505 Unforgettable Book Quotes Every Reader Will Love

Life itself is a quotation. — Jorge Luis Borges

Believe everything you read — Kurt Cobain

A noble book! all men’s book! — Thomas Carlyle

Books + friendship = book club — Kristin Hannah

Don’t judge a book by its cover — George Eliot

Time is a river, and books are boats. — Dan Brown

The best fashion accessory is a book. — Vivienne Westwood

College isn’t the place to go for ideas. — Helen Keller

I am not young enough to know everything. — James M. Barrie

Work is the curse of the drinking classes. — Oscar Wilde

There’s more learning than is taught in books. — Lady Gregory

Think before you speak. Read before you think. — Fran Lebowitz

You cannot open a book without learning something. — Confucius

You may be real, but you’re still stuck in a book. — Jodi Picoult

I’m writing a book. I’ve got the page numbers done. — Steven Wright

True courage is in facing danger when you are afraid. — L. Frank Baum

Health, south wind, books, old trees, a boat, a friend. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Bible is one of the most genocidal books in history. — Noam Chomsky

Some people read so little they have rickets of the mind. — Jim Rohn

“We are drowning in information

but starved for knowledge.” — John Naisbitt

Wisdom is not wisdom when it is derived from books alone. — Horace

Don’t judge a book by its cover ’til you’ve read the book. — Jamie Lee Curtis

One half who graduate from college never read another book. — G. M. Trevelyan

I strongly believe that good books are the best home accessory. — Rachel Nichols

My mother had a book club that would dissolve into opening wine. — Tim Federle

Books are no more threatened by Kindle than stairs by elevators. — Stephen Fry

Before history is written down in books, it is written in courage. — George W. Bush

Be thankful we’re not getting all the government we’re paying for. — Will Rogers

With wisdom fraught; not such as books, but such as practice taught. — Edmund Waller

I give each book however long it needs to be the best I can make it. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

I have more ideas than I’ll ever be able to write in five lifetimes. — Rick Riordan

The Bible is worth all the other books which have ever been printed. — Patrick Henry

You don’t have to believe in God, but you should believe in The Book. — Paul Erdos

It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations. — Winston Churchill

With the history of us, a book wouldn’t necessarily be the best thing. — Keisha Buchanan

Tomorrow is the first blank page of a 365-page book. Write a good one. — Brad Paisley

Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written. — Henry David Thoreau

Isn’t that interesting. All the book clubs. I’ve never belonged to one. — Judy Blume

The Bible was not given for our information but for our transformation. — Dwight L. Moody

The Bible is as much a book of religion with me as the Gita and the Koran. — Mahatma Gandhi

Book clubs are the best thing that has happened to the world of publishing. — Adriana Trigiani

Nobody ever outgrows Scripture; the book widens and deepens with our years. — Charles Spurgeon

“This book (the Bible) is not hard to understand.

  It’s just hard to swallow.” — Steve Lawson

Habent sua fata libelli et balli [Books and bullets have their own destinies] — Ernst Junger

I always wanted to be a designer. I read books on fashion from the age of 12. — Alexander McQueen

The book has never been written which is to be accepted without any allowance. — Henry David Thoreau

O, let my books be then the eloquence and dumb presages of my speaking breast. — William Shakespeare

It isn’t what the book costs. It’s what it will cost you if you don’t read it. — Jim Rohn

I read books like mad, but I am careful to to let anything I read influence me. — Michael Caine

This is a short book because most books about writing are filled with bullshit. — Stephen King

I don’t think anyone should write their autobiography until after they’re dead. — Samuel Goldwyn

Wonder is the beginning of wisdom in learning from books as well as from nature. — Mortimer Adler

It often requires more courage to read some books than it does to fight a battle. — Sutton E. Griggs

The first and almost the only Book deserving of universal attention is the Bible. — John Quincy Adams

With the history of Moses no book in the world, in point of antiquity, can contend. — John Tillotson

One of the great things about books is sometimes there are some fantastic pictures. — George W. Bush

I would not dare so dishonor my Creator’s name by attaching it to this filthy book. — Thomas Paine

The books all say that barracuda rarely eat people, but very few barracuda can read. — Dave Barry

I imagine that no art has ever been learned from books. fly-fishing is no exception. — G. E. M. Skues

I believe in communication; books communicate ideas and make bridges between people. — Jeanette Winterson

The images from the book you make in your head are always going to be the best images. — Rick Riordan

There is no other book so various as the Bible, nor one so full of concentrated wisdom. — Herbert Hoover

What’s the point of having a book club if you don’t get to eat brownies and drink wine? — Jami Attenberg

I was really bummed when I got to the last one of Tony Hillerman Navajo detective books. — Dave Barry

Beware you be not swallowed up in books! An ounce of love is worth a pound of knowledge. — John Wesley

The New Testament is the very best book that ever was or ever will be known in the world. — Charles Dickens

my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways” from the book of Isaiah — Mitch Albom

The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause. — Mark Twain

The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries. — Rene Descartes

He who repeats what he does not understand is no better than an ass that is loaded with books. — Khalil Gibran

The Holy Book of the living God suffers more from its exponents today than from its opponents. — Leonard Ravenhill

Love and Loyalty, run deeper than blood.” Love that quote even though I haven’t read the book. — Richelle Mead

The Bible is a book that has been read more and examined less than any book that ever existed. — Thomas Paine

I have examined all religions, and the result is that the Bible is the best book in the world. — John Adams

I picked up this book called Blue Mountain, supposed to be a really good book on the Civil War. — Max Lucado

I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me. — Charles Darwin

It is the vice of scholars to suppose that there is no knowledge in the world but that of books. — William Hazlitt

The Bible is no mere book, but a Living Creature, with a power that conquers all that oppose it. — Napoleon Bonaparte

A man only learns by two things; one is reading and the other is association with smarter people. — Will Rogers

When one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language. — John Donne

All screenwriting books are bullshit, all. Watch movies, read screenplays. Let them be your guide. — Brian Koppelman

The Bible is the most thought suggesting book in the world. No other deals with such grand themes. — Herrick Johnson

Some Day Someone is going to pick up this book (The Bible) and believe it, and put us all to shame. — Leonard Ravenhill

When you read the sacred Scriptures, or any other book, never think how you read, but what you read. — John Philip Kemble

If a man is known by the company he keeps, so also his character is reflected in the books he reads. — J. Oswald Sanders

Therefore we say that a lying Spirit has been in the mouth of the writers of the books of the Bible. — Thomas Paine

Donald Trump has defied practically every playbook or blue book technique in dispatching an opponent. — Rush Limbaugh

England has two books, the Bible and Shakespeare. England made Shakespeare,but the Bible made England. — Victor Hugo

The only two kinds of books could earn an American writer a living are cookbooks and detective novels. — Rex Stout

I cannot remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Either god should have written a book to fit my brain, or he should have made my brain to fit his book. — Robert Green Ingersoll

It is so human a book that I don’t see how belief in its divine authority can survive the reading of it. — William James

Following takes why. Transactions take what. It has to be real. It has to be the same for writing a book. — Simon Sinek

When you read God’s Word, you must constantly be saying to yourself, “It is talking to me, and about me”. — Soren Kierkegaard

I am what libraries and librarians have made me, with little assistance from a professor of Greek and poets — Heraclitus

The best evidence of the Bible’s being the word of God is to be found between its covers. It proves itself. — Charles Hodge

We wanted the book [Paper Girls] to feel to evoke the ’80s, but not necessarily feel that it was drawn then. — Cliff Chiang

Other books we may read and criticise. To the Scriptures we must bow the entire soul, with all its faculties. — Edward Norris Kirk

…next to the pleasure of reading a favourite fishing book comes that of persuading a friend to read it too. — Arthur Ransome

It is a miracle how God has so long preserved His Book! How great and glorious it is to have the Word of God! — Martin Luther

I call that [Book of Job], apart from all theories about it, one of the grandest things ever written with pen. — Thomas Carlyle

No story is the same to us after a lapse of time; or rather we who read it are no longer the same interpreters. — George Eliot

If this book has made any point clear, I hope it’s that things don’t have to be real to be true. Or vice versa. — Grant Morrison

I have this book club, and we don’t read one book; we offer up a few suggestions and create a library over time. — Claire Danes

As an actor, the biggest compliment you can get, in my book is for someone to believe that you’re the character. — Matt LeBlanc

I should think that an ordinary copy of the King James version would have been good enough for those Congressmen. — Calvin Coolidge

Im very comfortable with tweeting, I have a very active author Facebook page, I Skype book clubs all over the world. — Cathy Marie Buchanan

Reading is important, because if you can read, you can learn anything about everything and everything about anything. — Tomie dePaola

There are treasures in books that all the money in the world cannot buy, but the poorest laborer can have for nothing. — Robert Green Ingersoll

The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug. — Mark Twain

Magic has universal appeal. I don’t believe in magic in the way that I describe in my books, but I’d love it to be real. — J. K. Rowling

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

Like my father, I am very impatient. I have a strong bullshit detector. I may finish one book in twenty that I have started. — John Fante

In ordinary detective novels you never see the consequences of what happens in a story in the next book. That you do in mine. — Steig Larsson

There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book and the tired man who wants a book to read. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Books are a better investment in our future than bullets. Books, not bullets, will pave the path towards peace and prosperity. — Malala Yousafzai

We have never been so rich in books. But there has never been a generation when there is so much twaddle in print for children. — Charlotte Mason

W. C. Fields, a lifetime agnostic, was discovered reading a Bible on his deathbed. ”I’m looking for a loop-hole,” he explained. — W. C. Fields

Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten. — Neil Gaiman

Although Kurt Vonnegut may not be considered a humor writer, ‘Breakfast of Champions’ is one of the funniest books I’ve ever read. — Justin Halpern

One of these days some simple soul will pick up the Book of God, read it, and believe it. Then the rest of us will be embarrassed. — Leonard Ravenhill

Getting out of the hospital is a lot like resigning from a book club. You’re not out of it until the computer says you’re out of it. — Erma Bombeck

It is better to be the builder of our own name than to be indebted by descent for the proudest gifts known to the books of heraldry. — Hosea Ballou

The vital accessories to my work are my reference books, such as the complete Shakespeare and a prayer book, and a large refuse bin. — Beryl Bainbridge

Some people learn from books, some listen to the advice of others, some learn from mistakes. I fit into the last category. So sue me. — Janet Evanovich

Unprovided with original learning, unformed in the habits of thinking, unskilled in the arts of composition, I resolved to write a book. — Edward Gibbon

The book to read is not the one which thinks for you, but the one which makes you think. No book in the world equals the Bible for that. — Harper Lee

I remain a fan of my friend Bret Easton Ellis’s ‘American Psycho.’ I think as a book about New York in the ’80s it was pretty excellent. — Jay McInerney

There are only two kinds of books which you can write and be pretty sure you’re going to make a living — cook books and detective stories. — Rex Stout

We are indebted to the Book of books (Bible) for our national ideals and institution. Their preservation rests in adhering to it’s precepts. — Herbert Hoover

It is not at all incredible, that a book which has been so long in the possession of mankind should contain many truths as yet undiscovered. — Joseph Butler

I really never even seriously considered a book but a few years ago someone approached me out of the blue and I said I would think about it. — Mark McNairy

Scriptures – The sacred books of our holy religion, as distinguished from the false and profane writings on which all other faiths are based. — Ambrose Bierce

If there’s a therapist who wants a writing project, I think there’s a need for a book about how the culture affects the mental health of boys. — Mary Pipher

I was born under the Blue Ridge, and under that side which is blue in the evening light, in a wild land of game and forest and rushing waters. — Winston Churchill

The Bible is not my book and Christianity is not my religion. I could never give assent to the long complicated statements of Christian dogma. — Abraham Lincoln

Let us read the Bible without the ill-fitting colored spectacles of theology, just as we read other books, using our judgment and reason. . . . — Luther Burbank

Revelation: a famous book in which St. John the Divine concealed all that he knew. The revealing is done by the commentators, who know nothing. — Ambrose Bierce

Read! Read something every day. Discipline yourself to a regular schedule of reading. In fifteen minutes a day you can read twenty books a year. — Wilferd Peterson

There is even – as with no other game – a fascinating detective literature, a wry commentary on the human comedy, implicit in the book of rules. — Alistair Cooke

The Harlem of my books was never meant to be real; I never called it real; I just wanted to take it away from the white man if only in my books. — Chester Himes

I believe the Bible is the best gift God has ever given to man. All the good from The Savior of the world is communicated to us through this Book. — Abraham Lincoln

This editor is a critic. He has pulled out his carving-knife and his tomahawk and is starting after a book which he is going to have for breakfast. — Mark Twain

When you are reading a book in a dark room, and come to a difficult part, you take it to a window to get more light. So take your Bibles to Christ. — Robert Murray M’Cheyne

Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry. When we consider a book, we mustn’t ask ourselves what it says but what it means. — Umberto Eco

One old lady who wants her head lifted wouldn’t be so bad, but you multiply her two hundred and fifty thousand times and what you get is a book club. — Flannery O’Connor

What has happened to us has happened to everyone or only to us; if to everyone, then it’s no novelty, and if only to us, then it won’t be understood. — Fernando Pessoa

Every book has some real life in it. I was never pursued by an evil twin clone, but everything else in MR. MURDER was pretty much out of my own life. — Dean Koontz

We’re all in the end-of-our-life book club, whether we acknowledge it or not; each book we read may well be the last, each conversation the final one. — Will Schwalbe

I draw rainbows whenever I see them, with my black ink pen. When I have collected enough, I thought I might make a book called Black-and-White Rainbows. — Jason Polan

