, Books, Faces)
"I have always read all the latest cookery books and magazines, from all over the world."
- Delia Smith
(Related: Books, Cookery, World)
"The newest books are those that never grow old."
- Logan P. Smith
(Related: Books, Old)
"Most people - and particularly people whose lives have nothing to do with books at all - are intrigued by the idea that somebody wants to listen to them and get it right."
- Martin C. Smith
(Related: People, Idea, Books, Nothing, Right)
"I never thought I would just be doing Arkady books."
- Martin C. Smith
(Related: Thought, Books)
"The best way to obtain truth and wisdom is not to ask from books, but to go to God in prayer, and obtain divine teaching."
- Joseph Smith, Jr.
(Related: Wisdom, God, Truth, Books, Prayer, Teaching)
"There's a series of children's books called A Series of Unfortunate Events, which is like an incredibly dark version of Roald Dahl. I hope to start directing it."
- Barry Sonnenfeld
(Related: Hope, Books, Children, Events)
"Books are funny little portable pieces of thought."
- Susan Sontag
(Related: Funny, Thought, Books)
"Most of my books have caused distribution and printing problems in the past."
- Peter Sotos
(Related: Books, Past, Printing, Problems)
"I don't publish the books to make money, not at all."
- Peter Sotos
(Related: Money, Books)
"And books that were published in much larger numbers than Selfish, Little are hard to find. And publishers who wanted to publish my last few works have them stuck in limbo while new distribution ideas and legal issues and fears are blown away."
- Peter Sotos
(Related: Legal, Ideas, Books, Numbers)
"I don't sell enough books to pay for the lawyers, however. And these various problems finally became too much."
- Peter Sotos
(Related: Books, Lawyers, Problems)
"Books and all forms of writing are terror to those who wish to suppress the truth."
- Wole Soyinka
(Related: Truth, Books, Terror, Writing)
"Very conscious of the fact that an effort was being made to destroy my mind, because I was deprived of books, deprived of any means of writing, deprived of human companionship. You never know how much you need it until you're deprived of it."
- Wole Soyinka
(Related: Being, Books, Companionship, Effort, Fact, Mind, Writing)
"I read over a hundred books a year and have done so since I was fifteen years old, and every book I've read has taught me something."
- Nicholas Sparks
(Related: Books, Old, Years)
"Focus in on the genre you want to write, and read books in that genre. A LOT of books by a variety of authors. And read with questions in your mind."
- Nicholas Sparks
(Related: Books, Focus, Mind, Questions, Variety, Want)
"There's always pressure, a great deal of pressure, when writing, since my first books were so successful."
- Nicholas Sparks
(Related: Successful, Books, First, Pressure, Writing)
"Our mission, is to publish books on social and cultural issues, including books on law related to those areas. We are not looking for books on, say, tax policy, etc."
- Thomas Spence
(Related: Policy, Books, Tax, Law, Mission)
"The experience of the race shows that we get our most important education not through books but through our work. We are developed by our daily task, or else demoralized by it, as by nothing else."
- Anna Garlin Spencer
(Related: Education, Experience, Work, Books, Nothing, Race)
"Oh yeah, I was one of the first guys writing comic books, I wrote Captain America, with guys like Stan Lee, who became famous later on with Marvel Comics."
- Mickey Spillane
(Related: America, Books, Famous, First, Writing)
"Hemingway hated me. I sold 200 million books, and he didn't. Of course most of mine sold for 25 cents, but still... you look at all this stuff with a grain of salt."
- Mickey Spillane
(Related: Books)
"I dont like any of them, because they don't read the books. In Kiss Me Deadly my story is better than his story. Anthony Quinn played in The Lond Wait and he didn't read the book either."
- Mickey Spillane
(Related: Kiss, Books)
"I read all the time... I read a lot of history books."
- Mickey Spillane
(Related: History, Time, Books)
"But then I go through long periods where I don't listen to things, usually when I'm working. In between the records and in between the writing I suck up books and music and movies and anything I can find."
- Bruce Springsteen
(Related: Movies, Music, Books, Writing)
"Surely the immutable laws of the universe can teach more impressive and exalted lessons than the holy books of all the religions on earth."
- Elizabeth Cady Stanton
(Related: Books, Earth, Laws, Universe)
"We found nothing grand in the history of the Jews nor in the morals inculcated in the Pentateuch. I know of no other books that so fully teach the subjection and degradation of woman."
- Elizabeth Cady Stanton
(Related: History, Books, Morals, Nothing, Woman)
"To tell the truth, I don't read children's books. I'm an adult. I just write them."
