Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The two biggest sellers in any bookstore are the cookbooks and the diet books. The cookbooks tell you how to prepare the food, and the diet books tell you how not to eat any of it!
I don't think I'll write a large novel again because it was like being in jail for me. Even though that's the funniest book I've ever written, it was the saddest period of my life.
I never read a horse book in my life. But I thought that's what my friends were reading and that's what I should be reading. And this was "Dobbin Does This" and "Dobbin Does That."
Replies began arriving seconds after he pressed send, and soon every single one of the warriors (besides William) had agreed to come home. Take me out of your address book, William
After telephone, kinematograph and phonograph had replaced newspaper, book schoolmaster and letter, to live outside the range of the electric cables was to live an isolated savage.
There are many Latino writers as talented as I am, but because we are published through small presses, our books don't count. We are still the illegal aliens of the literary world.
she loved to walk down the street with a book under her arm. It had the same significance for her as an elegant cane for the dandy a century ago. It differentiated her from others.
The dirty little secret of publishing is that, all along, each book sold has had an average of 5 readers. That's an 80% "piracy" rate if you insist on looking at it in those terms.
A vibrant, rich, growing corpus of public-domain books is a vital public good - similar to parks, the infrastructure of basic services, and other hallmarks of any advanced society.
In my opinion, understanding who your target audience is, and what they want, and writing to them (and only them!) is the most important component of being successful as an author.
With every book, you go back to school. You become a student. You become an investigative reporter. You spend a little time learning what it's like to live in someone else's shoes.
A hot bath, time with a book, or five minutes of meditation helps tremendously with recharging and grounding us so we are more equipped to deal with everything life throws our way.
All the old houses that I knew when I was a child were full of books, bought generation after generation by members of the family. Nobody told you to read this or not to read that.
The gaslight of the film [The Girl On The Train] became something that really needed to be dramatized more than the book did, because it wasn't going to read as strongly on screen.
Second hand books are wild books, homeless books; they have come together in vast flocks of variegated feather, and have a charm which the domesticated volumes of the library lack.
You may go on reading any number of books on Meditation. They can only tell you ‘Realize the Self’. The Self cannot be found in books. You have to find it for yourself in yourself.
A book which the Mohammedans foolishly believe to have been written by divine inspiration, but which Christians know to be a wicked imposture, contradictory to the Holy Scriptures.
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.
So much of the way books get classified has to do with marketing decisions. I think it's more useful to think of literary books and sci-fi/fantasy books as existing on a continuum.
You asked me where I generally lived. In my workshop [i.e. in his study] in the mornings and always in the library in the evening. Books are companions even if you don’t open them.
I wanted [the book 'There are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé?'] to be colorful. I wanted it to be evocative. I wanted a figure of a black woman that the reader has to confront.
The Naked Socialist connects the ancient order of oppression with the modern order of oppression. The Naked Socialist is a fabulous book and we need to get everyone to read it NOW!
When a book leaves your hands, it belongs to God. He may use it to save a few souls or to try a few others, but I think that for the writer to worry is to take over God's business.
What’s the deal with the hair?” Curran tore his gaze from the book and grimaced. “Grows every flare. Can’t help it." We stared at each other. “Waiting for the Fabio joke,” he said.
Well I've been writing books. So that, by its nature, is kind of a solitary occupation. And from time to time I have research help, but mostly I've done those completely on my own.
My obsessions tend to cluster, so I often have families of poems in which only a couple of them make it to the book. It can be satisfying to banish poems to my "crappy poems" file.
We learned in the university to consider Wordsworth and Keats as Romantics. They were only a generation apart, but Wordsworth didn't even read Keats's book when he gave him a copy.
I now rely on a scanner, which reproduces the passages I want to cite, and then I keep my own comments on those books in a separate file so that I will never confuse the two again.
I thought of the structure as musical. The first piece, for instance, contains the names/subject matter of every person to come in the book. Like a piece of music with themes, etc.
Where are you originally from?” “The planet Lorien, three hundred million miles away.” “Must have been a long trip, John Smith.” “Took almost a year. Next time I’m bringing a book.
Although the point of blogging is that it doesn't pay, I often steal from my blog for paid publication. I've based several magazine essays on blog posts, as well as an entire book.
Those who want to burn books are either afraid of the ideas contained within the covers or they haven't the courage to stand up for the views which they themselves profess to hold.
Start with short stories. After all, if you were taking up rock climbing, you wouldn't start with Mount Everest. So if you're starting fantasy, don't start with a nine-book series.
I should as soon think of swimming across Charles River, when I wish to go to Boston, as of reading all my books in originals, when I have them rendered for me in my mother tongue.
What I'm always trying to do with every book is to recreate the effect of the stories we heard as children in front of campfires and fireplaces - the ghost stories that engaged us.
The only words that ever satisfied me as describing nature are the terms used in fairy books, charm, spell, enchantment; they express the arbitrariness of the fact and its mystery.
Basically, right before college I got into the Guinness book for my feet and started to do local commercials and little radio spots, just little things and found I really liked it.
With Barack Obama, we will turn the page on the old politics of misrepresentation and distortion. With Barack Obama we will close the book on the old politics of race against race.
What did people do prior to cell phones? Read a book? If I'm stuck in a car, and I don't have my phone, I'm like, 'What am I doing?' Car rides used to be one of my favorite things.
When you are old and gray and full of sleep, and nodding by the fire, take down this book and slowly read, and dream of the soft look your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep.
I began reading everyhing in the family library. Kidnapped, Treasure Island, Robinson Crusoe. And of course, if you're running out of books to read you can always read Shakespeare.
I love the way that each book -- any book -- is its own journey. You open it, and off you go. You are changed in some way, large or small, by having traveled with those characters.
In a small cathedral town where changes are few, there are always people who remember who used to live in a particular house, what happened to them there and afterwards, and so on.
The books for young people say a great deal about the selection of Friends; it is because they really have nothing to say about Friends. They mean associates and confidants merely.
The wine urges me on, the bewitching wine, which sets even a wise man to singing and to laughing gently and rouses him up to dance and brings forth words which were better unspoken.
I knew I would read all kinds of books and try to get at what it is that makes good writers good. But I made no promises that I would write books a lot of people would like to read.
I hate picking favourite books. I usually tend to stay away from all the 'top record' and 'favourite song' and 'favourite book', and I just think it doesn't do any good for anybody.
Being rich is not about how much money you have or how many homes you own; it's the freedom to buy any book you want without looking at the price and wondering if you can afford it.
You can only learn so much from books. You can only learn so much from education. Ultimately, it is the wisdom of God that will carry you through in the toughest situations of life.
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.