The Bible is the one Book to which any thoughtful man may go with any honest question of life or destiny and find the answer of God by honest searching. — John Ruskin

I wrote my children’s book because I believe there are children that are hurting and may need to know that there is love out there for them- God’s love. — Janine Turner

I love quotations because it is a joy to find thoughts one might have, beautifully expressed with much authority by someone recognized wiser than oneself. — Marlene Dietrich

The world, in its sheer exuberance of kindness, will try to bury the poet with warm and lovely human trivialities. It will even ask him to autograph books. — Christopher Morley

A hope of something beyond our place and time. This is what books – the best books – give us: a lifeline, a reason to believe, a way to breathe more freely. — Blake Morrison

Start locally and build. Start small and grow. Start in your house, then move to your school, your book club, your gym, your church, your temple, your city. — Laurie David

During the ’80s I wrote Memoirs from the Women’s Prison. This is one of my most important books. It came out in Arabic in ’83. About my experience in prison. — Nawal El Saadawi

…She was, obviously, one of those women whose polished words may reflect a book club or bridge club, or any other deadly conventionality, but never her soul. — Vladimir Nabokov

The Bible is still loved by millions, read by millions, and studied by millions. It remains the most published and most read book in the world of literature. — Bernard Ramm

In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin, without even opening them. — Mark Twain

I first came out against Castro in June 1968, fifteen months after my book had been published, and you cannot imagine how quickly a void was created around me — Guillermo Cabrera Infante

I have had moments where I’ve had mental-health issues and I’ve felt like yoga and meditating and reading these Buddhist self-help books actually really help. — Mike White

Also, I designed a pretty fascinating bracelet, where you put a rubber band around your favorite book of poems for a year, and then you take it off and wear it. — Jonathan Safran Foer

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 Thomas Sladek

Immorality, perversion, infidelity, cannibalism, etc., are unassailable by church and civic league if you dress them up in the togas and talliths of the Good Book. — Ben Hecht

All Sacred Scriptures is but one book, and that one book is Christ, because all divine Scripture speaks of Christ, and all divine Scripture is fulfilled in Christ. — Hugh of Saint Victor

The king to Oxford sent a troop of horse, For Tories own no argument but force; With equal care, to Cambridge books he sent, For Whigs allow no force but argument. — William Browne

Was it not the great philosopher and mathematician Leibnitz who said that the more knowledge advances the more it becomes possible to condense it into little books? — J. Arthur Thomson

The Compleat Angler is acknowledged to be one of the world’s books. Only the trouble is that the world doesn’t read its books, it borrows a detective story instead. — Stephen Leacock

Play the gayest tunes in your books, play them loud and keep on playing them, and never mind if a bullet goes through a trombone, or even a trombonist, now and then. — Philip Sheridan

And to all of you, what it really comes down to is: If you’re buying a book with my name on it, I feel I owe it to you to have it be the best book that I can make it. — Peter David

I do, in fact, have a book club. I meet with a couple of guys once a month of a lunchtime discussion of some interesting text, usually, but not always, philosophical. — David Liss

Historical investigation and literary criticism have taken the magic out of the Bible and have made it a composite human book, written by many hands in different ages. — Bill Vaughan

The Bhagavad-Gita is a true scripture of the human race a living creation rather than a book, with a new message for every age and a new meaning for every civilization. — Sri Aurobindo

Read the Bible as though it were something entirely unfamiliar, as though it had not been set before you ready-made. Face the book with a new attitude as something new. — Martin Buber

Hold fast to the Bible. To the influence of this Book we are indebted for all the progress made in true civilization and to this we must look as our guide in the future. — Ulysses S. Grant

You be sure to throw the book at him, you hear me? I feel violated, Detective. Violated.” “I’ll throw this table at you if you don’t give us the names we’re looking for. — Derek Landy

We have to tell the American public that they’re missing the boat, that they have to get into writing and reading. Not only that, but books won’t crash in the year 2000. — Patricia Schroeder

By the way, Wonder Woman is Amazonian, and historically accurate Amazonian women actually had only one breast. So, if I’d really go ‘by the book’ … it’d be problematic. — Gal Gadot

My books are always tactical, bullet lists, this is what you need to do because I’m trying to appeal to people who are trying to change the world and they need checklists. — Guy Kawasaki

Coming after all the bullshit related to A Million Little Pieces, nobody was expecting anything from me. No publisher, no agent, no one. Just me and the book. It was great. — James Frey

I am glad there are things in the Bible I do not understand. If I could take that book up and read it as I would any other book, I might think I could write a book like that. — Dwight L. Moody

The Bible is actually a library of books-some long, some short- written over hundreds of years by many authors. Behind each one, however, was [the] Author: the Spirit of God. — Billy Graham

I think people get satisfaction from living for a cause that’s greater than themselves. They want to leave an imprint. By writing books, I’m trying to do that in a modest way. — Daniel H. Pink

I really like to look like a history book. I can look 1940s, I can look 1970s hippie-chic, or sometimes I’ll pull that ’80s Brooklyn hip-hop kid with the door-knocker earrings. — Katy Perry

Ah, reader, put thy trust in thy creator, and thou wilt be safe; but if thou trustest to the book called the scriptures thou trustest to the rotten staff of fable and falsehood. — Thomas Paine

“O, let my books be then the eloquence

And dumb presagers of my speaking breast,

Who plead for love, and look for recompense,

More than that tongue that more hath more expressed.” — William Shakespeare

Take all that you can of this book upon reason, and the balance on faith, and you will live and die a happier man. (When a skeptic expressed surprise to see him reading a Bible) — Abraham Lincoln

The existence of the Bible, as a book for the people, is the greatest benefit which the human race has ever experienced. Every attempt to belittle it is a crime against humanity. — Immanuel Kant

Books are something social – a writer speaking to a reader – so I think making the reading of a book the center of a social event, the meeting of a book club, is a brilliant idea. — Yann Martel

To me, it’s a great day every time I receive a letter from somebody who climbed inside one of my books, inhabited it for a while, learned a little something, and emerged grateful. — David James Duncan

Learning is acquired by reading books; much more necessary learning, the knowledge of the world, is only to be acquired by reading men, and studying all the various editions of them. — Lord Chesterfield

[Books] may sleep for a while and be neglected; but whenever the desire of information springs up in the human breast, there they are with mild wisdom ready to instruct and please us. — Ann Plato

Sometimes even when the book is over I dont know whos good and whos bad. Its really more interesting, I think, to write about gray characters than it is to write about black and white. — Harlan Coben

Preacher is a book that somehow allows me time by its settling on it’s characters, that sort of modern gothic western feel. You’re not likely to see the boat veering too far from that. — Garth Ennis

I’m 40 years old, and I still love watching Bugs Bunny slap the bull on the nose. I still watch those cartoons, and yet I also enjoy reading books about science, or the current fiction. — Jeff Smith

In the book I define conservatism, as I believe it is fit upon four categories of principle: respect for The Constitution, respect for life, less government, and personal responsibility. — Jonathan Krohn

By the time I was ten or eleven, I had a song-book and I was writing everything down. It used to just be my hobby but now it’s like my diary, it’s where I can go in my own little bubble. — Ella Henderson

I just increasingly enjoy the quiet moments when I can be on my own with my friends and family, or with a book, having a live experience. That’s really what I crave, and I always have done. — Benedict Cumberbatch

Why was it librarians had such a prim image? With all the information available in books right there at their fingertips, librarians could be the best-informed people around. About anything. — Charlaine Harris

I write books for young adults because I truly connect with them on some very deep level. They are our hope, our future, and inspiring them to be the best they can be is very important to me. — Ellen Hopkins

When I’m working on a serious and solid book … I read about a detective novel a day. It’s the best legal dope in the world. It makes you feel good until the next morning you can work again. — Mary Lee Settle

I would like my book to give people insight to the war before and after, but I don’t think anyone could read my book and suddenly make up her mind about the war. I want to write for everybody. — Asne Seierstad

I also wonder why is it that so many of the movies and books that are detective stories are also the most aesthetically interesting? From Hollywood noirs to horror movies like The Shining [1980]. — Christopher Bollen

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

I have to accept my role. I will never kill myself like Vincent Van Gogh. Nor will I paint beautiful water lilies like Monet. I can’t do that. I’m in the idiot role of being a kiddie book person. — Maurice Sendak

A book is not an end in itself; it is only a way to touch someone – a bridge extended across a space of loneliness and obscurity – and sometimes it is a way of winning other people to our causes. — Isabel Allende

I write because I want to end my loneliness. Books make people less alone. That, before and after everything else, is what books do. They show us that conversations are possible across distances. — Jonathan Safran Foer

Cultivate an appreciation and passion for books. I’m using passion in the fullest sense of the word: a deep, fervent emotion, a state of intense desire; an enthusiastic ardor for something or someone. — Cassandra King

You see? I know where every single book used to be in the library.  She pointed to the shelf opposite.  Over there was Catch-22, which was a hugely popular fishing book and one of a series, I believe. — Jasper Fforde

Books have always a secret influence on the understanding; we cannot at pleasure obliterate ideas; he that reads books of science, thogh without any fixed desire of improvement, will grow more knowing. — Samuel Johnson

For instance, in 1999, Bill Gates not only published a new book on work at the speed of thought but also detailed how Microsoft’s ‘Falconview’ software would enable the destruction of bridges in Kosovo. — Paul Virilio

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

When I feel that I’m going to write a detective story, I buy a five pound box of chocolates and a ream of paper. When the candy is all gone and the paper all used up, I know that the book is long enough. — Carolyn Wells

Over the years, whenever I’ve felt that little twinkle in the hairs on the back of my neck., as I encountered an original thought or observation in a fishing book, I’ve turned the corner of the page down. — Arnold Gingrich

The point is that whatever one is trying to learn, it is necessary to have firsthand experience, rather than learning from books or from teachers or by merely conforming to an already established pattern. — Chogyam Trungpa

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

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

Most books about writing are filled with bullshit. Fiction writers, present company included, don’t understand very much about what they do—not why it works when it’s good, not why it doesn’t when it’s bad. — Stephen King

Everyone needs some time to unwind. There are even coloring book clubs popping up in every state now, so it’s not such an isolating experience. People are getting together specifically to color. It’s amazing. — Alan Robert

At first I read mostly books by Southern authors – black and white – because almost all the people I knew were born and raised in the South, starting with my mother. I remember I got a lot of Erskine Caldwell. — Edward P. Jones

I want world leaders to choose books over bullets…We can afford to give every girl 12 years of free education. It is absolutely in our power, and when we do, we will realize a whole new world of possibility. — Malala Yousafzai

The Book of the Heart provides a fresh perspective on the influence of the book as artifact on our language and culture. Reading this book broadens our appreciation of the relationship between things and ideas. — Henry Petroski

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

They must be real people. And this means that every word in every line of speech must be accurate and full of some kind of meaning which stretches not only forward in the book but stems from before in the book. — John Steinbeck

Amid the push to excellence, with its measurement and accountability, it is easy to lose sight of a key ingredient in reading a book – the pleasure it bring us, something too many boil down to a dirty word: FUN. — Jim Trelease

Dr. Phil was very helpful and caring. I believe he helped all of us there and watching how to better relate, understand, and communicate with our families and loved ones. Dr. Phil recommended reading my new book. — Louie Anderson

I really believe that God builds all the bridges, writes all the books, and delivers all the speeches. When I say God, again, I mean that source we all come from, we all are pieces of, and we all are connected to. — Wayne Dyer

In the lead-up to the launch of my new book I Was Here, I’ve seen a lot of discussion about depression and suicide and mental health and YA dealing with such intense matters. What I haven’t seen discussed is kittens. — Gayle Forman

For at least the last 275 years the honesty of fishermen has been somewhat questionable. It should be noted that Izaak Walton whose book published in 1653 spoke not of  anglers and , but  anglers OR very honest men . — Arthur Ransome

O thou who art able to write a book which once in the two centuries or oftener there is a man gifted to do, envy not him whom they name city-builder, and inexpressibly pity him whom they name conqueror or city-burner. — Thomas Carlyle

I interviewed – no – had lunch with Harper Lee several years ago, trying to convince Harper Lee to do “To Kill a Mockingbird” for the book club. She wouldn’t do it. She said, “Honey, I said everything I wanted to say.” — Oprah Winfrey

When I wrote War Against the Mafia as a Vietnam statement, I didn’t expect much to come of it-but quite a bit came and it captured me. I continued the books to feed the obvious hunger that was there for heroic fiction. — Don Pendleton

where I have seen good I shall speak of it with pleasure, and where I have seen the reverse, I shall try to be silent; for a book is meant to give pleasure, and pain that is inflicted in black and white lasts for ever. — Isabel Burton

My books may highlight corruption, brutality and venality, but they also show that if these things come to light, there is rectification. The voiceless do have a voice; democratic mechanisms and accountability do exist. — Vikas Swarup

“… Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,

I fear no evil, for You are with me…

Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” — David

Unfortunately what is little recognized is that the most worthwhile scientific books are those in which the author clearly indicates what he does not know; for an author most hurts his readers by concealing difficulties. — Evariste Galois

Yet I’m making a book and I’m going to care immensely about what words get bound in the pages, and I want the object to look good. I won’t believe in it and it won’t be real to me until there’s a finished book I can hold. — Jonathan Lethem

I don’t believe any of you have ever read Paradise Lost, and you don’t want to. That’s something that you just want to take on trust. It’s a classic … something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read. — Mark Twain

According to the book Celebrate Today, June 18th is National Splurge Day. Besides being the birthday of Paul McCartney and Isabella Rossellini, it’s also mine. Go ahead; celebrate my birthday and don’t worry about the cost! — Ernie J Zelinski

