So I stood around that big square of books. Standing around books, even books in a foreign language, you feel a kind of electricity buzzing up toward you, Your Excellency. It just happens, the way you get erect around girls wearing tight jeans.
Except here what happens is that your brain starts to hum.
- Aravind Adiga
There was an extensive collection of cookbooks in the well-stocked library, and he took to pouring over these in the evenings.
- Alexandra Adornetto
I think many of my books, including 'Handle with Care,' including 'My Sister's Keeper,' circle back to how far are we willing to go for the people we love? I think love changes the way we think. It's the thing that takes you out of what your normal set of beliefs would be.
- Jodi Picoult
Please could I say one word?" was the question three times repeated before a rough head bobbed out from the grotto of books in which Mac usually sat. "Did anyone speak?" he asked, blinking in the flood of sunshine that entered with Rose.
- Louisa May Alcott
You say often you wish a library; here I gif you one; for between these two lids (he meant covers) is many books in one. Read him well, and he will help you much; for the study of character in this book will help you to read it in the world, and paint it with your pen.
- Louisa May Alcott
I used to sleep with my books in piles all over my bed and sometimes they were the only thing keeping me warm and always the only thing keeping me alive. Books are the best and worst defense.
- Sherman Alexie
My name is Eva, which means 'life,' according to a book of names my mother consulted. I was born in the back room of a shadowy house, and grew up amidst ancient furniture, books in Latin, and human mummies, but none of those things made me melancholy, because I came into the world with a breath of the jungle in my memory.
- Isabel Allende
The worst thing in the world was the way I felt when I wanted us to be like the families in the books in the library, when I just wanted Daddy Glen to love me like the father in Robinson Crusoe. (209)
- Dorothy Allison
A lot of books in the self-help section of your bookstore really belong in the fiction section.
- Steve Maraboli
No- I cannot talk of books in a ballroom; my head is always full of something else.
- Jane Austen
No one can draw more out of things, books included, than he already knows. A man has no ears for that to which experience has given him no access.
- Friedrich Nietzsche
I often wonder what I'd do if there weren't any books in the world.
- James Baldwin
Life isn't so complicated for children. They have more time to think about the really important things. That's why I occasionally moralise in my children's books in a way I wouldn't dare when writing for adults.
- Nina Bawden
If you feel... that well-read people are less likely to be evil, and a world full of people sitting quietly with good books in their hands is preferable to world filled with schisms and sirens and other noisy and troublesome things, then every time you enter a library you might say to yourself, 'The world is quiet here,' as a sort of pledge proclaiming reading to be the greater good.
- Lemony Snicket
There are many, many types of books in the world, which makes good sense, because there are many, many types of people, and everybody wants to read something different.
- Lemony Snicket
This wasn't the way I had imagined my adventures, but reality ignored my wishes from the get-go, giving me a body best suited for stacking books in the library, injecting so much fear into my veins that I could only cower in the stairwell when the violence came. Maybe someday my arms and legs would thicken with muscle and the fear would drain away like dirty bathwater. I wish I believed these things would happen, but I didn't.
- David Benioff
Our senses and emotions are the great source of inspiration for creating compelling and interesting art pieces (books included). Each art piece, be it a book, a song, a painting, a photograph or a product should touch our senses and evoke emotions. Emotionless art lacks purpose and interest.
- Serafima Bogomolova
There are certain books in the world which every searcher for truth must know: the Bible, the Critique of Pure Reason, the Origin of Species, and Karl Marx's Capital.
- W E B Du Bois
Tongues in trees, books in running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.
- William Shakespeare
And this, our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.
- William Shakespeare
The fact is that poetry is not the books in the library... Poetry is the encounter of the reader with the book, the discovery of the book.
- Jorge Luis Borges
I know of a wild region whose librarians repudiate the vain superstitious custom of seeking any sense in books and compare it to looking for meaning in dreams or in the chaotic lines of one's hands... They admit that the inventors of writing imitated the twenty-five natural symbols, but they maintain that this application is accidental and that books in themselves mean nothing. This opinion - we shall see - is not altogether false.
- Jorge Luis Borges
He had no settled plan of life, nor looked forward at all, but merely lived from day to day. Yet he read a great deal in a desultory manner, without any scheme of study, as chance threw books in his way, and inclination directed him through them.
- James Boswell
Somewhere the saving and putting away had to begin again and someone had to do the saving and keeping, one way or another, in books, in records, in people's heads, any way at all so long as it was safe, free from moths, silverfish, rust and dry rot and men with matches.
