From Book Quotes

Whenever I finish a book, I start with a blank slate and never have ideas lined up.

I'm very perverse. If someone tells me I have to read a book, I'm instantly disinclined to do so.

The directors thought, They understand nothing in the real economy, in real life. They read some stupid books, and they came from the moon to the earth, and maybe in one month they will disappear.

Most of my books have been written in the form of fantasy.

The past but lives in written words: a thousand ages were blank if books had not evoked their ghosts, and kept the pale unbodied shades to warn us from fleshless lips.

I've never watched any of the adaptations of my books. I've never wanted to, and there's absolutely no chance of me doing so in the future.

There are some awful things in the world, it's true, but there are also some great books.

Read Don Quixote; it is a very good book; I still read it frequently.

Writers must rely more on the feel of a sentence than on the dictates of a rule book.

Choose thy friends like thy books, few but choice.

Who knows whether in retirement I shall be tempted to the last infirmity of mundane minds, which is to write a book.

There are too many books. The books are terrible. And this is because you have been taught to have self-esteem.

I will write another book if I feel like it.

There comes a point when you can more or less count the number of books you're going to write before you die.

So my first book I had no experience having written a book, but each book is a little snapshot of who you are at that moment, accrued all through time, so I accept that.

Every reader gets something different from a book and every reader, in a sense, completes it in a different way.

All authors know that any book is a casting of runes, a reading of cards, a map of the palm and heart. We make up the ocean - then fall in. But we also write the life raft.

I think it's very important for someone going to buy a book, taking a class or listening to a lecturer to ask, "Is this the right thing for me to do now? If it isn't, guide me to what I need."

Screenplays I didn't really care about, journalism, travel books, getting my writer friends to write about their dreams or something. I just determined to write the books I had to write.

I insist on knowing the names, on being interested only in books left ajar, like doors; I will not go looking for keys.

When [wines] were good they pleased my sense, cheered my spirits, improved my moral and intellectual powers, besides enabling me to confer the same benefits on other people. (Notes on a Cellar Book)

Read much, but not too many books.

If you're smart, you'll always be humble. You can learn all you want, but there'll always be somebody who's never read a book who'll know twice what you know.

In the fairy tale the painting represents the here and now. The book is actually divided into five sections, through which the key character, the muse, leads us.

I came in on the decline. Phil Elliot was in first, he got his book out, he sold thirteen thousand, I think he got two issues out before I got mine in, this was March '87. He was out in December '86.

What's crazy is living your life according to some book written by someone who couldn't imagine what your life would be like.

I have a bad tendency to get rapidly bored with my own material, so rewriting is hard for me. I mean, I already know the story and would rather read something new.

A good book is an education of the heart. It enlarges your sense of human possibility what human nature is of what happens in the world. It's a creator of inwardness.

I've always been a bookworm. As I mentioned, I moved around a lot, and one of the problems with being the new kid is it takes a while to make new friends. But I always had my books.

I don't keep my books around... they would embarrass me. When I finish writing my books, I kick them in the belly, and have done with them.

Dynasty was the opportunity to take charge of my career rather than waiting around like a library book waiting to be loaned out.

We are now in want of an art to teach how books are to be read rather than to read them. Such an art is practicable.

As for the largest-hearted of us, what is the word we write most often in our cheque-books? "Self.

I think that an author who speaks about his own books is almost as bad as a mother who talks about her own children.

Every one of my books is written from the viewpoint of cops, with the exception of my book Killer on the Road, which is written from the viewpoint of a serial killer.

I have written about 10 books, all just practical encouragement for moms.

Once I start reading something, I can't stop. I obsessively read, which is a problem with long books!

When I'm working on a book, I constantly retype my own sentences. Every day I go back to page one and just retype what I have. It gets me into a rhythm.

In reading some books we occupy ourselves chiefly with the thoughts of the author; in perusing others, exclusively with our own.

Even when I was in school shows, in elementary school doing plays, I'd always go off book and start improvising.

People have given me classified information, but always with the disclaimer 'This can never end up in a book.' And it never does.

Definition of a classic: a book everyone is assumed to have read and often thinks they have.

Books and minds only work when they're open.

The summer movies are coming out. My advice: just stay home and burn a good book.

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.

Life is too short for reading inferior books.

I like to co-author books to learn from those I write with.

The reading of a fine book is an uninterrupted dialogue in which the book speaks and our soul replies.

It is one of the great charms of books that they have to end.

Writing is a difficult trade which must be learned slowly by reading great authors; by trying at the outset to imitate them; by daring then to be original; by destroying one's first productions.