Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
If the fidelity [ in a book] isn't maintained, the reader will think your structure is extraneous, or superficial, or that you're trying to curry favor, or live up to the expectations of some sort of genre or structure.
There are countless books written on self-defense. Not all are non- sensical, but many are. Nathaniel Cooke has clearly thought a great deal about the subject and distilled its essence in a way that is wholly admirable.
It's really irritating when you open a book, and 10 pages into it you know that the hero you met on page one or two is gonna come through unscathed, because he's the hero. This is completely unreal, and I don't like it.
Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become.
The woman who became the Duchesse d'Angoulême did indeed have painful memories, but she was not only very brave but I would say she had "nerves of steel." As I wrote in the book, one woman, defeated, one woman, defiant.
I'm always writing new books so I don't dwell on the ones I've already done. I think that's a habit from being a newspaper guy because you're always writing columns and you can't reflect on the ones you've already done.
It was a matter of going back through a lot of sermons and remembering the questions and conversations, where these ideas came from. So the book [Max on Life] is really kind of a second chance to answer these questions.
If God had meant for me to be religious, he would have alphabetized the books of the Bible. It was just too hard for me to find what I was looking for, especially if I was looking for it through a few glasses of scotch.
My books may highlight corruption, brutality and venality, but they also show that if these things come to light, there is rectification. The voiceless do have a voice; democratic mechanisms and accountability do exist.
There are a lot of good books around. People don't read any more. It's a sad state of affairs. Reading's the only thing that allows you to use your imagination. When you watch films it's someone else's vision, isn't it?
Our audience is all the girls who made Britney a huge star. Those are the girls who bought the book. I didn't read the book at first. I read the script just to see what I would think of the script and I really liked it.
Now that I live in Southern California, my current world certainly speaks to me, and I sense that my next book will have a more American and southerly setting. But that's certainly not to say I won't be back to Leaford.
There are books on my shelf that I'm not into. They are things I don't know anything about yet. It's going to lead me off into a new place. The books don't represent an interest; they represent a source of my ignorance.
The first duty of the novelist is to entertain. It is a moral duty. People who read your books are sick, sad, traveling, in the hospital waiting room while someone is dying. Books are written by the alone for the alone.
Every TV show I've ever made, every game I've ever built, and every book I've ever published has had the common thread of building the biggest, brightest spotlight imaginable and then flipping it around to shine on you.
Was there ever a more horrible blasphemy than the statement that all the knowledge of God is confined to this or that book? How dare men call God infinite, and yet try to compress Him within the covers of a little book!
Harriet Beecher Stowe thought Uncle Tom's Cabin was written through her by Another Hand, so little did she know what was going to happen from moment to moment in the book. She herself was amazed at what she was writing.
The neatest part of this book I'm working on - to me - are the pictures that show the process... Because photographers... think things through and... it isn't luck, and it isn't random and it isn't accidental. It isn't.
I came at last to a recognition of myself as, in part, a Tom Sawyer who wanted everything done according to the rules of romantic fiction, and complicated simple solutions with his absurd adolescent, book-born nonsense.
When I finally got tired of arguing with her and decided to write a novel as if I was some kind of formulaic, genre writing drone, just to prove to her how awful it would be, I wrote the first book of the Dresden Files.
Three publishers came to me at the White House after George lost and said, 'We would like to publish your book.' I said, 'Well, I don't have a book,' and they said well it's a well known fact that you have kept diaries.
We are sensitized by the books we read. And the more books we read, and the deeper their lessons sink into us, the more pairs of glasses we have. And those glasses enable us to see things we would have otherwise missed.
I never write with any kind of message, and I don't think that this book, 'Goodbye, Stranger' has a message in the capital M form of the word but I do hope it makes people ask themselves questions about what they think.
You always need that spark of imagination. Sometimes I'm midway through a book before it happens. However, I don't wait for the muse to descend, I sit down every day and I work when I'm not delivering lambs on the farm.
I looked up towards the immensity of the labyrinth. "How does one choose a single book among so many?" Isaac shrugged his shoulders. 'Some like to believe it's the book that chooses the person...destiny, in other words.