- William Steig
(Related: Truth, Books, Children)
"A couple of weeks after that, Zebra Books phoned with an offer, and I accepted."
- George Stephen
(Related: Books)
"So, in effect, my first sale was actually two books."
- George Stephen
(Related: Books, Effect, First)
"When I decided to take writing seriously, I did a lot of reading and analyzing of the books I liked, and came up with what I thought were pretty sound plotting and structure basics."
- George Stephen
(Related: Thought, Books, Pretty, Reading, Sound, Writing)
"I've really written my books for my husband and our family. They've brought us closer together by allowing us to discuss things that were unspoken for so long."
- Pamela Stephenson
(Related: Family, HusbBooks)
"The most accomplished way of using books is to serve them as some people do lords; learn their titles and then brag of their acquaintance."
- Laurence Sterne
(Related: People, Acquaintance, Books, Titles)
"Blake has always been a favorite, the lyrics, not so much the prophetic books, but I suppose Yeats influenced me more as a young poet, and the American, Robert Frost."
- Anne Stevenson
(Related: American, Books, Favorite)
"Books are good enough in their own way, but they are a poor substitute for life."
- Robert Louis Stevenson
(Related: Life, Books, Poor)
"There are several books that I have-the Physics of Star Trek, Star Trek and Business, there are manuals on command style and countless scholarly papers that have been written about the significance of Next Generation."
- Patrick Stewart
(Related: Business, Books, Physics, Style)
"I don't read magazines much, and I have an awful time with books."
- Payne Stewart
(Related: Time, Books)
"Read. Read. Read. Just don't read one type of book. Read different books by various authors so that you develop different styles."
- R. L. Stine
(Related: Books)
"I used to get a haircut every Saturday so I would never miss any of the comic books. I had practically no hair when I was a kid!"
- R. L. Stine
(Related: Books, Hair)
"If I'm home with no chore at hand, and a package of books has come, the television set and the chess board and the unanswered mail will have to manage without me if one of the books is a detective story."
- Rex Stout
(Related: Home, Books, Chess, Mail, Television, Will)
"Television and film are our libraries now. Our history books."
- David Strathairn
(Related: History, Books, Film, Libraries, Now, Television)
"There were a lot of adventure books for boys, historical novels by Kenneth Roberts, and whatever mystery novels the alarmed librarian imagined might not corrupt an eager but innocent youth."
- Peter Straub
(Related: Adventure, Books, Boys, Mystery, Youth)
"These days, there are a great many books about childhood trauma and its effects, but at the time all the experts agreed that one should forget about it as quickly as possible and pick up where you left off."
- Peter Straub
(Related: Time, Books, Childhood, Experts, Forget)
"Doesn't anyone here think this sounds like a vision of hell? While we are all competing or dying, when will there be time for sex or music or books? Stop the world, I want to get off."
- Howard Stringer
(Related: Music, Time, Sex, Vision, Books, Dying, Hell, Want, Will, World)
"I have a private press. I'm a book artist. I publish books of other authors and artists. I do the illustrating. I set the type. I print it myself on my press. I do everything but bind it."
- Gloria Stuart
(Related: Artist, Artists, Books, Press)
"All I'm asking for is the law that's been on the books for the last 33 years, no public funding for abortion. We are both saying the same thing, pro-life, pro-choice. Let's find the language that works for both of us so we can pass health care."
- Bart Stupak
(Related: Health, Abortion, Books, Care, Language, Law, Public, Saying, Years)
"Every child is going to grow up. You can see it happen in the books: They get older and older and belong to themselves to a greater and greater extent."
- Jock Sturges
"Most books, like their authors, are born to die; of only a few books can it be said that death has no dominion over them; they live, and their influence lives forever."
- William Styron
(Related: Death, Books, Influence)
"Books, the children of the brain."
- Jonathan Swift
(Related: Books, Children)
"I'm obsessed with books."
- David Sylvian
(Related: Books)
"My books are about losers, about people who've lost their way and are engaged in a search."
- Antonio Tabucchi
(Related: People, Books)
"You write a book and you hope somebody will go out and pay $24.95 for what you've just said. I think books were my salvation. Books saved me from being miserable."
- Amy Tan
(Related: Hope, Being, Books, Salvation, Will)
"I read a book a day when I was a kid. My family was not literary; we did not have any books in the house."
- Amy Tan
(Related: Family, Books, Day, Literary)
"The books I loved in childhood - the first loves - I've read so often that I've internalized them in some really essential way: they are more inside me now than out."
- Donna Tartt
(Related: Books, Childhood, First, Now)
"My heart goes out to victims and survivors of the Hurricane Katrina tragedy and to their families. This disaster will go down in history books as one of the largest natural disasters in U.S. history."