I would advise you to read with a pen in your hand and enter in a little book short hints of what you feel that is common or that may be useful; for this will be the best method of imprinting such portcullis in your memory. — Benjamin Franklin

Experts on romance say for a happy marriage there has to be more than a passionate love. For a lasting union, they insist, there must be a genuine liking for each other. Which, in my book, is a good definition for friendship. — Marilyn Monroe

The buying of a self-help book is the most desperate of all human acts. It means you’ve lost your mind completely: You’ve entrusted your mental health to a self-aggrandizing twit with a psychology degree and a yen for a yacht. — Cynthia Heimel

When I’m not acting, I try to be normal, play golf, play hockey. It’s funny because you’re in this little bubble when you’re working – you don’t read books, you don’t really keep up with the news, you’re just living that life. — Taylor Kitsch

I had always been told the bible was a book about love, but I couldn’t find enough love in it to fill a salt shaker. God is not love in the bible; God is vengeance. There is no other book between whose covers life is so cheap. — Ruth Hurmence Green

This book out-lives, out-loves, out-fits, out-lasts, out-reaches, out-runs, and out-ranks all books. This book is faith producing. It is hope awakening. It is death destroying, and those who embrace it find forgiveness of sin. — Arcturus Z. Conrad

I never read detective novels. I started out in graduate school writing a more serious book. Right around that time I read ‘The Day of the Jackal’ and ‘The Exorcist’. I hadn’t read a lot of commercial fiction, and I liked them. — James Patterson

The Old Testament is responsible for more atheism, agnosticism, disbelief – call it what you will – than any book ever written; it has emptied more churches than all the counterattractions of cinema, motor bicycle and golf course. — A. A. Milne

It is between fifty and sixty years since I read it (i.e. the Book of Revelations), and I then considered it merely the ravings of a maniac, no more worthy nor capable of explanation than the incoherence of our own nightly dreams. — Thomas Jefferson

A grain of real knowledge, of genuine controllable conviction, will outweigh a bushel of adroitness; and to produce persuasion there is one golden principle of rhetoric not put down in the books-to understand what you are talking about. — John Robert Seeley

Nothing teaches great writing like the very best books do. Yet, good teachers often help students cross that bridge, and I have to say that I had a few extraordinary English teachers in high school whom I still credit for their guidance. — Julia Glass

Not only has my latest book, The Wandering Who?, rocked the boat, but it also has managed to unite Alan Dershowitz and Abe Foxman with Ali Abunimah and Max Blumenthal. That is pretty encouraging: it means that peace may prevail after all. — Gilad Atzmon

Children read to learn – even when they are reading fantasy, nonsense, light verse, comics or the copy on cereal packets, they are expanding their minds all the time, enlarging their vocabulary, making discoveries – it is all new to them. — Joan Aiken

I spent much of my prison time reading. I must have read over 200 large books, mostly fictional stories about the American pioneers, the Vikings, Mafia, etc. As long as I was engrossed in a book, I was not in prison. Reading was my escape. — Frazier Glenn Miller, Jr.

The Social License is fundamentally about accountability to people and not just powerful interests. John Morrison’s book reminds all organizations – governments, business and civil society – to focus on the legitimacy of their own actions. — Kumi Naidoo

The Cemetery of Forgotten Books is like the greatest, most fantastic library you could ever imagine. Its a labyrinth of books with tunnels, bridges, arches, secret sections – and its hidden inside an old palace in the old city of Barcelona. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Books and newspapers assume a “common reader” that is, a person who knows the things known by other literate persons in the culture. Obviously, such assumptions are never identical from writer to writer, but they show a remarkable consistency — Edward Hirsch

I began to read the Holy Scriptures upon my knees, laying aside all other books, and praying over, if possible, every line and word. This proved meat indeed and drink indeed to my soul. I daily received fresh life, light and power from above. — George Whitefield

Every man of sound brain whom you meet knows something worth knowing better than yourself. A man, on the whole, is a better preceptor than a book. But what scholar does not allow that the dullest book can suggest to him a new and a sound idea? — Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

I feel very discouraged with the state of gay and lesbian publishing because I don’t feel like we’re really welcome in the mainstream and then you get ghettoized and put on some lesbian book club reading list where you don’t want to be either. — Ali Liebegott

Based on what you know about him in history books, what do you think Abraham Lincoln would be doing if he were alive today? 1) Writing his memoirs of the Civil War. 2) Advising the President. 3) Desperately clawing at the inside of his coffin. — David Letterman

I get daily e-mails from Afghans who thank me for writing this book [The Kite Runner], as they feel a slice of their story has been told by one of their own. So, for the most part, I have been overwhelmed with the kindness of my fellow Afghans. — Khaled Hosseini

It’s scary to make major changes, but we usually have enough courage to take the next right step. One small step and then another. That’s what it takes to raise a child, to get a degree, to write a book, to do whatever it is your heart desires. — Regina Brett

I don’t condemn and I don’t convert. I’ve been searching through books and bibles to find what this life is worth, and I’ve made up my mind: Love is my religion. You can take it or leave it, and you don’t have to believe it. Love is my religion — Ziggy Marley

I think solitude is a really positive thing. I cherish solitude immensely. In today’s society, there’s so much pressure to communicate, eat out, be friends with people. Why can’t you read a book on your own? Why have you got to have a book club? — Nicky Wire

The hours between eight in the evening and one or two in the morning have always been my magic hours. Against the blue candlewick bedspread the white pages of my open book, illuminated by a circle of lamplight, were the gateway to another world. — Diane Setterfield

I’m not a detective from Baker Street or an old lady who solves crimes while she’s knitting in an easy chair. I’m just a book girl. So I can’t make a deduction, only take a flight of fancy–er, forget I said that. I meant, I can only take a guess. — Mizuki Nomura

To me, nothing tastes more like summer than peach pie. I began collecting pie recipes from friends and family while I was still working on my first draft. As the recipes poured in, it was fun to try to match the pies to the characters in the book. — Sarah Weeks

Of course you should study whatever you want. The written appreciation and understanding of literature, or any kind of artistic endeavour, is absolutely central to a decent society. Why d’you think books are the first things that the fascists burn? — David Nicholls

The gospel is not a book; it is a living being, with an action, a power, which invades every thing that opposes its extension, behold! It is upon this table: This book, surpassing all others. I never omit to read it, and every day with some pleasure. — Napoleon Bonaparte

Dig a trench through a landfill and you will see layers of phone books like geographical strata or layers of cake…. During a recent landfill dig in Phoenix, I found newspapers dating from 1952 that looked so fresh you might read one over breakfast. — William Rathje

Harry – you’re a great wizard, you know.” “I’m not as good as you,” said Harry, very embarrassed, as she let go of him. “Me!” said Hermione. “Books! And cleverness! There are more important things – friendship and bravery and – oh Harry – be careful! — J. K. Rowling

It’s because of libraries that books like mine get recommended to book clubs and avid readers, who in turn pass them onto others looking to be whisked away from the world for a little while…and perhaps to learn a bit about themselves in the process. — Jodi Picoult

I got the idea that to write books would be the best way to spend a life. I never thought of anything else that seemed like half as much fun, although in my next life I would like to be an architect, too, so I can have an easier time restoring houses. — Frances Mayes

Every book should begin with attractive endpapers. Preferably in a dark colour: dark red or dark blue, depending on the binding. When you open the book it’s like going to the theatre. First you see the curtain. Then it’s pulled aside and the show begins. — Cornelia Funke

When people want to sound smart, they add syllables to words, words to sentences, sentences to paragraphs, paragraphs to books. They try to make up in quantity and complexity what they lack in quality. That’s bullshit! They’re just hiding their bullshit! — Robert McKee

Only those works which are well-written will pass to posterity: the amount of knowledge, the uniqueness of the facts, even the novelty of the discoveries are no guarantees of immortality … These things are exterior to a man but style is the man himself. — Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon

I want to know one thing, the way to heaven; how to land safe on that happy shore. God Himself has condescended to teach the way; for this end He came from heaven. He hath written it down in a book. Give me that book! At any price give me the Book of God! — John Wesley

In this one book are the two most interesting personalities in the whole world–God and yourself. The Bible is the story of God and man, a love story in which you and I must write our own ending, our unfinished autobiography of the creature and the Creator. — Fulton Oursler

To be well informed, one must read quickly a great number of merely instructive books. To be cultivated, one must read slowly and with a lingering appreciation the comparatively few books that have been written by men who lived, thought, and felt with style. — Aldous Huxley

My website inspired me to create my book club and provides me with a creative outlet where I can write about things that interest me. It’s a platform where I can present ideas or new ventures and get feedback straight from the people who mean the most to me. — Lauren Conrad

I usually get up not before 9. I have a huge library – I’m a big fan of Scandinavian crime fiction – so I’ll usually take a book and go off to one of my favorite bistros for a cappuccino or espresso or maybe I’ll have some lovely smoked salmon for breakfast. — Anthony Geary

Now you see, Dr. Stadler, you’re speaking as if this book were addressing to a thinking audience. If it were, one would have to be concerned with such matters as accuracy, validity, logic and the prestige of science. But it isn’t. It’s addressed to the public. — Ayn Rand

But this time I’m not to blame; I want you to believe that. I simply slipped into those violets. No, I want to be really truthful. I am a little to blame. The sky, you know, was gold, and the ground all blue, and for a moment he looked like some one in a book. — E. M. Forster

If a book is worth reading at all, it is worth reading more than once. Suspense is the lowest of excitants, designed to take your breath away when the brain and heart crave to linger in nobler enjoyment. Suspense drags you on; appreciation causes you to linger. — William Gerhardie

“There are a limited number of things we can be personal with. This understanding can bring us to pare down to what we really need, and to let go of that which we cannot hold in caring awareness.

We may learn that having too much can be another form of poverty.” — Gunilla Brodde Norris

[Tom] Wolfe’s books offered a whole new world to step into, and whilst at times you could accuse him of being somewhat long-winded, he had an incredible quality of prose and a bravery of writing from the heart. He believed in being autobiographical at all times. — Jude Law

Readers have a loyalty that cannot be matched anywhere else in the creative arts, which explains why so many writers who have run out of gas can keep coasting anyway, propelled on to the bestseller lists by the magic words AUTHOR OF on the covers of their books. — Stephen King

People should decide on the books’ meanings for themselves. They’ll find a story that attacks such things as cruelty, oppression, intolerance, unkindness, narrow-mindedness, and celebrates love, kindness, open-mindedness, tolerance, curiosity, human intelligence. — Philip Pullman

I’m listening to Gogol Bordello, which is totally random, but I love him. Just finished the new Joan Didion book, Blue Nights, which I loved. I haven’t been to the movies in God knows how long. I haven’t been doing anything but living in a bubble, making jewelry! — Pamela Love

Sam loved to listen to music and make his own songs, to wear soft velvets, to play in the castle kitchen beside the cooks, drinking in the rich smells as he snitched lemon cakes and blueberry tarts. His passions were books and kittens and dancing, clumsy as he was. — George R. R. Martin

The best one-volume biography of Abraham Lincoln is still Benjamin Thomas’s 1952 biography. David Donald’s 1995 biography is a close second, and close enough that if you can only obtain the Donald rather than the Thomas, your book club will still be doing just fine. — Allen C. Guelzo

There were no mail-order catalogues in 1492. Marco Polo’s journal was the wish book of Renaissance Europe. Then, Columbus sailed the ocean blue and landed in Sears’ basement. Despite all the Indians on the escalator, Columbus’ visit came to be known as a “discovery. — Tom Robbins

It is June. This is what I have decided to do with my life just now. I will do this work and lead this life, the one I am leading today. Each morning the blue clock and the crocheted bedspread, the table with the Phone, the books and magazines, the Times at the door. — Elizabeth Hardwick

I always say that the characters in Jane Austen’s original books are rather like zombies because they live in this bubble of immense wealth and privilege and no matter what’s going on around them they have a singular purpose to maintain their rank and to impress others. — Seth Grahame-Smith

Why would I talk about the past when I got a bright future? What kind of money is the past gonna make me? Everyone wants to know information. Now, if you wanna know information, if you want history, you’re gonna read a history book. The past ain’t gonna make you no cash. — Riff Raff

Historic figures have homes to visit for posterity; the Lord of history left no home. Luminaries leave libraries and write their memoirs; He left one book, penned by ordinary people. Deliverers speak of winning through might and conquest; He spoke of a place in the heart. — Ravi Zacharias

The pure and noble, the graceful and dignified, simplicity of language is nowhere in such perfection as in the Scriptures and Homer. The whole book of Job, with regard both to sublimity of thought and morality, exceeds, beyond all comparison, the most noble parts of Homer. — Alexander Pope

Mr. Sherlock Holmes, who was usually very late in the mornings, save upon those not infrequent occasions when he was up all night, was seated at the breakfast table. I stood upon the hearth-rug and picked up the stick which our visitor had left behind him the night before. — Arthur Conan Doyle

We invest less in our friendships and expect more of friends than any other relationship. We spend days working out where to book for a romantic dinner, weeks wondering how to celebrate a partner or parent’s birthday, and seconds forgetting a friend’s important anniversary. — Mariella Frostrup

Vernon Reis opened the world to me through books. He taught me that while I was physically firmly planted in blue-collar Auburn, Washington in the 50s and early 60s, intellectually I could go anywhere, explore anything, and sample exciting new ideas simply by opening a book. — Christine Gregoire

Take away from Genesis the belief that Moses was the author, on which only the strange believe that it is the word of God has stood, and there remains nothing of Genesis but an anonymous book of stories, fables, and traditionary or invented absurdities, or of downright lies. — Thomas Paine