I'd buy joke books and try doing them at school; I always had jokes. That would be my go-to thing at parties: I'd be able to get through them if I just told enough jokes. Otherwise, I wouldn't end up talking to anybody.
This hand is not very active always, because it was in this hand that I carried my books. My carrying hand was always my strongest. Now I think my other hand has developed more muscles from signing all those autographs.
You may not agree, you may not care, but if you are holding this book you should know that of all the sights I love in this world — and there are plenty — very near the top of the list is this one: dogs without leashes.
For my first three books the setting (or place if you will) has always been a given - N.J. and the Dominican Republic and some N.Y.C. - so from one perspective you could say that the place in my work always comes first.
A prose writer never sees a reader walk out of a book; for a playwright, it's another matter. An audience is an invaluable education. In my experience, theatre artists don't know what they've made until they've made it.
The only true equalisers in the world are books; the only treasure-house open to all comers is a library; the only wealth which will not decay is knowledge; the only jewel which you can carry beyond the grave is wisdom.
Your face, my thane, is as a book where men May read strange matters. To beguile the time, Look like the time; bear welcome in your eye, Your hand, your tongue: look like the innocent flower, But be the serpent under't.
There are no grown-ups. We suspect this when we are younger, but can confirm it only once we are the ones writing books and attending parent-teacher conferences. Everyone is winging it, some just do it more confidently.
Saddling another person with a book he did not ask for has always seemed to me like a huge psychological imposition, like forcing someone to eat a chicken biryani without so much as inquiring whether they like cilantro.
Books have this function that help me to understand the work I've done, to wrap it up. Once it's done, fortunately, it doesn't mean there's closure. Change in my work happens not in revolutions - it's more evolutionary.
The cynic about human nature might say that religious morality is an effective way of keeping people in line. The threat of hell, the reward of heaven, but the rules of the holy books are out of date and often barbaric.
One of the great things about writing a series is that with each book, the novel is meant to stand alone on its own legs, but also to bring along those loyal readers who become attached to the characters over the years.
A man would have to be an idiot to write a book of laws for an apple tree telling it to bear apples and not thorns, seeing that the apple-tree will do it naturally and far better than any laws or teaching can prescribe.
I was interested in being part of interesting stories. As an actor, you generally don't get to choose what projects you are part of, so I've been very fortunate that The Book of Mormon was something I got to be part of.
I always write the end of everything first. I always write the last chapters of my books before I write the beginning....Then I go back to the beginning. I mean, it's always nice to know where you're going is my theory.
I'm pretty much an open book. I've pretty much talked about anything I'm going through onstage. Between interviews and curious fans, I've been asked everything. And I always give answers. I don't shy away from anything.
I am impressed when I go on the internet and see a lot of young people who've been influenced by the books, or I meet someone who tells me how it has changed their life. To me, that is much more real than sales figures.
If you read Donald Trump's book "The Art of the Deal," you know that he likes to create leverage, he likes to have psychological advantage, he likes to be on the offense. He believes in what he calls truthful hyperbole.
One of the things I have tried to do with this book and with all of them really is avoid that simple, easy, reductionist view of motivation and to show we do things for a complex net of reasons, a real braid of reasons.
I educated myself, and it made me feel good. I went to museums. I read books. I did all the things, pretty much, that you would do in school. I would never want my kids to leave school, though, I'm really for education.
I know Im not going to book everything I go in on, and thats just the nature of the business. You have to keep hustling and not get down on it. You have to keep at it and find your way in. Everybodys story is different.
Now what I do is I manage that decision. And I teach them in the book how - know what decision to make and then how to manage those decisions. It's a very - it's a personal growth book [Today Matters]; that's what it is.
Unfortunately what is little recognized is that the most worthwhile scientific books are those in which the author clearly indicates what he does not know; for an author most hurts his readers by concealing difficulties.
If a writer knows what he or she is doing, I'll go along for the ride. If he or she doesn't... well, I'm in my fifties now, and there are a lot of books out there. I don't have time to waste with the poorly written ones.
The death panel issue arose with Tom Daschle, who was originally going to be the Health Czar. Daschle became enamored with the British system and wrote a book about health care, which influenced President [Barack] Obama.