- Ellen Tauscher
(Related: History, Heart, Books, Disaster, Disasters, Tragedy, Victims, Will)
"I had to learn chord shapes. I bought books with chord charts. I used to listen to all kinds of pop music."
- Mick Taylor
(Related: Music, Books)
"Who ever converses among old books will be hard to please among the new."
- William Temple
(Related: Books, Old, Will)
"Books, like proverbs, receive their chief value from the stamp and esteem of ages through which they passed."
- William Temple
(Related: Books, Value)
"All the other books ask, 'What's it like?' What was World War II like for the young kid at Normandy, or what is work like for a woman having a job for the first time in her life? What's it like to be black or white?"
- Studs Terkel
(Related: Time, War, Work, Life, Books, First, Job, Woman, World, World war)
"I've always felt, in all my books, that there's a deep decency in the American people and a native intelligence - providing they have the facts, providing they have the information."
- Studs Terkel
(Related: Intelligence, People, American, Books, Decency, Deep, Facts, Information)
"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!"
- William Makepeace Thackeray
(Related: History, Thoughts, Books)
"I'd only read a bit of the first book. And I just knew about all the media furor over it. But I'd not read books 2 or 3. I'd just read a bit of it. And I'd seen the films."
- David Thewlis
(Related: Books, First, Media)
"The White House used to belong to the American people. At least that's what I learned from history books and from covering every president starting with John F. Kennedy."
- Helen Thomas
(Related: History, People, American, Books, President)
"I find that balancing my life with my work with the kids at St. Jude, working on books, working on my career as an actor and taking time out for my husband and family help to cushion a lot of the blows."
- Marlo Thomas
(Related: Family, Life, Time, Work, HusbActor, Books, Career, Help, Kids)
"Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all."
- Henry David Thoreau
(Related: Books, Chance, First, May)
"Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations."
- Henry David Thoreau
(Related: Wealth, Books, Generations, Inheritance, Nations, World)
"Books can only reveal us to ourselves, and as often as they do us this service we lay them aside."
- Henry David Thoreau
(Related: Books, Service)
"Books are to be distinguished by the grandeur of their topics even more than by the manner in which they are treated."
- Henry David Thoreau
(Related: Books)
"If you read a lot of books you are considered well read. But if you watch a lot of TV, you're not considered well viewed."
- Lily Tomlin
(Related: Books)
"Youth is a time when we find the books we give up but do not get over."
- Lionel Trilling
(Related: Time, Books, Youth)
"I'm no different from anybody else. If I don't have a card, I can't check out these books."
- Bess Truman
(Related: Books)
"Upon books the collective education of the race depends; they are the sole instruments of registering, perpetuating and transmitting thought."
- Harry S. Truman
(Related: Education, Thought, Books, Race)
"Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill."
- Barbara Tuchman
(Related: History, Science, Thought, Civilization, Books, Dumb, Literature)
"Books are humanity in print."
- Barbara Tuchman
(Related: Books, Humanity)
"Normally, I could hit hard enough, as anyone who studied my fights might have known. But the impression was that I was essentially defensive, the very reverse of a killer, the prize fighter who read books, even Shakespeare."
- Gene Tunney
(Related: Impression, Books, Shakespeare)
"That text-books be permitted in Catholic schools such as will not offend the religious views of the minority, and which from an educational standpoint shall be satisfactory to the advisory board."
- Charles Tupper
(Related: Minority, Religious, Schools, Will)
"The one thing I would like more credit for is being part of a movement which involves recognising the importance of plot and asserting that books of literary worth could be written that had plots."
- Scott Turow
(Related: Being, Books, Credit, Importance, Literary, Worth)
"Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint."
- Mark Twain
(Related: Health, Books, May, Reading)
"Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life."
- Mark Twain
(Related: Life, Books, Friends)
"The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them."
- Mark Twain
(Related: Books, Man)
"My books are like water; those of the great geniuses are wine. (Fortunately) everybody drinks water."
- Mark Twain
(Related: Books, Drinks, Water, Wine)
"You know, it's about getting out there and having a good time. Not about worrying - all these young books for women are like I'm 29 with a closet full of Prada shoes and I can't get a date. Come on."
- Aisha Tyler
(Related: Women, Time, Books)
"When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff."
- Mike Tyson
(Related: People, Books, Deep, Prison)
"Mr. Arthur Ashe, he was good. I read some of his books. He knew about everything, but he was real quiet and didn't talk much. I never met him."
- Mike Tyson
(Related: Books, Quiet, Talk)
"Study how water flows in a valley stream, smoothly and freely between the rocks. Also learn from holy books and wise people. Everything - even mountains, rivers, plants and trees - should be your teacher."