I tried documentaries.It wasn’t the time for me. I was going to try to do the same thing, I did make a valiant attempt but it did not work – to do the same thing with documentaries that we had done with the book club [in 2011]. The zeitgeist wasn’t ready. It just wasn’t ready. — Oprah Winfrey

I understand that what I am to do is to be a bridge between the people who would never set foot in a church in their entire lives and people who would like to get them there. So I write books that Christians can give to their non-Christian friends that they will actually read. — Andy Andrews

I suppose also that watching marketing and publicity stuff play out from behind the scenes, making those plans and seeing each piece fall into place or not, each year, for each book, has made me a little more tranquil about the process for my own book than I might otherwise be. — Danielle Dutton

Don’t lament so much about how your career is going to turn out. You don’t have a career. You have a life. Do the work. Keep the faith. Be true blue. You are a writer because you write. Keep writing and quit your bitching. Your book has a birthday. You don’t know what it is yet. — Cheryl Strayed

I think bridges have a special meaning in our life. I think a book is a bridge. Any type of art is a bridge that allows different cultures to connect. You may not understand your neighbour’s way of seeing life, but you sure understand your neighbour’s joy in painting or dancing. — Paulo Coelho

Every new book is a challenge. I could, of course, have stopped many years ago if it was only for money. But no, it is about building bridges among cultures, different cultures… When you want someone to understand something that is not forcefully in your culture, you use stories. — Paulo Coelho

My father taught me to love detective fiction writers such as Raymond Chandler. When I decided to have a hard-boiled detective series I did a lot of studying before I wrote the first book. I learned police procedure, the California criminal law, and many areas outside my expertise. — Sue Grafton

The Christian feels that the tooth of time gnaws all books but the Bible…19 centuries of experience have tested it. It has passed through critical fires no other volume has suffered and its spiritual truth has endured the flames and come out without so much as the smell of burning. — W. Sangster

We’re in a strange situation where people either don’t read at all or they read a lot. There’s a huge gap in between. That’s something that would be good to bridge so it doesn’t have to be one thing or the other. Books could be part of life in a more relaxed way. I’d like to see that. — Jeanette Winterson

I see the audience as the final collaborator. I think it’s kind of bullshit when people say, “I’m not interested in the audience reaction.” I’m like, “Then why do you do theater? You can write a book, then you don’t have to see how the audience reacts.” It’s a living, breathing thing. — Lynn Nottage

You may be sitting in a room reading this book. Imagine one note struck upon the piano. Immediately that one note is enough to change the atmosphere of the room – proving that the sound element in music is a powerful and mysterious agent, which it would be foolish to deride or belittle. — Aaron Copland

Sexcastle is a perfect mix of homage and comedy, action and irony, loving tribute and hilarious send-up of the great, good, and ungodly-bad action movies of the ’80s. I don’t remember the last time a debut book hit me this hard. Literally, this book punched me in the face. It’s THAT mean. — Matt Fraction

You know, a documentary is only interesting once in a while. If you look at a whole book of Dorothea [Lange]’s where she has row after row of people bending over and digging out carrots – that can be very tedious. And so it’s only once in a while that something happens that is worth doing. — Imogen Cunningham

Deprived of their newspapers or a novel, reading-addicts will fall back onto cookery books, on the literature which is wrapped around bottles of patent medicine, on those instructions for keeping the contents crisp which are printed on the outside of boxes of breakfast cereals. On anything. — Aldous Huxley

The idea for a book usually bubbles up from my sub-conscious when I am drifting off to sleep. Each one has started as a line or two that I’ve heard in my head. As a writer, you have to leave space to listen for words. That means finding time to be quiet and listen for that still, small voice. — Marie Bradby

All who have travelled through the delicious scenery of North Devon must needs know the little white town of Bideford, which slopes upwards from its broad tide-river paved with yellow sands, and many-arched old bridge, where salmon wait for Autumn floods, toward the pleasant upland on the west. — Charles Kingsley

In the dark colony of night, when I consider man’s magnificent capacity for malice, madness, folly, envy, rage, and destructiveness, and I wonder whether we shall not end up as breakfast for newts and polyps, I seem to hear the muffled cries of all the words in all the books with covers closed. — Leo Rosten

The Bible itself is a book that constantly must be wrestled with and re-interpreted. … Bible interpretation is colored by historical context, the reader’s bias and current realities. The more you study the Bible, the more questions it raises. It is not possible to simply do what the Bible says. — Rob Bell

Mathematicians have sought knowledge in figures, Philosophers in systems, Logicians in subtleties, and Metaphysicians in sounds. It is not in any nor in all of these. He that studies only men, will get the body of knowledge without the soul, and he that studies only books, the soul without the body. — Charles Caleb Colton

I came to think that nobody from England could draw American comic books, because they were clearly all done by this sort of Mafia, all these guys with Italian and Irish names who had the whole thing sewn up. It was actually seeing a comic book drawn by Barry Smith, who was about my age, and English. — Dave Gibbons

What can I expect from myself? My sensation in all their horrible acuity, and a profound awareness of feeling. A sharp mind that only destroys me, and an unusual capacity for dreaming to keep me entertained. A dead will and a reflection that cradles it, like a living child. From, The Book of Disquiet — Fernando Pessoa

I’ve often said that there’s no such thing as writer’s block; the problem is idea block. When I find myself frozen-whether I’m working on a brief passage in a novel or brainstorming about an entire book-it’s usually because I’m trying to shoehorn an idea into the passage or story where it has no place. — Jeffery Deaver

White America has seen to it that Black history has been suppressed in schools and in American history books. The bravery of hundreds of our ancestors who took part in slave rebellions has been lost in the mists of time, since plantation owners did their best to prevent any written accounts of uprisings. — Huey Newton

There is that lovely feeling of one reader telling another, ‘You must read this.’ I’ve always wanted to write a book like that, with the sense that you are contributing to the discourse in middle America, a discourse that begins at a book club in a living room, but then spreads. That is meaningful to me. — Abraham Verghese

You can lose a reader in a blink of an eye. If a person is an engineer or chemist or an anthropologist or whatever, you spoil the whole book for that person if there’s obviously ignorance here. What’s wrong with so much science fiction is that the science is so lousy that it isn’t worth paying attention to. — Robert Caro

Many of the narratives can only tend to excite ideas the worst calculated for a female breast: Every thing is called plainly and roundly by its name; and the annals of a Brothel would scarcely furnish a greater choice of indecent expressions. Yet this is the Book, which young Women are recommended to study. — Matthew Lewis

Y’see, I get so bored so easily. I like to start with a clean slate each time. Sure, I’ll have characters drop in and out of books but the main cast of characters always changes. Maybe I’m wrong but I think if had the same joe detective guy or gal, I wouldn’t write them as well; I wouldn’t do as good a job. — Carl Hiaasen

Bush has not read enough books to have a developed moral sense. The fewer books you read, the easier it is to become fundamental. In some ways my antiwar stand here is also a stand on anti-literacy. Someone should get G.W. into a reading program, get him to join a book club. Have him read Hamlet, King Lear. — Sherman Alexie

Just when you thought the mafia novel was dead, Tod Goldberg breathes new life into it. Gangsterland, the best mafia novel in years, is a dark, funny, and smart page-turning crime story. It’s also a moving, thoughtful meditation on ethics, religion, family, and a culture that eats itself. I loved this book. — Sara Gran

Blindness to the aesthetic element in mathematics is widespread and can account for a feeling that mathematics is dry as dust, as exciting as a telephone book… Contrariwise, appreciation of this element makes the subject live in a wonderful manner and burn as no other creation of the human mind seems to do. — Philip J. Davis

The National Book Festival is a great way for families and friends to share the creative works of some of America’s most-loved authors, .. Readers of all ages can listen to favorite writers speaking about their books, have books autographed, meet many storybook characters and enjoy a day on the National Mall. — Laura Bush

I know publishing now more as an author than with occasional peaks inside those elite offices than as an industry insider. It was difficult publishing a novel the first time around, while working behind the scenes, knowing all that has to happen to make a book a success and to still make the leap as an author. — Jennifer Gilmore

Jorge Luis Borges wrote a poem when he was in his 80s about one day writing the book that would justify him. This was long after he had become one of the great masters, a writer everyone looks up to and reveres. As artists, I don’t think we ever see ourselves as done. We always think we’re at the beginning . . . — Theodora Goss

Since I invoke Torah so often, let me state that I don’t personally believe in the God it postulates … I am not religious, nor were the majority of the early builders of Israel believers. Yet their passion for this land stemmed from the Book of Books … [The Bible is] the single most important book in my life. — David Ben-Gurion

The dog becomes the repository of those model human properties that we have cynically ceased to find among humans. Where today can we find the full panoply of William Bennett’s Book of Virtues-from Courage and Responsibility to Loyalty and Family Values-but in Lassie and Beethoven and Millie and Checkers and Spot? — Marjorie Garber

You have started the book with this bubble over your head that contains a cathedral full of fire – that contains a novel so vast and great and penetrating and bright and dark that it will put all other novels ever written to shame. And then, as you get towards the end, you begin to realise, no, it’s just this book. — Michael Cunningham

I think that, like in my writing, reality is always a soap bubble, Silly Putty thing anyway. In the universe people are in, people put their hands through the walls, and it turns out they’re living in another century entirely. I often have the feeling — and it does show up in my books — that this is all just a stage. — Philip K. Dick

In regards to this great Book [the Bible], I have but to say it is the best gift God has given to man. All the good the Savior gave to the world was communicated through this Book. But for it we could not know right from wrong. All things most desirable for man’s welfare, here and hereafter, are found portrayed in it. — Abraham Lincoln

Maybe just as many women writers as male writers could be billed as the next great American writer by their publisher. Maybe book criticism sections could review an equal amount of female and male writers. Maybe Oprah could start putting some books by women authors in her book club, since most of her audience is women. — Jami Attenberg

Simon’s walls were covered in what looked like pages ripped from a comic book, but when I squinted, I realized they were hand drawn. Some were black-and-white, but most were in full color, everything from character sketches to splash panels to full pages, done in a style that wasn’t quite manga, wasn’t quite comic book. — Kelley Armstrong

What you need to know about the next piece is contained in the last piece.  The place to learn about your materials is in the last use of your materials.  The place to learn about your execution is in your execution.  Put simply, your work is your guide:  a complete, comprehensive, limitless reference book on your work. — David Bayles

It is worth mentioning, for future reference, that the creative power which bubbles so pleasantly in beginning a new book quiets down after a time, and one goes on more steadily. Doubts creep in. Then one becomes resigned. Determination not to give in, and the sense of an impending shape keep one at it more than anything. — Virginia Woolf

“I remember the special quiet of rainy days

when I felt that I could enter the pages

of my beautiful picture books.

Now I try to recreate that feeling of believing

that the imaginary place I’m drawing really exists.

The detail in my work helps to convince me, and I hope

others as well, that such places might be real.” — Jan Brett

Let me roughly divide books into those which compete with the movies and those with which the movies cannot compete. They are the books that can elevate or instruct. If they are fine works of fiction, they can deepen your appreciation of human life. If they are serious works of nonfiction, they can inform or enlighten you. — Mortimer Adler

For me, being a rap fan and the nostalgia of me being a kid, rappers and guys on the street told me everything to wear. That was it. I didn’t necessarily read too many fashion books. Then it got competitive in junior high school. It was moreso about, “You don’t got these.” Everybody could be fresh, but you don’t got these. — Pusha T

I went to many coaching clinics, talked to other coaches, read articles, books, etc. Anything I could do that would help me prepare to be the best coach possible. Fortunately, the coaches I had as a player were good men and were excellent role models in setting priorities and relating to the team members and coaching staff. — LaVell Edwards

I believe that the Bible is to be understood and received in the plain and obvious meaning of its passages; for I cannot persuade myself that a book intended for the instruction and conversion of the whole world should cover its true meaning in any such mystery and doubt that none but critics and philosophers can discover it. — Daniel Webster

What a dazzlingly generous, gloriously unpredictable book! Maggie Nelson shows us what it means to be real, offering a way of thinking that is as challenging as it is liberating. She invites us to ‘pay homage to the transitive’ and enjoy ‘a becoming in which one never becomes.’ Reading The Argonauts made me happier and freer. — Eula Biss

It’s something that people who read my materials have asked me in the past. If you don’t have principles – the last chapter of the book [“Win”] is all about winning with principles. It’s all about applying words to good things, good people, good efforts. Without that inherent accuracy, then even the best words will still fail. — Frank Luntz

I ceased in the year 1764 to believe that one can convince one’s opponents with arguments printed in books. It is not to do that, therefore, that I have taken up my pen, but merely so as to annoy them, and to bestow strength and courage on those on our own side, and to make it known to the others that they have not convinced us. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

Really, the moment you have any idea, the second thought that enters your mind after the original idea is, “What is this? Is it a book, is it a movie, is it a this, is it a that, is it a short story, is it a breakfast cereal?” Really, from that moment, your decision about what kind of thing it is then determines how it develops. — Douglas Adams

In a way, ‘Sin City”s designed to be paced somewhere between an American comic book and Japanese manga. Working in black and white, I realized that the eye is less patient, and you have to make your point, and sometimes repeat it. Slowing things down is harder in black and white, because there isn’t as much for the eye to enjoy. — Frank Miller

I have been tested. I have beaten breast cancer. I have buried a child. I started as a secretary. I fought my way to the top of corporate America while being called every B word in the book. I fought my way into this election and on to this debate stage while all the political insiders and the pundits told, “it couldn’t be done.” — Carly Fiorina

