Book famous quotes
Last updated: Sep 5, 2024
-
For 10 or 11 years, I had my kids, I wrote four or five books, and I was working all the damn time.
-- Anne Enright -
The only way to write a book, I’m fond of telling people, is to actually write a book. That’s how you write a book.
-- Anne Enright -
If you truly love a book, you should sleep with it, write in it, read aloud from it, and fill its pages with muffin crumbs.
-- Anne Fadiman -
My daughter is seven, and some of the other second-grade parents complain that their children don't read for pleasure. When I visit their homes, the children's rooms are crammed with expensive books, but the parent's rooms are empty. Those children do not see their parents reading, as I did every day of my childhood. By contrast, when I walk into an apartment with books on the shelves, books on the bedside tables, books on the floor, and books on the toilet tank, then I know what I would see if I opened the door that says 'PRIVATE--GROWNUPS KEEP OUT': a child sprawled on the bed, reading.
-- Anne Fadiman -
In my view, nineteen pounds of old books are at least nineteen times as delicious as one pound of fresh caviar.
-- Anne Fadiman -
I can think of few better ways to introduce a child to books than to let her stack them, upend them, rearrange them, and get her fingerprints all over them.
-- Anne Fadiman -
Books wrote our life story, and as they accumulated on our shelves (and on our windowsills, and underneath our sofa, and on top of our refrigerator), they became chapters in it themselves.
-- Anne Fadiman -
I have never been able to resist a book about books.
-- Anne Fadiman -
Some day, as soon as a book is printed it will be simultaneously put into digital form. That will be a wonderful research tool, but it will never substitute for holding the book. I feel certain that at least within my lifetime, everyone will still be going to the bookstore and buying printed books. Thank God I'll die before I have to worry about whether the printed book itself will disappear. That's something I don't want to live to see.
-- Anne Fadiman -
I'd rather have a book, but in a pinch I'll settle for a set of Water Pik instructions.
-- Anne Fadiman -
when I walk into an apartment with books on the shelves, books on the bedside tables, books on the floor, and books on the toilet tank, then I know what I would see if I opened the door that says Private - grownups keep out: a children sprawled on the bed, reading.
-- Anne Fadiman -
I am very grateful to the electronic world for making my life easier, but there is something about holding a book - the smell and the world of association. Even when e-books are perfected, as they surely will be, it will be like being in bed with a very well-made robot rather than a warm, soft, human being whom you love.
-- Anne Fadiman -
...the reader who plucks a book from her shelf only once is as deprived as the listener who, after attending a single performance of a Beethoven symphony, never hears it again.
-- Anne Fadiman -
One of the convenient things about literature is that, despite copyrights [...] a book belongs to the reader as well as to the writer.
-- Anne Fadiman -
I, on the other hand, believe that books, maps, scissors, and Scotch tape dispensers are all unreliable vagrants, likely to take off for parts unknown unless strictly confined to quarters.
-- Anne Fadiman -
When the Irish novelist John McGahern was a child, his sisters unlaced and removed one of his shoes while he was reading. He did not stir. They placed a straw hat on his head. No response. Only when they took away the wooden chair on which he was sitting did he, as he puts it, 'wake out of the book'.
-- Anne Fadiman -
To use an electronics analogy, closing a book on a bookmark is like pressing the Stop button, whereas when you leave the book facedown, you've only pressed Pause.
-- Anne Fadiman -
The Most Secret Quintessence of Life is an original work filled with rich, new research, relying on important primary literature which has not, until now, been plumbed and digested. In this book, Chandak Sengoopta offers both a history of hormone discovery and a chronicle of how this discovery transformed our concepts of the body and how our existing concepts of sex and sexuality, in turn, informed our concepts for understanding hormones.
-- Anne Fausto-Sterling -
Living your life is a long and doggy business. . . . And stories and books help. Some help you with the living itself. Some help you just take a break. The best do both at the same time.
-- Anne Fine -
The Amazons is a stupendous achievement--a long-anticipated centerpiece in the great puzzle of humankind. The story of these forbidden women, silenced for so long by the rigidity of traditional scholarship, is as exciting and surprising as a bestselling murder mystery; I simply couldn't put it down. Through scholarly brilliance and passion, Adrienne Mayor has opened the door to a forgotten world of gender equality, and her book ought to be required reading in every college history course.
-- Anne Fortier -
The Hawley Book of the Dead had me completely spellbound from beginning to end. A storytelling virtuosa, Chrysler Szarlan has woven a wondrous, scintillating web of suspense, love, history, and magic that will keep you eagerly turning the pages late into the night. Even readers not normally drawn to the supernatural will be swept away by this book; it has everything a great adventure should have-and so much more.