- Morihei Ueshiba
(Related: People, Books, Mountains, Plants, Rivers, Study, Trees, Water)
"It's just different discipline, just doing the voice over. I guess I've done about 5 or 6 audio books in the past and I do the animated voice for a show called Fatherhood on Nickelodeon."
- Blair Underwood
(Related: Discipline, Books, Past, Voice)
"I went to work in an office and learned, among other lessons, to do things I did not care for, and to do them well. Before I left this office, two of my books had already been published."
- Sigrid Undset
(Related: Work, Books, Care, Office)
"Books, I don't know what you see in them. I can understand a person reading them, but I can't for the life of me see why people have to write them."
- Peter Ustinov
(Related: Life, People, Books, Reading)
"I don't take advances for my books."
- Andrew Vachss
(Related: Books)
"I don't sign contracts for my books."
- Andrew Vachss
(Related: Books)
"Books have the same enemies as people: fire, humidity, animals, weather, and their own content."
- Paul Valery
(Related: Animals, Books, Content, Enemies, Fire, Weather)
"I'm a collecting maniac and I buy a lot of books and records. I have over thousand cds."
- Ville Valo
(Related: Books)
"I do read books. I suppose it's more or less the same thing, but at least I'm alone and I'm an individual. I can stop anytime I want, which I frequently do."
- Jack Vance
(Related: Books, Want)
"But, for instance, when I was awfully young, I read all the Oz books. They were an enormous influence on me."
- Jack Vance
(Related: Books, Influence)
"I like the idea of making big budget films with a heart. I like graphic novels more than comic books."
- Matthew Vaughn
(Related: Heart, Idea, Books)
"With a few flowers in my garden, half a dozen pictures and some books, I live without envy."
- Lope de Vega
(Related: Books, Envy, Flowers, Garden)
"That is sad until one recalls how many bad books the world may yet be spared because of the busyness of writers."
- Gore Vidal
(Related: Books, Busyness, May, World, Writers)
"Today's public figures can no longer write their own speeches or books, and there is some evidence that they can't read them either."
- Gore Vidal
(Related: Books, Public, Today)
"The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbours, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all."
- Voltaire
(Related: Home, Books, Fire, Property)
"The multitude of books is making us ignorant."
- Voltaire
(Related: Books)
"I know many books which have bored their readers, but I know of none which has done real evil."
- Voltaire
(Related: Books, Evil)
"I read numerous books - loads in fact - and, as I always do when recording a historical project, immersed myself into the subject matter. I spent many hours at Henry's old homes, such as Hampton Court, and visiting the Tower of London. I read no other books during that period."
- Rick Wakeman
(Related: Books, Court, Fact, London, Old, Project)
"One, I have a wonderful publisher, Black Sparrow Press; as long as they exist, they will keep me in print. And they claim they sell very respectable numbers of my books, so I guess, and it's true, every place I go, my books are in libraries and on bookshelves."
- Diane Wakoski
(Related: Books, Libraries, Numbers, Press, Will)
"I'm calling my book series the 'with God series.' And this next 'with God' book is Friendship with God, which comes out in November. This books challenges us to bring about the end of 'better' on this planet."
- Neale Donald Walsch
(Related: Friendship, God, Books)
"The new spirituality will bring about what I'm calling the 'end of better.' And that is in fact what is called for in the next of the series of books that I've been writing."
- Neale Donald Walsch
(Related: Books, Fact, Spirituality, Will, Writing)
"A harsh reality of newspaper editing is that the deadlines don't allow for the polish that you expect in books or even magazines."
- Bill Walsh
(Related: Books, Reality)
"The other thing is this industry has decided it only has one market. Unlike any other industry in the world, unlike film or books or sports even, this industry has decided it has only one market and that's 14 year old boys."
- Rob Walton
(Related: Sports, Books, Boys, Film, Old, World)
"I enjoy adapting my own work, or anybody's work. I like to adapt books."
- Joseph Wambaugh
(Related: Work, Books)
"I think the kind of unexpected I really love is when you open books and the actual way of writing is different and interesting. Like reading Virginia Woolf for the first time or Lawrence Durrell for the first time."
- Lalla Ward
(Related: Love, Time, Books, First, Open, Reading, Writing)
"But a girl of seventeen is not always thinking of books, especially in the Oxford summer term."
- Mary A. Ward
(Related: Books, Summer, Thinking)
"A life spent largely among books, and in the exercise of a literary profession, has very obvious drawbacks, as a subject-matter, when one comes to write about it."