I never imagined when I wrote my first book on Strauss that the unscrupulous elite that he elevates would ever come so close to political power, nor that the ominous tyranny of the wise would ever come so close to being realised in the political life of a great nation like the United States. But fear is the greatest ally of tyranny. — Shadia Drury

I learn immediately from any speaker how much he has already lived, through the poverty or the splendor of his speech. Life lies behind us as the quarry from whence we get tiles and copestones for the masonry of today. This is the way to learn grammar. Colleges and books only copy the language which the field and the work-yard made. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I am the outskirts of some non-existent town, the long-winded prologue to an unwritten book. I’m nobody, nobody. I don’t know how to feel or think or love. I’m a character in a novel as yet unwritten, hovering in the air and undone before I’ve even existed, amongst the dreams of someone who never quite managed to breath life into me. — Fernando Pessoa

We’re historians and above all want to write about what was. Our book doesn’t deal with legacies. It also wasn’t our goal to destroy a legend. We consider Walesa to be a national symbol. He led Solidarity and remains an icon. But he also worked with the secret police under the name Bolek. The truth isn’t always simply black and white. — Slawomir Cenckiewicz

But then, look at me. My brain is incorrectly formed, and I’m shaped like a tube. Plus, I’m an alcoholic, a “survivor” of childhood sexual abuse, was raised in a cult and have no education. So, really, if you think about it, the only thing that separates me from the guy with the stinky foot and no teeth is a book deal and some cologne. — Augusten Burroughs

My own convictions as to negro slavery are strong. It has its evils and abuses…We recognize the negro as God and God’s Book and God’s Laws, in nature, tell us to recognize him – our inferior, fitted expressly for servitude…You cannot transform the negro into anything one-tenth as useful or as good as what slavery enables them to be. — Jefferson Davis

History is not the story of heroes entirely. It is often the story of cruelty and injustice and shortsightedness. There are monsters, there is evil, there is betrayal. That’s why people should read Shakespeare and Dickens as well as history ~~ they will find the best, the worst, the height of noble attainment and the depths of depravity. — David McCullough

Throughout my reading life, I’ve enjoyed many memorable meals-if only fictionally. The oysters at dinner near the beginning of Anna Karenina, the dinner Nana throws for her overflowing guests in Zola’s Nana, the walk through Les Halles for breakfast in Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room, and nearly every meal in Monique Truong’s The Book of Salt. — Alexander Chee

This is a jury of your peers. They watch the same TV movies. They belong to Oprah’s Book Club. You can take any monster, slap a bad dad into his past, and all of a sudden he’s just another lost soul, lashing out. And you were the poor lady that got in the way. They’ll argue you lacked compassion. You were the one who took things too far. — Jeremy Robert Johnson

Using the word ‘political’ in the widest possible sense. Desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other peoples’ idea of the kind of society that they should strive after. Once again, no book is genuinely free from political bias. The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude. — George Orwell

The only way to store information is by agreement. The belief system is like a Book of Law that rules our mind. Our biggest fear is taking the risk to be alive. Humans punish themselves endlessly for not being what they believe they should be. We have the need to be accepted and to be loved by others, but we cannot accept and love ourselves. — Miguel Angel Ruiz

It seems that every movie is a remake of something that was better when it was first released in a foreign language, as a 1960s TV show, or even as a comic book. Now you’ve got theme park rides as the source material of movies. The only things left are breakfast cereal mascots. In our lifetime, we will see Johnny Depp playing Captain Crunch. — Alan Moore

The main challenge that television presents is that I have a tendency to say things with a great deal of precision and accuracy. Often a description of that sort, which will work in a book because people can read it slowly – they can turn the pages back and so on – doesn’t really work on TV because it interrupts the flow of the moving image. — Brian Greene

Authors have a greater right than any copyright, though it is generally unacknowledged or disregarded. They have a right to the reader’s civility. There are favorable hours for reading a book, as for writing it, and to these the author has a claim. Yet many people think that when they buy a book they buy with it the right to abuse the author. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

It is not the number of books you read; nor the variety of sermons which you hear; nor the amount of religious conversation in which you mix: but it is the frequency and the earnestness with which you meditate on these things, till the truth which may be in them becomes your own, and part of your own being, that ensures your spiritual growth. — Frederick William Robertson

Most book things now (with a few exceptions) are just built around nice, safe books written for nice and safe book club readers. These are usually the books you see on display at Barnes and Noble. These Internet writers are like literary terrorists to me. They’re training as we speak. They’re getting ready to invade. They’re building an army. — Scott McClanahan

I used to be embarrassed because I was just a comic-book writer while other people were building bridges or going on to medical careers. And then I began to realize: entertainment is one of the most important things in people’s lives. Without it they might go off the deep end. I feel that if you’re able to entertain people, you’re doing a good thing. — Stan Lee

There was something in the pages of these books that had the power to make him feel better about things, a life raft to cling to before the dark currents of memory washed him downstream again, and on brighter days, he could even see himself going on this way for some time. A small but passable life. And then, of course, the end of the world happened. — Justin Cronin

I started writing novels while an undergraduate student, in an attempt to make sense of the city of Edinburgh, using a detective as my protagonist. Each book hopefully adds another piece to the jigsaw that is modern Scotland, asking questions about the nation’s politics, economy, psyche and history … and perhaps pointing towards its possible future. — Ian Rankin

Cram your head with characters and stories. Abuse your library privileges. Never stop looking at the world, and never stop reading to find out what sense other people have made of it. If people give you a hard time and tell you to get your nose out of a book, tell them you’re working. Tell them it’s research. Tell them to pipe down and leave you alone. — Jennifer Weiner

As a non-western artist, you have to ask yourself a question fairly early in your life: do I want to become a bridge maker, do I want my culture to be understood by the west? I have no intentions of doing such things. I’m fine being a little strange to a non-western audience. It doesn’t bother me if my book doesn’t change a generation of American readers. — Sarnath Banerjee

I don’t know enough about the lower classes to write about them. I don’t feel with them, and that could be regarded as a defect, a limitation of my imagination. I could put myself in their position, but not politically. The idea of writing a story or a book about somebody completely devoid of appreciation of anything I care about is completely foreign to me. — Louis Auchincloss

Once you get into the era of the printed book, it gets a little easier. After years and years, you make a serious survey of that literature, and then you make it more specific depending on what kind of case appears. I never set out to collect material on cheating at bowling, but I found out that after 20 years, I had a lot of material on cheating at bowling. — Ricky Jay

If I were just to read briefing books or I were just to engage in the political back and forth, would I have heard what a big problem mental health is in New Hampshire? Would I have heard people say they’re really worried about the impact on young people because New Hampshire has the highest tuition and debt problems in the country? i’m not sure I would have. — Hillary Clinton

In my books my characters experience things as they are. My books allow youth an honest look at important issues affecting them. As adults we want to believe things like sex abuse or drug use are not happening anymore, or happening less and less, but that’s not the case and we need to acknowledge that. We can’t make life prettier for youth, but we can arm them. — Ellen Hopkins

To preach the Bible as ‘the handbook for life,’ or as the answer to every question, rather than as the revelation of Christ, is to turn the Bible into an entirely different book. This is how the Pharisees approached Scripture, as we can see clearly from the questions they asked Jesus. For the Pharisees, the Scriptures were a source of trivia for life’s dilemmas. — Michael Horton

When they took a young man into Tellson’s London house, they hid him somewhere till he was old. They kept him in a dark place, like a cheese, until he had the full Tellson flavour and blue-mould upon him. Then only was he permitted to be seen, spectacularly poring over large books, and casting his breeches and gaiters into the general weight of the establishment. — Charles Dickens

The Catholics have a Pope. Protestants laugh at them, and yet the Pope is capable of intellectual advancement. In addition to this, the Pope is mortal, and the church cannot be afflicted with the same idiot forever. The Protestants have a book for their Pope. The book cannot advance. Year after year, and century after century, the book remains as ignorant as ever. — Robert Green Ingersoll

You don’t see Los Angeles erecting a museum dedicated to the birth place of the Crips and the Bloods and the Mexican Mafia, with a special guided bus tour highlighting the rise of the crack trade, yet you can hop on a bus in Chicago tomorrow to see the famous locales of murders. I have to imagine there’s some wonderful academic book on the sociology of this out there. — Tod Goldberg

As you leave these gates and re-enter society, one thing is certain: Everyone out there is going to hate you. Never tell anyone in a roadside diner that you went to Harvard. In most situations the correct response to where did you go to school is, “School? Why, I never had much in the way of book learnin’ and such.” Then, get in your BMW and get the hell out of there. — Conan O’Brien

I’m sure there’s some self-help cheese-ball book about the gray area, but I’ve been having this conversation with my friends who are all about the same age and I’m saying, ‘Y’know, life doesn’t happen in black and white.’ The gray area is where you become an adult the medium temperature, the gray area, the place between black and white. That’s the place where life happens. — Justin Timberlake

“Your Remedy is within you, but you do not sense it.

Your Sickness is from you, but you do not perceive it.

You Presume you are a small entity,

But within you is enfolded the entire universe.

You are indeed the evident book,

By whose alphabet the hidden becomes the manifest.

Therefore, you have no need to look beyond yourself,

What you seek is within you, if only you reflect.” — Ali ibn Abi Talib

The Bible in itself is not the Word of God. The Word of God is a person. Neither does the Bible have life, power or light in itself any more than did the Jewish Torach. These attributes may be ascribed to the Bible only by virtue of its relationship to Him who is Word, Life, Power and Light. Life is not in the book, as the Pharisees supposed, but only in the Man of the book . — Robert D. Brinsmead

Excellence is THE trend of the ’80s. Walk into any shopping mall bookstore, go to the rack where they keep the best-sellers such as Garfield Gets Spayed, and you’ll see a half-dozen books telling you how to be excellent: In Search of Excellence, Finding Excellence, Grasping Hold of Excellence, Where to Hide Your Excellence at Night So the Cleaning Personnel Don’t Steal It, etc. — Dave Barry

My father always says, ‘Never trust anyone who has a TV bigger than their bookshelf.’ So I make sure I read. Back at home, I just put up a massive bookcase and asked everyone I know and love to help me fill it with their favorite books. It’s been quite nice because I’ve learned a lot about my friends and family from what they’ve been giving me. A book says a lot about a person. — Emilia Clarke

My wife, Amanda, is terribly good at warping reality. She is like a bowling ball on a rubber sheet, and you find yourself living in her universe, doing things that are completely unexpected or unimaginable for you, but you blink and you’re up on a stage singing, or wearing a peculiar wig, or writing a book filled with feelings and emotion, or doing something equally as unlikely. — Neil Gaiman

I believe scripture is not just resilient but rebellious against its abuse by people. Scripture says it refuses to be used in that way for long. That is why the gospel that has been used by the oppressors is the same gospel that liberated the oppressed: They were reading the same book. Something in the DNA of Christian faith and in the Bible agitates against that kind of misuse. — Allan Boesak

Your house, being the place in which you read, can tell us the position books occupy in your life, if they are a defense you set up to keep the outside world at a distance, if they area dream into which you sink as if into a drug, or bridges you cast toward the outside, toward the world that interests you so much that you want to multiply and extend its dimensions through books. — Italo Calvino

My father has always prayed that his words would reflect God’s standard of truth as the basis to claim, ‘I have given them Your word’ (John 17:14). In this book, I believe you will see that he has faithfully spoken God’s Word that quenches the thirst of those seeking to draw from the wellsprings of Life. It is highly meaningful to see these statements now collected in one volume. — Franklin Graham

But maybe the Charm Bracelets understood more about life than I did. From an early age they knew what little value the world placed in books, and so didn’t waste their time with them. Whereas I, even now, persist in believing that these black marks on white paper bear the greatest significance, that if I keep writing, I might be able to catch the rainbow of consciousness in a jar. — Jeffrey Eugenides

Demon. Gremlin. Poltergeist. Ghost. Phantom. Spirit. Shadow. Ghoul. Devil. People are afraid of them, so they relegate their existence to stories, volumes of books that can be closed and put on the shelf or left behind at a bed and breakfast; they clench their eyes shut, so they will see no evil. But trust me when I tell you that the zebra is real. Somewhere, the zebra is dancing. — Garth Stein

I said that he was my superior in observation and deduction. If the art of the detective began and ended in reasoning from an armchair, my brother would be the greatest criminal agent that ever lived. But he has no ambition and no energy. He will not even go out of his way to verify his own solutions, and would rather be considered wrong than take the trouble to prove himself right. — Arthur Conan Doyle

I often use detective elements in my books. I love detective novels. But I also think science fiction and detective stories are very close and friendly genres, which shows in the books by Isaac Asimov, John Brunner, and Glen Cook. However, whilst even a tiny drop of science fiction may harm a detective story, a little detective element benefits science fiction. Such a strange puzzle. — Sergei Lukyanenko

To me this world is all one continued vision of fancy or imagination, and I feel flattered when I am told so. What is it sets Homer, Virgil and Milton in so high a rank of art? Why is the Bible more entertaining and instructive than any other book? Is it not because they are addressed to the imagination, which is spiritual sensation, and but immediately to the understanding or reason? — William Blake

What havoc has been made of books through every century of the Christian era?  Where are fifty gospels, condemned as spurious by the bull of Pope Gelasius?  Where are the forty wagon-loads of Hebrew manuscripts burned in France, by order of another pope, because suspected of heresy?  Remember the ‘index expurgatorius’, the inquisition, the stake, the axe, the halter and the guillotine. — John Adams

Remember, we’re talking [in The Black Power Mixtape] about 1967, the year before [Martin Luther] King’s assassination. We’re talking about the emergence of black power, which is a discussion King mentioned in his last book, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? We’re talking about the meaning of black power and the possibility that it alienated our supporters, both white and black. — Danny Glover