- Ray Bradbury
Are you kidding? I'm supposed to put my books in this filthy tin coffin?
- Kami Garcia
Elend: I kind of lost track of time...
Breeze: For two hours?
Elend: There were books involved.
- Brandon Sanderson
I've only read two books in my life: Baseball Sparkplug and Love Story.
- George Brett
I had a hard time publishing my books in the beginning of my career, because editors were afraid what people would think of THEM, personally, if their name was associated with me.
- Susie Bright
If this nation is to be wise as well as strong, if we are to achieve our destiny, then we need more new ideas for more wise men reading more good books in more public libraries. These libraries should be open to allexcept the censor. We must know all the facts and hear all the alternatives and listen to all the criticisms. Let us welcome controversial books and controversial authors. For the Bill of Rights is the guardian of our security as well as our liberty.
- John F Kennedy
Focus in on the genre you want to write, and read books in that genre. A LOT of books by a variety of authors. And read with questions in your mind.
- Nicholas Sparks
You can't enjoy art or books in a hurry.
- E A Bucchianeri
I am a writer of books in retrospect. I talk in order to understand; I teach in order to learn.
- Robert Frost
Christmas poem to a man in jail
hello Bill Abbott:
I appreciate your passing around my books in
jail there, my poems and stories.
if I can lighten the load for some of those guys with
my books, fine.
but literature, you know, is difficult for the
average man to assimilate (and for the unaverage man too);
I don't like most poetry, for example,
so I write mine the way I like to read it.
- Charles Bukowski
Do you know that if you take the books in an average school library and stretched out all those words into a single line, the line would go all the way around the world? Actually, I made that up, but doesn't it sound like it should be true?
- Neal Shusterman
Books in a large university library system: 2,000,000. Books in an average large city library: 10,000. Average number of books in a chain bookstore: 30,000. Books in an average neighborhood branch library: 20,000.
- Anthony Burgess
At one point, trying to explain her unhappiness, Sanna was to say to Miss Love, "I read some psychology books in college. Everything that's supposed to warp a child happened to me." Miss Love, who had been raped as an adolescent, replies, "Everything that could warp a child happened to me, too. But understanding that doesn't help. It's interesting but it doesn't help. I figure that what you do with your life now is all that counts. I try not to look back.
- Olive Ann Burns
We had to figure out how to produce books in a cost-effective way.
- Levar Burton
My main wish is to get my books into other people's rooms, and to keep other people's books out of mine.
- Samuel Butler
We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library, whose walls are covered to the ceiling with books in many different languages. The child knows that someone must have written those books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the the languages in which they are written. The child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books, a mysterious order, which it does not comprehend but only dimly suspects.
- Albert Einstein
I've had many more thousands of books in my possession than my shelves at home would indicate. At one time, I tried to keep them all, but that quest soon became impossible; I now only keep the ones I'm sure I'm going to reread, the ones I'm definitely going to read before I die, and the ones I can't bear to part with because of an aesthetic or emotional attachment.
- Lewis Buzbee
It's not as if I don't have anything to read; there's a tower of perfectly good unread books next to my bed, not to mention the shelves of books in the living room I've been meaning to reread. I find myself, maddeningly, hungry for the next one, as yet unknown. I no longer try to analyze this hunger; I capitulated long ago to the book lust that's afflicted me most of my life.
- Lewis Buzbee
There are certain books in the world which every searcher for truth must know: the Bible, the Critique of Pure Reason, the Origin of Species, and Karl Marx's Capital.
- Al Capp
There is no substitute for books in the life of a child. (1952)
- Mary Ellen Chase
It could be said that a single person has written all the books in the world such central unity is in them that they are undeniably the work of a single all-knowing master.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
The Bible is one of the most genocidal books in history.
- Noam Chomsky
Always buy pornographic books in hardback because they're easier to hold with one hand.
- Robert Clark
Otis was inspired by a boy who sat across the aisle from me in sixth grade. He was a lively person. My best friend appears in assorted books in various disguises.
- Beverly Cleary
Do you want to guess what's in here?" I asked Dash.
"I think I've got it figured out already. There's a new supply of red notebooks in there, and you want us to fill them in with clues about the works of, say, Nicholas Sparks."
"Who?" I asked. Please, no more broody poets. I couldn't keep up.
"You don't know who Nicholas Sparks is?" Dash asked.