-- Anne Fortier -
If I read a book that impresses me, I have to take myself firmly by the hand, before I mix with other people; otherwise they would think my mind rather queer.
-- Anne Frank -
If I'm engrossed in a book, I have to rearrange my thoughts before I can mingle with other people, because otherwise they might think I was strange.
-- Anne Frank -
Ordinary people simply don't know what books mean to us, shut up here. Reading, learning, and the radio are our amusements.
-- Anne Frank -
I can't think of any flower that wouldn't be suitable to merge with an image of a newborn, and as I was planning for the book, Miracle, I was drawn to blossoms that appealed to me artistically.
-- Anne Geddes -
My life's goal is not to write books; my life's goal is to know God better today. The neat thing about a goal like that is you can achieve it. Faith is constant; it's a relationship.
-- Anne Graham Lotz -
I felt that one of the things God impressed on me was that I needed to start a nonprofit corporation, so that any money that came my way, whether it was an honorarium, a book sale or a gift, would go into a nonprofit ministry.
-- Anne Graham Lotz -
Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report written on birds that he'd had three months to write, which was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books about birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him put his arm around my brother's shoulder, and said, "Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.
-- Anne Lamott -
I used to tell my writing students that they must write the books they wished they could come upon - because then the books they hungered and thirsted for would exist.
-- Anne Lamott -
This is one thing they forget to mention in most child-rearing books, that at times you will just lose your mind. Period.
-- Anne Lamott -
Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die.
-- Anne Lamott -
Two things put me in the spirit to give. One is that I have come to think of everyone with whom I come into contast as a patient in the emergency room. I see a lot of gaping wounds and dazed expressions. Or, as Marianne Moore put it, "The world's an orphan's home." And this feels more true than almost anything else I know. But so many of us can be soothed by writing: think of how many times you have opened a book, read one line, and said, "Yes!" And I want to give people that feeling, too, of connection, communication.
-- Anne Lamott -
For some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die.
-- Anne Lamott -
We were raised to believe in books, music, and nature.
-- Anne Lamott -
Some people may have thought that this book was too personal, too confessional. But what these people think about me is none of my business.
-- Anne Lamott -
For some of us, good books and beautiful writing are our ultimate solace, even more comforting than exquisite food.
-- Anne Lamott -
I devoured books like a person taking vitamins, afraid that otherwise I would remain this gelatinous narcissist, with no possibility of ever becoming thoughtful, of ever being taken seriously.
-- Anne Lamott -
No matter how people mess with you or let you down, or how you let yourself down, a good book means that when you get in bed that night, you have a good hour. I feel like you pay all day for that hour. That's what books mean to me. I can open this two-dimensional , flat white page with squiggly little black marks on them, and someone has created this world that you're going to enter into ...
-- Anne Lamott -
E-books are great for instant gratification - you see a review somewhere of a book that interests you, and you can start reading it five minutes later.
-- Anne Lamott -
I try to write the books I would love to come upon that are honest, concerned with real lives, human hearts, spiritual transformation, families, secrets, wonder, craziness - and that can make me laugh.
-- Anne Lamott -
Who you are, what your values are, what you stand forthey are your anchor, your north star. You won't find them in a book. You'll find them in your soul.
-- Anne M. Mulcahy -
I have a shelf of comfort books, which I read when the world closes in on me or something untoward happens
-- Anne McCaffrey -
I don't often reread my own books, unless I am going into another in the series and need to refresh my mood when originating the concept
-- Anne McCaffrey -
At age 77, I need the help of someone with more energy than I can now summon to finish a book
-- Anne McCaffrey -
Hold a book in your hand and you're a pilgrim at the gates of a new city.
-- Anne Michaels -
When my parents were liberated, four years before I was born, they found that the ordinary world outside the camp had been eradicated. There was no more simple meal, no thing was less than extraordinary: a fork, a mattress, a clean shirt, a book. Not to mention such things that can make one weep: an orange, meat and vegetables, hot water. There was no ordinariness to return to, no refuge from the blinding potency of things, an apple screaming its sweet juice.
-- Anne Michaels -
Give me a man or woman who has read a thousand books and you give me an interesting companion. Give me a man or woman who has read perhaps three and you give me a very dangerous enemy indeed.
-- Anne Rice -
And books, they offer one hope -- that a whole universe might open up from between the covers, and falling into that universe, one is saved.