The old saying of work hard, play hard really works for me. For me it’s all about focus. To get the Fire Starter Sessions digital book out it was about three months of intense focus. I let my friends know that I probably wouldn’t be hanging out of returning their phone calls. It wasn’t about doing the dishes, I ordered a lot of pizza, and I just completely put myself in the creative bubble. — Danielle LaPorte

The newspaper is a Bible which we read every morning and every afternoon, standing and sitting, riding and walking. It is a Biblewhich every man carries in his pocket, which lies on every table and counter, and which the mail, and thousands of missionaries, are continually dispersing. It is, in short, the only book which America has printed, and which America reads. So wide is its influence. — Henry David Thoreau

To live with the work and the letters of James Joyce was an enormous privilege and a daunting education. Yes, I came to admire Joyce even more because he never ceased working, those words and the transubstantiation of words obsessed him. He was a broken man at the end of his life, unaware that Ulysses would be the number one book of the twentieth century and, for that matter, the twenty-first. — Edna O’Brien

This Book had to be written by one of three people: good men, bad men or God. It couldn’t have been written by good men because they said it was inspired by the revelation of God. Good men don’t lie and deceive. It couldn’t have been written by bad men because bad men would not write something that would condemn themselves. It leaves only one conclusion. It was given by divine inspiration of God. — John Wesley

If pregnancy were a book, they would cut the last two chapters. The beginning is glorious, especially if you’re lucky enough not to have morning sickness and if, like me, you’ve had small breasts all your life. Suddenly they begin to grow, and you’ve got them, you’ve really got them, breasts, darling breasts, and when you walk down the street they bounce, truly they do, they bounce bounce bounce. — Nora Ephron

I hope to encourage more children to discover and love reading, but I want to focus particularly on the appreciation of picture books…. Picture books are for everybody at any age, not books to be left behind as we grow older. The best ones leave a tantalising gap between the pictures and the words, a gap that is filled by the reader’s imagination, adding so much to the excitement of reading a book. — Anthony Browne

My book is going to be called Against Empathy, which may give you a feeling for where my argument is going to go. Whenever I talk about this, I have to begin in the most boring of all possible ways: by defining my terms. By “empathy,” some people mean everything that is good – compassion, kindness, warmth, love, being a mensch, changing the world – and I’m for all of those things. I’m not a monster. — Paul Bloom

For most people, what is so painful about reading is that you read something and you don’t have anybody to share it with. In part what the book club opens up is that people can read a book and then have someone else to talk about it with. Then they see that a book can lead to the pleasure of conversation, that the solitary act of reading can actually be a part of the path to communion and community. — Bell Hooks

My wife gave me a book before we got married, Oh, the Places You’ll Go!, by Dr. Seuss. She was trying to tell me something, about what I was capable of, but I didn’t get it. Over time, I’ve sort of lived the message in that book, and I couldn’t have without what golf taught me. So I put it in my bag while I played the Old Course, and on the last hole when I posed on the Swilcan Bridge, I held it up. — George Lopez

I don’t think it’s necessarily 100-percent true. But comic books have infiltrated the mainstream Hollywood in ways that I don’t think I ever would have seen or thought imaginable a while ago. But it’s also cyclical. You saw it in the ’80s when it became kind of huge again. And then it disappears for a while, then it comes back again, then it disappears for a while. So yeah, there’s something about that. — Ryan Reynolds

At the age of three I began to look around my grandfather’s library. My first knowledge of astronomy came from reading and looking at pictures at that time. By the time I was six I remember him buying books for me. … I think I was eight, he bought me a three-inch telescope on a brass mounting. … So, as far back as I can remember, I had an early interest in science in general, astronomy in particular. — Jesse L. Greenstein

Interference is a terrific page-turner, but it’s also a haunting, powerful look at the way families and friendships entangle us all. Berry is a sharp-eyed, engaging writer, and she deftly captures the terrors, ruptures and intimacies of one seemingly ordinary neighborhood, always finding a precarious beauty in her characters’ lives. This is a book that is terrifying, startling, and very hard to put down. — Rebecca Godfrey

I’ve been very lucky at what’s happened in my career to date, but playing something as far from me as possible is an ambition of mine – anything from a mutated baddy in a comic book action thriller, to a detective. If anything, I’d like Gary Oldman’s career: he’s the perfect example of it. I’ve love to have a really broad sweep of characters – to be able to do something edgy, surprising and unfashionable. — Benedict Cumberbatch

Of tobacco and its consequences, I will say nothing but that the practice is at too bad a pass to leave hope that anything that could be said in books would work a cure. If the floors of boarding-houses, and the decks of steam-boats, and the carpets of the Capitol, do not sicken the Americans into a reform; if the warnings of physicians are of no avail, what remains to be said? I dismiss the nauseous subject. — Harriet Martineau

I like people, I really do. I like meeting people. But most of the time I would rather be at home reading a book than reading in a bookstore. It’s a performance, and it ends up being all right, and then you have a nice shot of bourbon afterwards, and it’s all good. I want to please people. I want to be nice. I want to be liked. As a result I say yes to everything. But it takes a lot of vital energy out of me. — Lauren Groff

[Confiscating a book and punishing its author] is a sign that one does not have a good case, or at least doesn’t trust it enough to defend it with reasons and refute the objections. Some people even go so far as to consider prohibited or confiscated books to be the best ones of all, for the prohibition indicates that their authors wrote what they really thought rather than what they were supposed to think . . . — Laszlo Radvanyi

I sometimes think about that, when I finish in something big I find it even hard, I feel like I lose an actual noticeable percentage of my reading time. Even on the reader end I find it so hard when a book that I love so much ends, to find the kindness to enter into a new one. Do you know what I’m saying? To find my way in, I feel like even there’s that space after. I just love inhabiting a book that hits right. — Nathan Englander

It is not the fault of the entrepreneurs that the consumers,the people, the common man,prefer liquor to Bibles and detective stories to serious books, and that governments prefer guns to butter. The entrepreneur does not make greater profits in selling bad things than in selling good things. His profits are the greater the better he succeeds in providing the consumers with those things they ask for most intensely. — Ludwig von Mises

I’m a constant editor. Every few months or so I make a ton of 4×6 prints. I put them on a magnetic board and I live with them for a while to see what bubbles to the surface. A lot of this was part of Disco Night originally, and I suddenly started realizing, “If I keep working on this because I’m not done and I put all that in Disco Night, how can this be one book? Is it going to be too long and bloated and crazy?”. — Peter van Agtmael

A Dream of Undying Fame is a probing, elegant and balanced book. Louis Breger shows how Freud’s traumatic childhood shaped his ambitious, detached and authoritarian personality, and led to the betrayal of his mentor, Josef Breuer. Breger’s analysis exposes a fascinating paradox: Freud both invented psychoanalysis and impoverished its development. A must-read for everyone interested in how ideas can change the world. — Brenda Webster

Every life is inexplicable, I kept telling myself. No matter how many facts are told, no matter how many details are given, the essential thing resists telling. To say that so and so was born here and went there, that he did this and did that, that he married this woman and had these children, that he lived, that he died, that he left behind these books or this battle or that bridge – none of that tells us very much. — Paul Auster

I was on a walking tour of Oxford colleges once with a group of bored and unimpressable tourists. They yawned at Balliol’s quad, T.E. Lawrence’s and Churchill’s portraits, and the blackboard Einstein wrote his E=mc2 on. Then the tour guide said, ‘And this is the Bridge of Sighs, where Lord Peter proposed (in Latin) to Harriet,’ and everyone suddenly came to life and began snapping pictures. Such is the power of books. — Connie Willis

I went into Hollywood and met Mike Aarons and went to Grantray-Lawrence Animation to work on the, by today’s standards, extremely cheap and crude Marvel superheroes cartoons which basically consisted of taking stacks of the comic book art, taking parts of the art, pasting it down, extending it down into drawings and occasionally a new piece of art to bridge the comic book panels and limited animation and lip movement. — Mike Royer

You will want a book which contains not man’s thoughts, but God’s – not a book that may amuse you, but a book that can save you – not even a book that can instruct you, but a book on which you can venture an eternity – not only a book which can give relief to your spirit, but redemption to your soul – a book which contains salvation, and conveys it to you, one which shall at once be the Saviour’s book and the sinner’s. — John Selden

If you’re happy with where the Internet, Facebook, and Twitter have taken you, I’m not the Grinch. Someone called me Sherry Turkle’s “evil Luddite twin.” I’m not that. I enjoy the bounties of this technology. But if you fear that your connected life is running away with you, read the book, reflect, talk to your family and friends. I think we deserve better than some of the places that we’ve gotten with this technology. — Sherry Turkle

A healthy man, with steady employment, as wood-chopping at fifty cents a cord, and a camp in the woods, will not be a good subjectfor Christianity. The New Testament may be a choice book to him on some, but not on all or most of his days. He will rather go a-fishing in his leisure hours. The Apostles, though they were fishers too, were of the solemn race of sea-fishers, and never trolled for pickerel on inland streams. — Henry David Thoreau

Many people are being persuaded that they cannot be considered intelligent or well educated if they insist on the doctrine of the verbal inspiration of the Book. Let me say to you that truth has always lived with the minority; what the majority says at a given moment is usually wrong. The crowd one day cried, “Crucify him,” and the whole world united to murder the Son of God, because in their ignorance they knew Him not. — Alan Redpath

In the end, the most important thing is to be true to yourself and those you love and work hard. I mean, work like there’s no tomorrow. Train. Strive. I mean, really train and cultivate your talent to the highest degree. Be the best at what you do. Get to know more about your field than anybody alive. Use the tools of your trade, if it’s books or a floor to dance on or a body of water to swim in. Whatever it is, it’s yours. — Michael Jackson

Writing a book I have found to be like building a house. A man forms a plan, and collects materials. He thinks he has enough to raise a large and stately edifice; but after he has arranged, compacted and polished, his work turns out to be a very small performance. The authour however like the builder, knows how much labour his work has cost him; and therefore estimates it at a higher rate than other people think it deserves — James Boswell

I got into comics about the same time as music. By 12 years old, I had discovered my dad’s killer comic book collection filled with Silver Age books from his youth…early Spider-Man, Thor, Fantastic Four, The Hulk, Detective Comics, Action Comics, you name it. Seeing those old books got me interested in new comics, so my friends and I would hit the local comic shop every Saturday to pick up the cool titles of my generation. — Alan Robert

I’m astounded whenever I finish something. Astounded and distressed. My perfectionist instinct should inhibit me from finishing; it should inhibit me from even beginning. But I get distracted and start doing something. What I achieve is not the product of an act of my will but of my will’s surrender. I begin because I don’t have the strength to think; I finish because I don’t have the courage to quit. This book is my cowardice. — Fernando Pessoa

Just like in the art museum, and notions of beauty and pleasure, if the hero is always a white guy with a squared jaw or pretty woman with big breasts, then kids start thinking that’s how it’s supposed to be. Part of the problem was that black comic book artists were making super heroes with the same pattern as the white super heroes. When you read a lot of those comics, the black super heroes don’t seem to have anything to do. — Kerry James Marshall

You know that feeling,” she said, “when you are reading a book, and you know that it is going to be a tragedy; you can feel the cold and darkness coming, see the net drawing tight around the characters who live and breathe on the pages. But you are tied to the story as if being dragged behind a carriage and you cannot let go or turn the course aside.” His blue eyes were dark with understanding — of course Will would understand. — Cassandra Clare

A book no more contains reality than a clock contains time. A book may measure so-called reality as a clock measures so-called time; a book may create an illusion of reality as a clock creates an illusion of time; a book may be real, just as a clock is real (both more real, perhaps, than those ideas to which they allude); but let’s not kid ourselves – all a clock contains is wheels and springs and all a book contains is sentences. — Tom Robbins

In my opinion what distinguishes the Bible from the other books is its sense of time. Its first concern is to establish a calendar. Then it traces a genealogy. It imposes rhythms, it orders, it operates, it does not abandon the earth where its destiny must be fulfilled and whose own destiny must be fulfilled by it. Its history will be that of men and not of idle gods. The whole spirit must become incarnate and explore the possible. — Adrienne Monnier

Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them. It depends on the mood of the man, whether he shall see the sunset or the fine poem. There are always sunsets, and there is always genius; but only a few hours so serene that we can relish nature or criticism. The more or less depends on structure or temperament. Temperament is the iron wire on which the beads are strung. Of what use is fortune or talent to a cold and defective store? — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The books in Mo and Meggie’s house were stacked under tables, on chairs, in the corners of the rooms. There where books in the kitchen and books in the lavatory. Books on the TV set and in the closet, small piles of books, tall piles of books, books thick and thin, books old and new. They welcomed Meggie down to breakfast with invitingly opened pages; they kept boredom at bay when the weather was bad. And sometimes you fall over them. — Cornelia Funke

You must get into the habit of looking intensely at words, and assuring yourself of their meaning, syllable by syllable-nay, letter by letter… you might read all the books in the British Museum (if you could live long enough) and remain an utterly “illiterate,” undeducated person; but if you read ten pages of a good book, letter by letter, – that is to say, with real accuracy- you are for evermore in some measure an educated person. — John Ruskin

There is a theology to gardening that few of us consider, but to understand this theology means relinquishing much control – our arsenal of books, techniques, tools, chemicals, fertilizers, fancy hybrids, and expectations. Yet, that is exactly what we must do if we are to fully embrace a more spiritual form of gardening. As a part of Nature we must learn to enter our garden as if it were truly sacred, we must learn to enter with humility. — Christopher McDowell