I shook my head.
"Please don't ever find out," he said.
- Rachel Cohn
I know that I am very popular in Holland, in fact I have visited Amsterdam several times to publicize my books. I have a great publisher in Holland and they have published all of my books in Dutch.
- Jackie Collins
I'd never have written the big books in London.
- Jilly Cooper
To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise..
- Henry David Thoreau
He was intrigued by the power of words, not the literary words that filled the books in the library but the sharp, staccato words that went into the writing of news stories. Words that went for the jugular. Active verbs that danced and raced on the page.
- Robert Cormier
So far it's 43 books in 25 years.
- Bernard Cornwell
Obviously people read the books in order to be entertained.
- Patricia Cornwell
Books, indeed, were his sole luxuries
- Edgar Allan Poe
The funny thing is, I'm not really a big reader, not a big fan of books in the first place.
- Macaulay Culkin
Think of me, the uneducated child reading books in my room at 22 Hyde Park Gate -- now advanced to this glory... Yes; all that reading, I say, has borne this odd fruit. And I am pleased.
- Virginia Woolf
Like most uneducated Englishwomen, I like reading--I like reading books in the bulk.
- Virginia Woolf
I don't write down my experiences, but I have a very decent memory. I have tons of books in which I write down phrases as they occur to me. That's how I write songs. I'll need a line and I'll go through the books and find it, the right rhyme and everything.
- Evan Dando
I bet if you look at the average teenager and the average adult, the average teenager has read more books in the last year than the average adult. Now of course the adult would be all like, 'I'm busy, I got a job, I got stuff to do.' WHATEVER! READ! I mean, you're watching CSI: Miami. Why would you be watching CSI: Miami, when you could be READING CSI: Miami, the novelization?
- John Green
Radar threw his books into his locker and shut it. Then the din of conversation around us quieted just a bit as he turned his eyes toward the heavens and shouted, IT IS NOT MY FAULT THAT MY PARENTS OWN THE WORLD'S LARGEST COLLECTION OF BLACK SANTAS.
- John Green
Have you really read all those books in your room?"
Alaska laughing- "Oh God no. I've maybe read a third of 'em. But I'm going to read them all. I call it my Life's Library. Every summer since I was little, I've gone to garage sales and bought all the books that looked interesting. So I always have something to read.
- John Green
November is Jewish book month, so Jewish Community Centers all around the country have book fairs where they invite authors and sell books in advance of the holidays.
- Anita Diament
So it is that a writer writes many books. In each book, he intended several urgent and vivid points, many of which he sacrificed as the book's form hardened.
- Annie Dillard
For all the books in his possession, he still failed to read the stories written plain as day in the faces of the people around him.
- Emma Donoghue
I have piles of poetry books in the bathroom, on the stairs, everywhere. The only way to write poetry is to read it.
- Carol Ann Duffy
The old man was peering intently at the shelves. 'I'll have to admit that he's a very competent scholar.'
Isn't he just a librarian?' Garion asked, 'somebody who looks after books?'
That's where all the rest of scholarship starts, Garion. All the books in the world won't help you if they're just piled up in a heap.
- David Eddings
If an army of monkeys were strumming on typewriters, they might write all the books in the British Museum.
- Arthur Eddington
I had a briefcase at one point, but it was a kind of 1980s New Wave briefcase. It was made of some kind of cardboard and it had metal hinges. It was kind of faux industrial looking, and I used to carry my books in it rather than a backpack. I didn't want to have normal student accoutrements.
- Jeffrey Eugenides
One reads books in order to gain the privilege of living more than one life. People who don't read are trapped in a mine shaft, even if they think the sun is shining.
- Garrison Keillor
If I finish a book a week, I will read only a few thousand books in my lifetime, about a tenth of a percent of the contents of the greatest libraries of our time. The trick is to know which books to read.
- Carl Sagan
All of the books in the world contain no more information than is broadcast as video in a single large American city in a single year. Not all bits have equal value.
- Carl Sagan
The books in Mo and Meggie's house were stacked under tables, on chairs, in the corners of the rooms. There where books in the kitchen and books in the lavatory. Books on the TV set and in the closet, small piles of books, tall piles of books, books thick and thin, books old and new. They welcomed Meggie down to breakfast with invitingly opened pages; they kept boredom at bay when the weather was bad. And sometimes you fall over them.
- Cornelia Funke
-And there's this twelve thousand dollars item for books.