-- Anne Rice -
Advice to a new writer: There are no rules in this profession. Do what is good for you. Read books and watch films that stimulate your writing. In your writing, go where the pain is; go where the pleasure is; go where the excitement is. Believe in your own original approach, voice, characters, story. Ignore critics. Have nerve. Be stubborn.
-- Anne Rice -
My heart right now is totally connected to a book called The Servant of the Bones, which is not in any way connected with vampires or witches. It's about a new hero, a ghost, who really doesn't particularly like the job that he's been given. I'm in love with this hero and in love with his dilemma.
-- Anne Rice -
I read The Old Curiosity Shop before I began Blackwood Farm. I was amazed at the utter madness in that book.
-- Anne Rice -
Stephen King in many respects is a wonderful writer. He has made a contribution. People in the future will be able to pick up Stephen King's books and learn a lot about who we were by reading those books.
-- Anne Rice -
What is written beneath this heavy handsome book cover will count, so sayeth this cover…
-- Anne Rice -
Somebody said writing is easy, you just sit down at your typewriter and open a vein. It depends on the book. Some, I have to do quite a lot of research, which I like. Others are much closer to me.
-- Anne Rivers Siddons -
You have to be a lover of books without expecting more of them than they give - a little pleasure, a little insight, a moment of escape, a deepening of your own humanity. Not much else.
-- Anne Roiphe -
If I were planning to be stranded on a desert island, I wouldn't take Freud's books with me, because I've already read them all.
-- Anne Roiphe -
Only my books anoint me, and a few friends, those who reach into my veins.
-- Anne Sexton -
I hoard books. They are people who do not leave.
-- Anne Sexton -
Blake has always been a favorite, the lyrics, not so much the prophetic books, but I suppose Yeats influenced me more as a young poet, and the American, Robert Frost.
-- Anne Stevenson -
I did know Ted Hughes and I partly wrote the book to explain to myself and others the complexities of a marriage that was for six years wonderfully productive of poetry and then ended in tragedy.
-- Anne Stevenson -
But what I hope for from a book - either one that I write or one that I read - is transparency. I want the story to shine through. I don't want to think of the writer.
-- Anne Tyler -
I can never tell ahead of time which book will give me trouble - some balk every step of the way, others seem to write themselves - but certainly the mechanics of writing, finding the time and the psychic space, are easier now that my children are grown.
-- Anne Tyler -
I think I was born with the impression that what happened in books was much more reasonable, and interesting, and real, in some ways, than what happened in life.
-- Anne Tyler -
I hated childhood, and spent it sitting behind a book waiting for adulthood to arrive.
-- Anne Tyler -
Hazel had read enough books to know that a line like this one is the line down which your life breaks in two. And you have to think very carefully about whether you want to cross it, because once you do it’s very hard to get back to the world you left behind. And sometimes you break a barrier that no one knew existed, and then everything you knew before crossing the line is gone. But sometimes you have a friend to rescue. And so you take a deep breath and then step over the line and into the darkness ahead.
-- Anne Ursu -
She looked at her shelves, filled with books in which the bad stuff that happened to people was caused by things like witches who lured people into the woods. In a weird way, the world seemed to make more sense that way.
-- Anne Ursu -
This book's title, Rough Beauty , conveys Anderson's conviction that the hard scrabble lives of most of the residents of Vidor, Texas, are worthy of our attention, but it also conveys that he does not seek to beautify their lives by removing the crude edges.
-- Anne Wilkes Tucker -
You know how I love talking about books, and you know how I adore receiving compliments.
-- Annie Barrows -
We clung to books and to our friends; they reminded us that we had another part to us.
-- Annie Barrows -
She read books as one would breathe air, to fill up and live.
-- Annie Dillard -
I do not so much write a book as sit up with it, as a dying friend. I hold its hand and hope it will get better.
-- Annie Dillard -
The reader's ear must adjust down from loud life to the subtle, imaginary sounds of the written word. An ordinary reader picking up a book can't yet hear a thing; it will take half an hour to pick up the writing's modulations, its ups and downs and louds and softs.
-- Annie Dillard -
I cannot imagine a sorrier pursuit than struggling for years to write a book that attempts to appeal to people who do not read in the first place.
-- Annie Dillard -
One of the few things I know about writing is this: Spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book, give it, give it all, give it now.
-- Annie Dillard -
This is the book I never read ~ These are the words I never said ~ This is the path I'll never tread ~ These are the dreams I'll dream instead
-- Annie Lennox -
You don't make a photograph just with a camera. You bring to the act of photography all the pictures you have seen, the books you have read, the music you have heard, the people you have loved.
-- Ansel Adams -
The book, the idea of a book or the image of a book, is a symbol of learning, of transmitting knowledge.. I make my own books to find my way through the old stories.