A Daring Life: A Biography of Eudora Welty is a beautifully written portrait of Eudora Welty and her amazing life. Carolyn J. Brown carries the reader through Welty’s long, productive writing career and introduces her family and friends along the way. The book’s very readable text, its lovely use of Welty quotes, and its excellent photographs make the work a treasure. This intimate look at Eudora Welty is a welcome addition for her readers. — William R. Ferris

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. — Neil Postman

When it comes to the whole debate today over evolution versus creation, Jesus affirmed the early chapters of Genesis were accurate when He said, “Have you not read, that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female” (Matthew 19:4). Adam and Eve didn’t come on the scene after billions of years of mutations and evolution. No. God created them all the way back in the beginning-just like Moses reported in the Book of Genesis. — Charlie Campbell

I’m pleased to say that it [ a paper on the history of Attica] got much recognition with a 99 grade. It was shown to the Attica Historical Society, who enthusiastically responded to it and read it at one of their annual meetings resulting in an article in the local newspaper about this excellent paper being presented. As I now look back at it, I think of that as being really my first book and did indicate that I did have interest in research. — Paul Smith

“It always seemed to me that the herbaceous peony is the very epitome of June.  Larger than any rose,

it has something of the cabbage rose’s voluminous quality; and when it finally drops from the vase, it

sheds its petticoats with a bump on the table, all in an intact heap, much as a rose will suddenly fall,

making us look up from our book or conversation, to notice for one moment the death of what had

still appeared to be a living beauty.” — Vita Sackville-West

From time to time I have wished to do more work in philosophy of religion, but the demands and challenges have been such that it needed more work than I had time for. I sneaked a chapter into my book on loyalty that touched on some issues in the area. Maybe in the future I will try responding to Philip Kitcher’s excellent critique: Life After Faith: The Case for Secular Humanism – it gets closer to me than much of what is produced in the field. — John Kleinig

I am a reader, a flashlight-under-the-covers, carries-a-book-everywhere-I-go​, don’t-look-at-my-Amazon-bill. I choose purses based on whether I can cram a paperback into them, and my books are the first items I pack into a suitcase. I am the person who family and friends call when they need a book recommendation or cannot remember who wrote Heidi. My identity as a person is so entwined with my love of reading and books that I cannot separate the two. — Donalyn Miller

I didn’t want to teach my kid how to read, so I used to read to him at night and close the book at the most interesting part.  He said, “What happened then, daddy?”  I said, “If you learn to read, you can find out.  I’m too tired to read.  I’ll read to you tomorrow.”  So, he had a need to want to learn how to read.  Don’t teach children how to read.  Don’t teach them mathematics.  Give them a reason to want it.  In school, they’re working ass-backwards. — Jacque Fresco

“The Book, this Holy Book, on every line,

Mark’d with the seal of high divinity,

On every leaf bedew’d with drops of love

Divine, and with the eternal heraldry

And signature of God Almighty stamp’d

From first to last; this ray of sacred light,

This lamp, from off the everlasting throne,

Mercy took down, and in the night of time

Stood, casting on the dark her gracious bow;

And evermore beseeching men With tears

And earnest sighs, to read, believe and live.” — Robert Pollok

It is never appropriate to comment on a woman’s breasts. I would never do it on the street or at a supermarket, but when I’m sitting a table signing books, sometimes I notice that a woman will have remarkable breasts. And I will maybe quietly say something about it. It’s not in a sexual way, because I’m a gay man – I would never say to a man “great ass” because that would be sort of creepy.. I hope it’s not creepy to quietly tell a woman she has nice breasts. — David Sedaris

Well, this is a story about books.” About books?” About accursed books, about a man who wrote them, about a character who broke out of the pages of anovel so that he could burn it, about a betrayal and a lost friendship. It’s a story of love, of hatred, and of the dreams that live in the shadow of the wind.” You talk like the jacket blurb of a Victorian novel, Daniel.” That’s probably because I work in a bookshop and I’ve seen too many. But this is a true story. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

For the record, my own loyalties are uncomplicated. I adore few humans more than I love books. I make no promises, but I do not expect to purchase a Kindle or a Nook or any of their offspring. I hope to keep bringing home bound paper books until my shelves snap from their weight, until there is no room in my apartment for a bed or a couch or another human being, until the floorboards collapse and my eyes blur to dim. But the book, bless it, is not a simple thing. — Ben Ehrenreich

To talk of comparing the Bible with other “sacred books” so called, such as the Koran…or the book of Mormon, is positively absurd. You might as well compare the sun with a rushlight, or Skiddaw with a molehill, or St. Paul’s with an Irish hovel, or the Portland vase with a garden pot, or the Kohinoor diamond with a bit of glass. God seems to have allowed the existence of these pretended revelations, in order to prove the immeasurable superiority of His own Word. — J. C. Ryle

The average detective story is probably no worse than the average novel, but you never see the average novel. It doesn’t get published. The average — or only slightly above average — detective story does…. Whereas the good novel is not at all the same kind of book as the bad novel. It is about entirely different things. But the good detective story and the bad detective story are about exactly the same things, and they are about them in very much the same way. — Raymond Chandler

Bubble gum angels swooped from top margins or scraped their wings between teeming paragraphs, maidens with golden hair dripped sea blue tears into the books spine, grape-colored whales spouted blood around a newspaper item (pasted in) listing arrivals to the endangered spieces list. Six hatchlings cried from shattered shells near an entry made on Easter. Cecilia had filled the pages with a profusion of colors and curlicues, candyland ladders and striped shamrocks. — Jeffrey Eugenides

Its contempt for citizens … is so routine, and so unlimited, that the agency has become a kind of Frankenstein, running wild and terrorizing Americans at will. The IRS hypocritically requires mistake-free returns when its own books are in shambles. It demands exorbitant sums of money without regard to the accuracy of its claims. It doesn’t hesitate to use every possible maneuver to get what it wants, sometimes destroying businesses — and lives — in the process. — James Bovard

I had not seen “Pride and Prejudice,” till I read that sentence of yours, and then I got the book. And what did I find? An accurate daguerreotyped portrait of a common-place face; a carefully fenced, highly cultivated garden, with neat borders and delicate flowers; but no glance of a bright, vivid physiognomy, no open country, no fresh air, no blue hill, no bonny beck. I should hardly like to live with her ladies and gentlemen, in their elegant but confined houses. — Charlotte Bronte

The ancient Greek philosopher Epictetus taught his students that what happens to them is not as important as what they believe happens to them. In this engaging and provocative book, Eldon Taylor provides his readers with specific ways in which their beliefs can lead to success or failure in their life undertakings. Each chapter provides  nuggets of wisdom as well as road maps for guiding them toward greater self-understanding, balance, responsibility, and compassion. — Stanley Krippner

You never want to be the worst bowler of the group-because then everyone treats you like you have cancer. “You can do it! We’re praying for you.” The advice starts. “Use a heavier ball.” “Keep your arm straight.” “You should get a vasectomy.” If you’re really bad at bowling like me, they’ll ask if want the bumpers up. Not that bowling is that complex anyway. “You want the bumpers? We can get rid of the pins. Why don’t you take this coloring book and sit in the corner?” — Jim Gaffigan

It is like most other ancient books – a mingling of falsehood and truth, of philosophy and folly – all written by men, and most of the men only partially civilized. Some of its laws are good – some infinitely barbarous. None of the miracles related were performed. . . . Take out the absurdities, the miracles, all that pertains to the supernatural – all the cruel and barbaric laws – and to the remainder I have no objection. Neither would I have for it any great admiration. — Robert Green Ingersoll

Day after day I read Freud, thinking myself to be very enlightened and scientific when, as a matter of fact, I was about as scientific as an old woman secretly poring over books about occultism, trying to tell her own fortune, and learning how to dope out the future form the lines in the palm of her hand. I don’t know if I ever got very close to needing a padded cell: but if I ever had gone crazy, I think psychoanalysis would have been the one thing chiefly responsible for it. — Thomas Merton

The Bible is not a book for the faint of heart — it is a book full of all the greed and glory and violence and tenderness and sex and betrayal that befits mankind. It is not the collection of pretty little anecdotes mouthed by pious little church mice — it does not so much nibble at our shoe leather as it cuts to the heart and splits the marrow from the bone. It does not give us answers fitted to our small-minded questions, but truth that goes beyond what we even know to ask. — Rich Mullins

Through an experience that simultaneously involved my sensibility and intelligence, I realized early on that the imaginative life, however morbid it might seem, is the one that suits temperaments like mine. The fictions of my imagination (as it later developed) may weary me, but they don’t hurt or humiliate. Impossible lovers can’t cheat on us, or smile at us falsely, or be calculating in their caresses. They never forsake us, and they don’t die or disappear. –The book of Disquiet — Fernando Pessoa

It is not as mirrors reflect us but, rather, as our dreams do, that movies most truly reveal the times. If the dreams we have been dreaming provide a sad picture of us, it should be remembered that – like that first book of Dante’s Comedy – they show forth only one region of the psyche. Through them we can read with a peculiar accuracy the fears and confusions that assail us – we can read, in caricature, the Hell in which we are bound. But we cannot read the best hopes of the time. — Barbara Deming

School did give me one of the greatest gifts of my life, though. I learned how to read, and for that I remain thankful. I would have died otherwise. As soon as I was able, I read, alone. Under the covers with a flashlight or in my corner of the attic—I sought solace in books. It was from books that I started to get an inkling of the kinds of assholes I was dealing with. I found allies too, in books, characters my age who were going through or had triumphed against the same bullshit. — Craig Ferguson

A year after I’d graduated college, I went to a weeklong conference intensive in Boston, and that’s when things kicked into high gear. My workshop leader was a Harvard professor and editor. At the end of the week we met one-on-one over breakfast, and she said, in essence, “Look, you’re ready to turn pro.” She gave me a list of literary agents to query once I had something to show them. I came home and wrote my first real novel, and the agent that sold it to Tor Books was on that list. — Brian Hodge

There are a lot of smart people being really thoughtful and writing really interesting things, but that isn’t what I want to do. It’s never felt like what I’ve been called to do. And I have to risk sounding really arrogant when I say that because I’ve gone to Ivy League schools and been privileged in all these ways in the world of ideas, but I’m not as smart as you think. I’m not really depending on what I learned in college to write my books. Those were just parts of my life experience. — Ottessa Moshfegh

One June evening, when the orchards were pink-blossomed again, when the frogs were singing silverly sweet in the marshes about the head of the Lake of Shining Waters, and the air was full of the savor of clover fields and balsamic fir woods, Anne was sitting by her gable window. She had been studying her lessons, but it had grown too dark to see the book, so she had fallen into wide-eyed reverie, looking out past the boughs of the Snow Queen, once more bestarred with its tufts of blossom. — Lucy Maud Montgomery

A is for Alibi, my first book, was published in 1982. As it happened the next couple of books took place in June and August of that year. Without meaning to I painted myself into a corner. The other issue was the aging process. I did not want my main character to age one year for every book so I slowed the whole process down. This way I could get through all 26 letters of the alphabet without making her 109 years old in 2015. I might end the series in either 1990 or on New Years Eve 1989. — Sue Grafton

O thou who art able to write a Book, which once in the two centuries or oftener there is a man gifted to do, envy not him whom they name City-builder, and inexpressibly pity him whom they name Conqueror or City-burner! Thou too art a Conqueror and Victor; but of the true sort, namely over the Devil: thou too hast built what will outlast all marble and metal, and be a wonder-bringing City of the Mind, a Temple and Seminary and Prophetic Mount, whereto all kindreds of the Earth will pilgrim. — Thomas Carlyle

“One should put forth great effort in matters of learning. One should read books concerning military matters, and direct his attention exclusively to

 the virtues of loyalty and filial piety. Reading Chinese poetry, linked

 verse, and waka is forbidden. One will surely become womanized if he gives

 his heart such knowledge of such elegant and delicate refinements. Having

 been born into the house of a warrior, one’s intentions should be to grasp

 the long and the short swords and to die” — Kato Kiyomasa

How hard is it to build an intelligent machine? I don’t think it’s so hard, but that’s my opinion, and I’ve written two books on how I think one should do it. The basic idea I promote is that you mustn’t look for a magic bullet. You mustn’t look for one wonderful way to solve all problems. Instead you want to look for 20 or 30 ways to solve different kinds of problems. And to build some kind of higher administrative device that figures out what kind of problem you have and what method to use. — Marvin Minsky

I used to feel guilty about spending morning hours working on a book; about fleeing to the brook in the afternoon. It took several summers of being totally frazzled by September to make me realize that this was a false guilt. I’m much more use to family and friends when I’m not physically and spiritually depleted than when I spend my energies as though they were unlimited. They are not. The time at the typewriter and the time at the brook refresh me and put me into a more workable perspective. — Madeleine L’Engle

In this age of space flight, when we use the modern tools of science to advance into new regions of human activity, the Bible… remains in every way an up-to-date book. Our knowledge and use of the laws of nature that enable us to fly to the Moon also enable us to destroy our home planet with the atom bomb. Science itself does not address the question whether we should use the power at our disposal for good or for evil. The guidelines of what we ought to do are furnished in the moral law of God. — Wernher von Braun

I want to see all the countries in the world and learn all the languages. I want to have thousands of friends and I want all my friends to be different. I want to play six instruments. I want to be the best in the world at two things. I want to be a great athlete and I want to be a great surgeon. I need to practice very hard every day. I need to sleep as little as possible. I need to read at least one major book every week. And I need to remember that my seventy years are going to go by too quickly. — Diana Nyad