-That supposed to be twelve hundred, the twelve thousand is for paper.
towels. Besides there is already that bequest for the library.
-Did it say books in so many words? No. It's just a bequest for the library.
-Use it for pegboard. You need pegboard in a library. Books you don't know what you're getting into.
- William Gaddis
Current "literature" [is] well-written books in which disgusting people do disgusting things to other disgusting people for no apparent reason and with no apparent resolution.
- Roberta Gellis
Young minds - young brains - need stories and ideas like the ones in those [censored and banned] books in order to grow. They need ideas that you disagree with. They need ideas that I disagree with. Or they'll never be able to figure out what ideas they believe in.
- Lev Grossman
There are 10,000 books in my library, and it will keep growing until I die. This has exasperated my daughters, amused my friends and baffled my accountant. If I had not picked up this habit in the library long ago, I would have more money in the bank today; I would not be richer.
- Pete Hamill
The Potter books in general are a prolonged argument for tolerance, a prolonged plea for an end to bigotry. And I think it's one of the reasons that some people don't like the books, but I think that's it's a very healthy message to pass on to younger people that you should question authority and you should not assume that the establishment or the press tells you all of the truth.
- J K Rowling
I'd love to see a good script of one of my books, in these years of animations and comic book sequels, and had so many written over the years, but none quite clicked.
- Carl Hiaasen
(about organizing books in his home library, and putting a book in the Arts and Lit non-fiction section)
I personally find that for domestic purposes, the Trivial Pursuit system works better than Dewey.
- Nick Hornby
... because real thoughts come from outside and travel with us like the noodle soup we take to work; in other words, inquisitors burn books in vain. If a book has anything to say, it burns with a quiet laugh, because any book worth its salt points up and out of itself.
- Bohumil Hrabal
I feel I've got 10 books in me.
- Robert Hunter
They were steaming out of the station before Maia asked, 'Was it books in the trunk?'
'It was books, admitted Miss Minton.
And Maia said, 'Good.
- Eva Ibbotson
I was drawn to boxing because I got beat up as a kid. I was the kid with the piano books in a New York neighbourhood.
- Billy Joel
There are two kinds of books in the world--the boring kind they make you read in school and the interesting kind that they won't let you read in school because then they would have to talk about real stuff like sex and divorce and is there a God and if there isn't then what happens when you die, and how come the history books have so many lies in them.
- Louanne Johnson
After this, Boy became very curious about the mansion where the clothes and the food came from. He made me describe everything. Then he asked Good Thing 'Are there books in this mansion, too?'
'And pictures and jewels,' Good Thing said through me. 'What does Master wish me to fetch? There is a golden harp, a musical box like a bird, a'
'Just books,' said Boy. 'I need to learn. I'm still so ignorant.
- Diana Wynne Jones
The worst book I've never read is the book I've never written, nor will I ever write. That book is "Food, God, Sex", which is not to be confused with "Eat, Pray, Love". My book was going to be about calories, the cosmos, and orgasms, but I just don't think there's a market for that type of thing among all the other children's books in the world.
- Jarod Kintz
On my list of things to be when I grew up was a character in a Gary Larson comic. With one of his books in my hands, I would spend hours and hours laughing. And then I'd finally stop laughing long enough to actually open the book. I'm not sure what the younger me would think about me if he could see me now. To be honest, I'm not sure he'd be terribly impressed. He'd probably put his hands on his hips and hump his dismay.
- Jarod Kintz
There are certain books in the history of the world that should never have been written. This book makes all those look like masterpieces.
- Jarod Kintz
I want to type one of my books into a free online translation website, and convert it from English to German and then publish the results as an exercise in the absurd.
- Jarod Kintz
I love ebooks. I love the idea of storing books in "The Cloud", because honestly, reading and rainy days go together like peanut butter and umbrellas.
- Jarod Kintz
We tend to read each other's books in sizeable chunks as they are written. I don't know that you could say we are ruthless with each other - in fact, I suppose we are very kind. There are ways to make suggestions which are not destructive.
- Jonathan Kellerman
One day I would have all the books in the world, shelves and shelves of them. I would live my life in a tower of books. I would read all day long and eat peaches. And if any young knights in armor dared to come calling on their white chargers and plead with me to let down my hair, I would pelt them with peach pits until they went home.
- Jacqueline Kelly
I've taken over the guest room wardrobe too- plus, I've arranged all my shoes on the bookshelves on the landing. (I put the books in boxes. No one ever read them. anyway.)
