Book Quotes

I write the big scenes first, that is, the scenes that carry the meaning of the book, the emotional experience.

I am a huge comic book fan, and I love everything vintage: cars, movies, music, art, and style - especially the 1950s style.

The first book really was kind of an entertaining textbook for the homemaker. I couldn't find a good book about entertaining in 1982, and neither could my friend, so I decided to write it.

Honorary degrees and lifetime achievement awards are very encouraging. I know that it might sound strange that a writer who has published many books still needs encouragement, but this is true.

Never tell anyone that you're writing a book, going on a diet, exercising, taking a course, or quitting smoking. They'll encourage you to death.

A plate of apples, an open fire, and a jolly good book are a fair substitute for heaven.

A great book begins with an idea; a great life, with a determination.

Most people's first books are their best anyways. It's the one they wanted most to write.

It ought to be a crime for any woman to have children that writes books.

There is no shortage of wonderful writers. What we lack is a dependable mass of readers.

I had no books at home. I started to frequent a public library in Lisbon. It was there, with no help except curiosity and the will to learn, that my taste for reading developed and was refined.

I'm not a huge comic book fan, but I'm a closet fan of certain Marvel heroes, two of those being Iron Man, and the other being Guardians of the Galaxy, which I'm looking forward to.

If you want to make a little money, write a book. If you want to make a lot of money, create a religion.

Writing a book is incredibly pleasurable, but very solitary. You have total control, but sometimes that can drive you insane.

You cannot judge a book by its contents.

I keep one simple rule that I only move in one direction - I write the book straight through from beginning to end. By following time's arrow I keep myself sane.

To create a market for your writing you have to be consistent, professional, a continuing writer - not just a one-article or a one-story or a one-book man.

Alternative cartoonists have to rely on comic book stores to get their stuff in the hands of readers.

I didn't write the book to sell the book, but to tell my experiences.

And Silence of the Lambs is a really smart book.

If it's a good book, anyone will read it. I'm totally unashamed about still reading things I loved in my childhood.

People had this image of the Jacksons as the perfect American family and I destroyed that image. But what people have to understand is writing that book was very healing for me.

I love an author the more for having been himself a lover of books.

Drink deeply from good books.

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.

There is no 'one-size-fits-all' way to build an audience.

I like a lot of talk in a book and I don't like to have nobody tell me what the guy that's talking looks like. I want to figure out what he looks like from the way he talks.

If we could follow the slogan that says,"Turn off the TV and open a good book" we would do something of substance for a future generation.

With most of my books, I'll actually go out and look at the setting. If you describe things carefully, it kind of makes the scene pop.

Books are divided into two classes, the books of the hour and the books of all time.

I look at 'The New York Review of Books.' It's what it has been for 35 or 40 years, which is a highly sophisticated vehicle for anti-American self-hatred.

I'm opening a store at the end of the month in the New York meatpacking district. I'm launching a line of bedding this summer, and I am writing a book that will be out next January.

I don't know why people enjoy what I do. I play piano and sing a few songs - and that's about as exciting as I want it to get. The people who come to my shows will have to bring a good book!

Not to know me argues yourselves unknown.

If Brideshead Revisited is not a great book, it's so like a great book that many of us, at least while reading it, find it hard to tell the difference.

I read all the time. I was reading a book I admire very much by Alice McDermot called Charming Billy.

Books make great gifts because they're something you love that you can share.

The book Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story, I read it when I was about 17-and-a-half or 18. It changed my life.

I love reading. I'm fortunate enough to have signed books by Faulkner, Steinbeck, Thomas Pynchon.

I never think about a movie when I'm writing a book, because I think only two things could happen and both of them are bad. You write a lousy novel and a lousy film.

Sugar Ray and talked about doing some articles together or writing a book together but dealing with Sugar Ray was a lot like fighting him. He would fake you in and then he'd drop you.

I often think that could we creep behind the actor's eyes, we would find an attic of forgotten toys and a copy of the Domesday Book.

Those who say 'you only live once' have never read a book.

The most accomplished way of using books is to serve them as some people do lords; learn their titles and then brag of their acquaintance.

The novel, in its best form, I regard as one of the most powerful engines of civilization ever invented.

A big book is a big misfortune.

Because no one can catch the motherfucking fox.

The process of writing a book is like the process of preparing a dinner. Serving dishes, choosing ingredients and so on.

In America, you’re allowed to justify almost any kind of bigotry, sexism, or intolerance if you source it to God’s big book of bad ideas.

When we read the right book generously, it can change the way think about the world around us.