From Book Quotes

As a kid I wanted to write science fiction, and I was never without a book. Later I really got into being a scientist and never thought I'd be writing novels.

In this book, not only is there no happy ending, there is no happy beginning and very few happy things in the middle.

I'm not a stranger," I said, and pointed to his book. "I'm someone who reads the same authors you do.

All the secrets of the world are contained in books. Read at your own risk.

If you like books with happy endings then put this book down immediately.

I’m reminded of a book my father used to read me,” she said. “A bunch of elves and things get into a huge war over a piece of jewelry that everybody wants but nobody can wear.

Stretched out in front of me was my time as an adult, and then a skeleton, and then nothing except perhaps a few books on a few shelves.

I can't think of a story that doesn't have something terrible in it. Otherwise, it's dull. So when I embarked into the world of picture books, my first thought was to do something about the dark.

Sometimes words are not enough. There are some circumstances so utterly wretched that I cannot describe them in sentences or paragraphs or even a whole series of books.

Sometime during your life—in fact, very soon—you may find yourself reading a book, and you may notice that a book’s first sentence can often tell you what sort of story your book contains.

The Long Goodbye' is one book I like to read over and over again, and it was an enormous inspiration for 'All The Wrong Questions'.

If you enjoy books with happy endings than you are better off reading some other book.

They say in every library there is a single book that can answer the question that burns like a fire in the mind.

If you wish to avoid an unpleasant story you had best put this book down

Adverbs is a book about love, and I thought that was pretty cheerful, but people who are reading it now are telling me that it's actually quite dark.

Like a lot of people whose children were small in the 2000s, I read [Daniel Handler] books out loud and I loved them.

I was never a fan of anything, and yet some people are fans of my books. That's a bit odd. But I like meeting them.

One has to adopt a sort of Zen calm, in which you know you wrote the best book that you could at the time.

I think there are probably just as many adults who would miss the humor of my books, if not more, as there are children.

Best-sellerism is the star system of the book world. A "best seller" is a celebrity among books. It is a book known primarily (sometimes exclusively) for its well-knownness.

Books are messengers of freedom. They can be hidden under a mattress or smuggled into slave nations.

It is very unlikely that the computer will displace the books, except in areas where we need information speedily.

The computer can help us find what we know is there. But the book remains our symbol and our resource for the unimagined question and the unwelcome answer.

When you look at the books about well-being, you see one word - it's happiness. People do not distinguish.

I contend that no book figured more prominently than the Bible in the political thought of these patriots we call the founders.

All my books were easy to write - doesn't it show?

I love books so much. I've read more books than anyone else I know.

The Bible is a book of faith, and a book of doctrine, and a book of morals, and a book of religion, of especial revelation from God.

But I've been at writing long enough now to know that every three or four books I have to start a new direction.

I have a book in the pipeline of short stories. You want to hear an agent scream, say 'I'm thinking about doing a collection of short stories set in the Ozarks.

I sense people expect something to show for ten years. But I do feel like it is dense. Some of my own favorite books are slim, but there's a lot of weight and power in them.

I'm not sure running the press has changed how I write (though perhaps it has in ways I can't see), but it has certainly changed my relationship to how books get made.

Each book takes anywhere from two to three years to complete, from concept to outline to final edits. I work on as many as five at a time.

I just write all the time! I'm always working. I usually work on several books at once.

A book begins with an image or character or situation that I care about deeply.

I publish six books a year now, which is very exciting. But it keeps me into my typewriter at all times! Now that my children have grown up, I'm with my typewriter 20 hours a day.

If you love a book you tend not to follow its surface value, you follow the other things in it.

I love watching the Bond movies obviously and I grew up reading the books as a kid. I've always loved them because of that.

I loved the theatre-my dad gave me many plays and books to read. The dramatic form just spoke to me.

I definitely feel like when I write a book it's not my job to police or guide the readers. The book and the characters don't belong to me anymore. If that makes sense.

And I don't like books which are full of name dropping.

I never read gossip press. I just read books. And I never switch on the TV any more.

We all have so much access to the information on the Internet and in books, but we don't necessarily get that information in a usable way so that we can turn information into action.

I think I wanted to write a book about the relationship between the victim and perpetrator in which the victim agrees to remain silent.

She didn't smile back. Not even a little. I totally needed to read that book on how to win friends and influence people. But that would involve an innate desire to win friends and influence people.

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

I don't want to dis anybody, but someone like Robert Parker. I first read a Spenser book maybe 20 years ago and then read every one that came out. I did that with Tony Hillerman too.

I walked out of the movie "Lincoln" and bought the book [of Doris Kearns Goodwin] at the bookstore next door.

I'm not sure you can count as history, was Keith Richards's "Life," which he so modestly titled it. I did find it a fascinating book. Keith's a pretty honest fellow.

I publish my own books, so there isn't a certain editor I owe the book to at a publishing house.