- Mary A. Ward
(Related: Life, Books, Exercise, Literary, Obvious, Profession)
"Mostly, I was only interested in television as a kid, and the majority of reading material I collected was an adjunct to that central concern, comic books and magazines included."
- Chris Ware
(Related: Books, Concern, Majority, Reading, Television)
"I always used to look at books and wonder how anybody could come up with so many words. But my divorce and then falling in love with somebody else has released in me an ability to write in other ways apart from songs."
- Roger Waters
(Related: Love, Ability, Books, Divorce, Songs, Wonder, Words)
"I grew up without a television. It meant that I read lots of books and entertained myself."
- Emily Watson
(Related: Books, Television)
"I find myself gravitating towards drama. It interests me. In the books I read, the paintings I like, it's always the darker stuff."
- Naomi Watts
(Related: Books, Drama)
"Professional reviewers read so many bad books in the course of duty that they get an unhealthy craving for arresting phrases."
- Evelyn Waugh
(Related: Books, Duty)
"I was a very sickly kid. While I was in the hospital at age 7, my Dad brought me a stack of comic books to keep me occupied. I was hooked."
- Len Wein
(Related: Age, Dad, Books)
"You can read a dozen different textbooks or how-to manuals that will tell you the basic rules of what makes a story - a beginning, a middle, and an end."
- Len Wein
(Related: Beginning, End, Rules, Will)
"In Endless Quest books, you start the plot, and the character has to make choices. Then you have to write one choice over here, one choice over there. The author might get one or two choices out."
- Margaret Weis
(Related: Character, Books, Choice, Choices, Quest)
"The revision of the books of Judges, Samuel, and Kings, undertaken towards the end of the Babylonian exile, a revision much more thorough than is commonly assumed, condemns as heretical the whole age of the Kings."
- Julius Wellhausen
(Related: Age, Books, End, Judges, Kings)
"It is the interest one takes in books that makes a library. And if a library have interest it is; if not, it isn't."
- Carolyn Wells
(Related: Books, Interest)
"I'd always liked to read, but when I picked up books I wasn't getting the same kind of excitement from them that I was from going out clubbing. I wanted to get the same kind of feel."
- Irvine Welsh
(Related: Books, Excitement)
"It's different in Scotland. People who come to readings are more interested in literature as such, but the readership in general is really quite diverse. It's a cliche, but it's said that people who read my books don't read any other books, and you do get that element."
- Irvine Welsh
(Related: People, Books, Literature, Scotland)
"Basically, particularly in Britain, it's a hegemonic thing that people who write tend to come from the leisure classes. They can afford the time and the books."
- Irvine Welsh
(Related: Time, People, Books, Leisure)
"It 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 of themselves like grass."
- Eudora Welty
(Related: People, Books, Wonders)
"Quite simply, federal laws already on the books aimed at stopping the flow of illegal immigration must be enforced. Furthermore, states must be given the resources necessary to confront the problem, which includes strengthening the border patrol."
- Allen West
(Related: Books, Laws, states)
"I write books to find out about things."
- Rebecca West
(Related: Books)
"Books don't exist unless you read them. And it's a two way process - you write the book as you read it and you fill in the gaps. You discover it and you put the marks together and without you doing it they're just marks."
- Samuel West
(Related: Books)
"When I did start writing books, I didn't realize it, but the girls that grew up watching the show became moms."
- Lisa Whelchel
(Related: Books, Girls, Writing)
"I have written about 10 books, all just practical encouragement for moms."
- Lisa Whelchel
(Related: Books, Encouragement)
"The real war will never get in the books."
- Walt Whitman
(Related: War, Books, Will)
"A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books."
- Walt Whitman
(Related: Books, Metaphysics)
"I think God destined that I play. I think it's all in the books already."
- Michelle Wie
(Related: God, Books, Play)
"The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame."
- Oscar Wilde
(Related: Books, Shame, World)
"There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written."
- Oscar Wilde
(Related: Books)
"Books had instant replay long before televised sports."
- Bern Williams
(Related: Sports, Books)
"Books were my pass to personal freedom. I learned to read at age three, and soon discovered there was a whole world to conquer that went beyond our farm in Mississippi."
- Oprah Winfrey
(Related: Age, Books, Freedom, World)
"Producing came about because I never wanted to be in one of those books, Where Are They Now?"
- Henry Winkler
(Related: Books, Now)
"A collection of good books, with a soul to it in the shape of a librarian, becomes a vitalized power among the impulses by which the world goes on to improvement."
- Justin Winsor
(Related: Power, Soul, Books, Improvement, Impulses, World)
"Nowadays I construct my books as if they're film scripts."
- Leon de Winter
(Related: Books, Film)