-- Anselm Kiefer -
J.R.R.Tolkien has confessed that about a third of the way through The Fellowship of the Ring, some ruffian named Strider confronted the hobbits in an inn, and Tolkien was in despair. He didn't know who Strider was, where the book was going, or what to write next. Strider turns out to be no lesser person than Aragorn, the unrecognized and uncrowned king of all the forces of good, whose restoration to rule is, along with the destruction of the evil ring, the engine that moves the plot of the whole massive trilogy, The Lord of the Rings.
-- Ansen Dibell -
A book can teach you, a conversation can assure you, a poem can seduce you, a genius can inspire you but only you can save yourself.
-- Anthony Anaxagorou -
When my father passed, I was still an unsuccessful cook with a drug problem. I was in my mid-thirties, standing behind an oyster bar, cracking clams for a living when he died. So, he never saw me complete a book or achieve anything of note. I would have liked to have shared this with him.
-- Anthony Bourdain -
I listen a lot to how people speak. I've read a great many good books in my life. I had some excellent English teachers. Surely, those things were helpful.
-- Anthony Bourdain -
I am a delightfully evangelical guy about things I love. I am that annoying guy who sits everyone down and forces them to read some book I like. I'm looking across the full spectrum of genres.
-- Anthony Bourdain -
When I'm doing a book tour in the States, I'll wake up in the room sometimes in an anonymous chain hotel, and I don't know where I am right away. I'll go to the window, and it doesn't help there either, especially if you're in an anonymous strip and it's the usual Victoria's Secret, Gap, Chili's, Applebee's.
-- Anthony Bourdain -
Picture books are for everybody at any age, not books to be left behind as we grow older.
-- Anthony Browne -
Picture books are being marginalised. I get the feeling children are being pushed away from picture books earlier and earlier and being told to look at proper books, which means books without pictures.
-- Anthony Browne -
Maurice Sendak is the daddy of them all when it comes to picture books - the words, the rhythm, the psychology, the design.
-- Anthony Browne -
As a boy, I devoured comics but never saw what we now describe as a picture book.
-- Anthony Browne -
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 -
The book I am best known for, or only known for, is a novel I am prepared to repudiate: written a quarter of a century ago, a jeu d'esprit knocked off for money in three weeks, it became known as the raw material for a film which seemed to glorify sex and violence. The film made it easy for readers of the book to misunderstand what it was about, and the misunderstanding will pursue me till I die. I should not have written the book because of this danger of misinterpretation.
-- Anthony Burgess -
Blockbusting fiction is bought as furniture. Unread, it maintains its value. Read, it looks like money wasted. Cunningly, Americans know that books contain a person, and they want the person, not the book.
-- Anthony Burgess -
The adult relation to books is one of absorbing rather than being absorbed.
-- Anthony Burgess -
The possession of a book becomes a substitute for reading it.
-- Anthony Burgess -
Books in a large university library system: 2,000,000. Books in an average large city library: 10,000. Average number of books in a chain bookstore: 30,000. Books in an average neighborhood branch library: 20,000.
-- Anthony Burgess -
A writer arrived at the monastery to write a book about the Master. "People say you are a genius . Are you?" he asked. "You might say so." said the Master, none too modestly. "And what makes one a genius?" "The ability to recognize." "Recognize what?" "The butterfly in a caterpillar: the eagle in an egg; the saint in a selfish human being.
-- Anthony de Mello -
I'm going to write a book someday and the title will be I'm an Ass, You're an Ass. That's the most liberating, wonderful thing in the world, when you openly admit you're an ass. It's wonderful. When people tell me, You're wrong I say, What can you expect of an ass?
-- Anthony de Mello -
Here's what I mean by the miracle of language. When you're falling into a good book, exactly as you might fall into a dream, a little conduit opens, a passageway between a reader's heart and a writer's, a connection that transcends the barriers of continents and generations and even death ... And here's the magic. You're different. You can never go back to being exactly the same person you were before you disappeared into that book.
-- Anthony Doerr -
We live through books; we have adventures in them, we lead alternative lives through them. We expand our memories through them. And that sometimes art can offer us more intense experiences of the world than life itself can.
-- Anthony Doerr -
I write reviews of science books for the Boston Globe, so I like to give science books.
-- Anthony Doerr -
I first got to know Charles in the late seventies when I wrote an article and then a book about him and I think at the time he came across as quite appealing, it was probably the height of his popularity.
-- Anthony Holden -
While the 1980 book was being serialized in the Sunday Times, Charles attacked it through the Observer.
-- Anthony Holden