From Book Quotes

Above all, a book is a riverbank for the river of language. Language without the riverbank is only television talk - a free fall, a loose splash, a spill.

All politicians know that every 'temporary' political initiative promised as a short-term poultice stays on the books forever.

Even the bad books I write are satisfying. I'm my least critical reader.

I do have trouble starting books. I have ideas that I have trouble starting to write. But I'm the kind of person who tends to finish everything she starts out of sheer stubbornness.

I didnt write anything at all except book reports until I was in seventh grade, and then I wrote mostly poetry for myself.

No one over thirty-five is worth meeting who has not something to teach us, something more than we could learn for ourselves, from a book.

We treat the Bible, not as if it's a magic book that has to be handled like a piece of abracadabra, make sure it's dusted, never put it on the floor, and things like that.

A book lives as long as it is unfathomed.

Ursula and Gudrun Brangwen sat one morning in the window-bay of their father's house in Beldover, working and talking.

The Brangwens had lived for generations on the Marsh Farm, in the meadows where the Erewash twisted sluggishly through alder trees, separating Derbyshire from Nottinghamshire.

To every man who struggles with his own soul in mystery, a book that is a book flowers once, and seeds, and is gone.

To leave a book is like leaving the better part of oneself.

The life of simplicity is simple, but it opens to us a book in which we never get beyond the first syllable.

I'm quite a slow reader. It can take me quite a while to get though a book.

You cannot get PTSD from reading a book or from hearing a story, even repeated stories over and over.

Don't come to New York until you've finished a book. It's too expensive. You'll never write anything. You'll spend all your time working to pay the rent.

The Bible, of course, is not a theology book. It is certainly not a philosophy book. So we have to derive the meaning of terms from the context in use.

We did not have a television while I was growing up, and so I read voraciously. My earliest memory of being utterly transfixed by a book was Madeleine L'Engle's 'A Wrinkle in Time.

I don't read horror, ever. When I was 15, I made the mistake of reading part of 'The Exorcist.' It was the first and last horror book I've ever opened.

I don't know where I would place myself in the literary landscape. I really just write the book that I would want to read. And I put on the blinders, and I really - it is, for me, that simple.

I think one reason my books have found mainstream success is that they're written from a skeptical point of view.

I will not write a lame follow-up. It could take me 20 years. But I will never turn in a book that I'm not happy with.

You can't count on notoriety lasting very long, and there's no way to predict whether anyone will care about your books or you in three years, let alone ten or twenty.

In some ways all of my fiction is like a conversation I'm having with the writers I read when I was first falling in love with books.

You should want to fight the biggest fights you can and so you could maximize your stature in the sport, on the front pages of the newspapers, and your pocket book.

I was an English major in university and that got me into novels, but I read a lot of books as a kid.

I think books are just a great ticket to get you outside of yourself. You can not be you for a second and live in the shoes of a character, which is a special thing.

Sometimes I look back and think, "How did I write that? The book is smarter than I am!" I have never written strategically, but rather, followed the dictates of my muse.

A manuscript not submitted is a book not published.

Many first-time authors are not concerned about the advance or royalties, they want the notoriety. They get smarter on their second book and look for the money.

No book or poem is ever finished, merely abandoned.

This book is dedicated to the rule breakers, the troublemakers, and the revolutionaries. Sometimes the hand that feeds you needs a good bite.

The novel is about, for me, sustained and organized looking. I do think that people have a hunger for a sustained engagement, that concentration that the book can offer.

I like to buy books for the kids in my family. I guess that's why they call me the 'mean' aunt.

I've always read books and loved human behavior since I was ten or twelve years old. Maybe even that's why I wanted to do comedy.

There are books that a writer undertakes because she wants to go on a journey, and there are journeys a writer undertakes because she wants to write a book.

Strange - I'm not much of a film person. I love watching films, but they don't stay with me the way books do. Stranger still, because my husband is a screenwriter!

Michael Lowenthal has written a big-hearted and wise book about familial love in all its richness and complexity.

When I near the end of a book, it feels as if the entire universe meets me more than halfway and supports me. The whole world seems to shimmer when I find the words. My mind quiets.

There is no end to the promotion. There is no end to the possibilities. You can continue to promote a book for years, literally.

I love teaching online at my website and soon I'll be writing a math book. I love to teach math. I just don't have time for a full-time teaching gig. Acting is way too time-consuming.

Eduardo Halfon is a brilliant storyteller, whose gifts are displayed on every page of this beautiful, daring, and deeply humane book.

I never know if a book is crazy or not. There's that fear - this is the one that will end it all.

Even if I only had 10 readers, I'd rather do the book for them than for a million readers online.

I'm always hiding the books in my closet, and my art's always turned upside down in my drawer.

As soon as I'm finished with it, it feels like an impersonal project. Like, "Well, I did another book."

I've felt that in the past, where I just felt like I had to keep drawing in the same way to maintain this sameness and rhythm throughout an entire book, and it was not really necessary.

I'd like to see (the films) go back to the books. I think (the films) need to be dirtier. I think that you should feel the man playing Bond could die at any moment. You don't feel that any more.

[A]n important new book. . . . Professor Akerlof and Rachel Kranton have invented Identity Economics.

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.