Over the years I have photographed thousands of people. I have never stopped being curious and trying to discover new worlds. I have used my camera as a mirror for my subjects as well. I remember photographing a woman in her 80s for my book, Wise Women, who told me it had been a long time since anyone had really been interested in “seeing” or photographing her. When she saw the picture, she burst into tears. She saw something in the photograph, an inner beauty and soul, she felt had long ago vanished. — Joyce Tenneson

I Need a Good Book I need a good story. I need a good book. The kind that explodes Off the shelf. I need some good writing, Alive and exciting, To contemplate all by myself. I need a good novel, I need a good read. I probably need Two or three. I need a good tale Of love and betrayal Or perhaps an adventure at sea. I need a good saga. I need a good yarn. A momentous and mightily Or slight one. But with thousands and thousands And thousands of books, I need someone to tell me The right one. -John Lithgow — John Lithgow

I’m really fascinated by how the mob ethos permeates places like Las Vegas and Chicago. I have the book set in Las Vegas and Chicago for pretty specific reasons, some of which are that in both cases the mob history has become a tourist attraction – I’m actually doing a book signing in Las Vegas at The Mob Museum, which I am positively giddy about! – and I find that especially unusual. If you don’t call these people “the Mafia” they’re just a band of psychopaths killing people for profoundly dumb reasons. — Tod Goldberg

Watching Italians eat (especially men, I have to say) is a form of tourism the books don’t tell you about. They close their eyes, raise their eyebrows into accent marks, and make sounds of acute appreciation. It’s fairly sexy. Of course I don’t know how these men behave at home, if they help with the cooking or are vain and boorish and mistreat their wives. I realized Mediterranean cultures have their issues. Fine, don’t burst my bubble. I didn’t want to marry these guys, I just wanted to watch. (p. 247) — Barbara Kingsolver

Darkroom: A Memoir in Black and White is remarkable for its truth-telling about two important issues concerning Alabama’s past and present: the civil rights movement and immigration. These stories, rendered through the words and eyes of a young Latina girl who came from Argentina to Marion, Alabama, are made vivid and immediate through Weaver’s highly accessible drawings and dialogue. This is a book-about maturation, family, education, and social change-every schoolchild, parent, and citizen should experience. — Sena Jeter Naslund

I elbowed my way into the grubby café, bought a pie that tasted of shoe polish and a pot of tea with cork crumbs floating in it, and eavesdropped on a pair of Shetland pony breeders. Despondency makes one hanker after lives one never led. Why have you given your life to books, TC? Dull, dull, dull! The memoirs are bad enough, but all that ruddy fiction! Hero goes on a journey, stranger comes to town, somebody wants something, they get it or they don’t, will is pitted against will. “Admire me, for I am a metaphor. — David Mitchell

There!” Mars finished writing and threw the scroll at Octavian. “A prophecy. You can add it to your books, engrave it on the floor, whatever.” Octavian read the scroll. “This says, ‘Go to Alaska. Find Thanatos and free him. Come back by sundown on June twenty-fourth or die’.” “Yes,” Mars said. “Is that not clear?” “Well, my lord…usually prophecies are unclear. They’re wrapped in riddles. They rhyme, and…” Mars casually popped another grenade off his belt. “Yes?” “The prophecy is clear!” Octavian announced. “A quest! — Rick Riordan

As a technology, the book is like a hammer. That is to say, it is perfect: a tool ideally suited to its task. Hammers can be tweaked and varied but will never go obsolete. Even when builders pound nails by the thousand with pneumatic nail guns, every household needs a hammer. Likewise, the bicycle is alive and well. It was invented in a world without automobiles, and for speed and range it was quickly surpassed by motorcycles and all kinds of powered scooters. But there is nothing quaint about bicycles. They outsell cars. — James Gleick

A lot of my books deal with very controversial issues that most people often don’t want to talk about, issues that, in my country, are more likely to get put under the carpet than get discussed. And when you talk about moral conundrums, about shades of gray, what you’re doing is asking the people who want the world to be black and white to realize instead that maybe it’s all right if it isn’t. I know you’ll learn something picking up my books, but my goal as a writer is not to teach you but to make you ask more questions. — Steven Tyler

We must sometimes get away from the Authorized Version, if for no other reason, simply because it is so beautiful and so solemn. Beauty exalts, but beauty also lulls. Early associations endear, but they also confuse. Through that beautiful solemnity, the transporting or horrifying realities of which the Book tells may come to us blunted and disarmed, and we may only sigh with tranquil veneration when we ought to be burning with shame, or struck dumb with terror, or carried out of ourselves by ravishing hopes and adorations. — C. S. Lewis

It’s a bunch of bull! If God, or nature, or whatever you want to call it didn’t want you to mix carbohydrates, starches and fats, you’d never have a grain, you’d never have a vegetable or a fruit, would you? What’s in a grain? It’s got carbohydrates, starches, fats, sugar. It’s got everything in it. Why does nature do that? One guy says don’t mix carbohydrates, and the other guy says don’t mix protein with it; it’s all a bunch of lard, something to sell a book. And the poor public is so confused, they don’t know what to do. — Jack LaLanne

I grew up in a home where animals were ever-present and often dominated our lives. There were always horses, dogs, and cats, as well as a revolving infirmary of injured wildlife being nursed by my sister the aspiring vet. Without any conscious intention on my part, animals come to play a significant role in my fiction: in Three Junes, a parrot and a pack of collies; in The Whole World Over, a bulldog named The Bruce. To dog lovers, by the way, I recommend My Dog Tulip by J. R. Ackerley — by far the best ‘animal book’ I’ve ever read. — Julia Glass

I think that most of my books are part of some process of self-education, often about the places I go to. Most of all, they are about the peculiar tension between institutional loyalty and loyalty to oneself; the mystery of patriotism, for a Brit of my age and generation, where it runs, how it should be defined, what it’s worth and what a corrupting force it can be when misapplied. All that stuff is just in me and it comes out in the characters. I don’t mean to preach, but I know I do, and I’m a very flawed person. It’s quite ridiculous. — John le Carre

The text moves like a small crustacean with compound eye and complex nervous system; throbbing, involuted, it becomes a parasite on a different body, animal, using ‘filiform protrusions through which it sucks the vital juices of its host.’ Parasite or creature in mutation on the shore, torrid / delirium: mordant mortality, systematic competition the narrator against the I, leaking gas, a lapse of memory against a promise, an inset in a book. A muscular, involuntary bulging in the breast, circling all its inner surface: mesoblast: visceral. — Nicole Brossard

Brian Myers takes a fresh approach. He largely ignores what the regime tells the outside world about itself, but concentrates instead on what North Koreans themselves are supposed to believe, paying special attention to the North Korean narratives and mass culture, including movies and television shows. (…) There are few books that can give the world a peek into the Hermit Kingdom. The Cleanest Race provides a reason to care about how those in North Korea see themselves and the West. It is possibly the best addition to that small library. — Andrei Lankov

The Bible is a wonderful book. It is the truth about the Truth. It is not the Truth. A sermon taken from the Bible can be a wonderful thing to hear. It is the truth about the truth about the truth. But it is not the truth. There have been many books written about the things contained in the Bible. I have written some myself. They can be quite wonderful to read. They are the truth about the truth about truth about the Truth. But they are NOT the Truth. Only Jesus Christ is the Truth. Sometimes the Truth can be drowned in a multitude of words. — Richard Wurmbrand

Kanematsu Sugiura…..took down lab books and showed me that in fact Laetrile is dramatically effective in stopping the spread of cancer. The animals were genetically programmed to get breast cancer and about 80 – 90% of them normally get spread of the cancer from the breast to the lungs which is a common route in humans, also for how people die of breast cancer, and instead when they gave the animals Laetrile by injection only 10-20% of them got lung metasteses. And these facts were verified by many people, including the pathology department. — Ralph W. Moss

The Bible is the written word of God, and because it is written it is confined and limited by the necessities of ink and paper and leather. The Voice of God, however, is alive and free as the sovereign God is free. ‘The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.’ The life is in the speaking words. God’s word in the Bible can have power only because it corresponds to God’s Word in the universe. It is the present Voice which makes the written word powerful. Otherwise it would lie locked in slumber within the covers of a book. — Aiden Wilson Tozer

The Deliverator belongs to an elite order, a hallow subcategory. He’s got esprit up to here. Right now, he is preparing to carry out his third mission of the night. His uniform is black as activated charcoal, filtering the very light out of the air. A bullet will bounce off its arachnofiber weave like a wren hitting a patio door, but excess perspiration wafts through it like a breeze through a freshly napalmed forest. Where his body has bony extremities, the suit has sintered armorgel: feels like gritty jello, protects like a stack of telephone books. — Neal Stephenson

It is clear that there must be difficulties for us in a revelation such as the Bible. If someone were to hand me a book that was as simple to me as the multiplication table and say, “This is the Word of God; in it He has revealed His whole will and wisdom,” I would shake my head and say, “I cannot believe it; that is too easy to be a perfect revelation of infinite wisdom.” There must be, in any complete revelation of God’s mind and will and character and being, things hard for the beginner to understand; and the wisest and best of us are but beginners. — R. A. Torrey

I wrote as a kid, but I never wanted to be a writer particularly. I had been drawing and painting for years and loved that. And I meditate, and one time when I was meditating, I started thinking, “Gee Gail, you love stories — you read all the time. How come you never tell yourself a story?” While I should have been saying my mantra to myself, I started telling myself a story. It turned out to be an art appreciation book for kids with reproductions of famous artworks and pencil drawings that I did. I tried to get it published and was rejected wholesale. — Gail Carson Levine

I’m not much of a self-promoter or anything. It’s not something I feel comfortable doing. But sometimes I would get frustrated, I’d think, “You know, this is a good book, how come no one is paying attention to it?” So it’s nice to have some recognition. I don’t write to put it in a drawer, I hope that people see it. But what am I willing to do for that? I struggle with that a little bit. I try to be accommodating, but I’m pretty much a loner. I’ll say this, and it’ll sound like bullshit, but it’s not: I don’t really pay attention to this stuff very much. — Paul Beatty

Train yourselves. Don’t wait to be fed knowledge out of a book. Get out and seek it. Make explorations. Do your own research work. Train your hands and your mind. Become curious. Invent your own problems and solve them. You can see things going on all about you. Inquire into them. Seek out answers to your own questions. There are many phenomena going on in nature the explanation of which cannot be found in books. Find out why these phenomena take place. Information a boy gets by himself is enormously more valuable than that which is taught to him in school. — Irving Langmuir

Yes, I know, shaming, isn’t it? I always say you can take the girl out of the 80s, but you can’t take the 80s out of the girl. Before I wrote my first novel, I was reading one of the self-help classics – and it’s as cheesy as you like, so feel free to laugh, Guardian readers – called Awaken The Giant Within, by Tony Robbins, and it inspired me to try. I like motivational books, because I like the go-getting American spirit – your destiny is in your own hands, life is what you make it, don’t accept your limitations, jump before you’re pushed, leap before you look. — Louise Mensch

This is a major, wide-ranging, and comprehensive book. A philosophical investigation that is also a literary and historical study, Truth and Truthfulness asks how and why we have come to think of accuracy, sincerity, and authenticity as virtues. Bernard Williams’ account of their emergence is as detailed and imaginative as his defense of their importance is spirited and provocative. Williams asks hard questions, and gives them straightforward and controversial answers. His book does not simply describe and advocate these virtues of truthfulness; it manifests them. — Alexander Nehamas

His [Thomas Edison] method was inefficient in the extreme, for an immense ground had to be covered to get anything at all unless blind chance intervened and, at first, I was almost a sorry witness of his doings, knowing that just a little theory and calculation would have saved him 90 per cent of the labor. But he had a veritable contempt for book learning and mathematical knowledge, trusting himself entirely to his inventor’s instinct and practical American sense. In view of this, the truly prodigious amount of his actual accomplishments is little short of a miracle. — Nikola Tesla

…One of the most important lessons, perhaps, is the fact that SOFTWARE IS HARD. From now on I shall have significantly greater respect for every successful software tool that I encounter. During the past decade I was surprised to learn that the writing of programs for TeX and Metafont proved to be much more difficult than all the other things I had done (like proving theorems or writing books). The creation of good software demand a significiantly higher standard of accuracy than those other things do, and it requires a longer attention span than other intellectual tasks. — Donald Knuth

The whole history of these books (i.e. the Gospels) is so defective and doubtful that it seems vain to attempt minute enquiry into it: and such tricks have been played with their text, and with the texts of other books relating to them, that we have a right, from that cause, to entertain much doubt what parts of them are genuine. In the New Testament there is internal evidence that parts of it have proceeded from an extraordinary man; and that other parts are of the fabric of very inferior minds. It is as easy to separate those parts, as to pick out diamonds from dunghills. — Thomas Jefferson

I think being raised within a Mexican Catholic family made magical realism a very natural part of who I am as a person and as a writer. My parents always told us great stories that often had magical elements and roots within Mexican folklore. Also, I remember my father reading a book to me, when I was very young, about the lives of saints. Those were crazy scary stories! Maybe he was trying to scare me into being a good person. In the end, magical realism offers me untethered freedom to explore human frailty and the way we clumsily cobble together our lives on this strange planet. — Daniel Olivas

If one is going to offer children stories that underneath the story must be something that will inform, stimulate and guide, I love to be on board. I think anything that resonates with history, as does The Jungle Book and Watership Down, reflects patterns of behavior, power struggles, deprivation, migration, survival, joy, love, betrayal, and all of these things. It’s tragic that children are encouraged to ignore history. We ignore history and any literature that is historically based in history. Even though both of those films involved animals, of course they reflect human behavior. — Ben Kingsley