- Sophie Kinsella
I think Walking Dead is one of the friendliest new reader type books in that every time a new trade is shipped out, a new issue is shipped out at the same time.
- Robert Kirkman
Sometimes I miss out the morning's painting session and instead study my Japanese books in the open.
- Gustav Klimt
There are books that I own that somehow even without reading them they mean something to me. So I think people have a relationship with books in a library whether you've come specifically to read them or not.
- Rem Koolhaas
I bought some books in order to learn the first principles of philosophy.
- Johann Heinrich Lambert
The difference between people who believe they have books inside of them and those who actually write books is sheer cussed persistence - the ability to make yourself work at your craft, every day - the belief, even in the face of obstacles, that you've got something worth saying.
- Jennifer Weiner
I learned to read at the age of five, in Brother Justiniano's class at the De la Salle Academy in Cochabamba, Bolivia. It is the most important thing that has ever happened to me. Almost seventy years later I remember clearly how the magic of translating the words in books into images enriched my life, breaking the barriers of time and space..
- Mario Vargas Llosa
I have friends who read my books in Greek.
- Brian Lumley
I spent my life folded between the pages of books. In the absence of human relationships, I formed bonds with paper characters.
- Tahereh Mafi
In a library in Missouri that was covered with vines
Lived thousands of books in a hundred straight lines
A boy came in at half past nine
Every Saturday, rain or shine
His book selections were clan-des-tine.
- Rebecca Makkai
For Borges, the core of reality lay in books; reading books, writing books, talking about books. In a visceral way, he was conscious of continuing a dialogue begun thousands of years before and which he believed would never end.
- Alberto Manguel
Disease, and most specially opprobrious, suppressed, secret disease, creates a certain critical opposition to the world, to mediocre life, disposes a man to be obstinate and ironical toward civil order, so that he seeks refuge in free thought, in books, in study.
- Thomas Mann
Sheer scholarship alone cannot reveal to us the gospel of grace. We must never allow the authority of books, institutions, or leaders to replace the authority of KNOWING Jesus Christ personally and directly. When the religious views of others interpose between us and the primary experience of Jesus as the Christ, we become unconvicted and unpersuasive travel agents handing out brochures to places we have never visited.
- Brennan Manning
Professional reviewers read so many bad books in the course of duty that they get an unhealthy craving for arresting phrases.
- Evelyn Waugh
I never read a single book as a child. I did not read as a child. I worked on the farm. I had books in the classroom, but that was it. I never read a single book outside of the classroom.
- Story Musgrave
I spend a lot of time preparing. I think a lot about what I want to do. I have prep books, little notebooks in which I write everything down before a sitting. Otherwise I would forget my ideas.
- Helmut Newton
A bottle of wine contains more philosophy than all the books in the world.
- Louis Pasteur
Who knows for what we live, and struggle, and die? Wise men write many books, in words too hard to understand. But this, the purpose of our lives, the end of all our struggle, is beyond all human wisdom.
- Alan Paton
Books were everywhere in their large apartment. Histories, biographies, novels, studies on Quebec antiques, poetry. Placed in orderly bookcases. Just about every table had at least one book on it, and oftern several magazines. And the weekend newspapers were scattered on the coffee table in the living room, in front of the fireplace. If a visitor was the observant type, and made it further into the apartment to Gamache's study, he might see the story the books in there told.
- Louise Penny
I think we did a great job of putting together a program that would have made good e-books available had people been buying e-books in any real numbers.
- Thomas Perry
...books, ingeniously coupled with music and alcohol, enabled the Irish to transcend reality.
- Joe Queenan
It is true, Monsieur," Raoule went on, shrugging her shoulders, "that I have had lovers in my life as I have books in my library, to know, to study. But I have had no passion, I have not written my own book yet! I always found myself alone when we were two. One is not weak when one remains master of one's self in the midst of the most stupefying pleasures.
- Rachilde
I read a book a day when I was a kid. My family was not literary; we did not have any books in the house.
- Amy Tan
Books inviting us to read, on the bookshelves stand.
Piers for bridges that will lead, into Fairyland
- Rainer Maria Rilke
It's so disappointing, to put it mildly, that people know so much about my life. Because it means that they're always trying to look at my books in terms of my life.
- Salman Rushdie
I asked him what, if anything, got him down about teaching. He said he didn't think that anything about it got him exactly down, but there was one thing, he thought, that frightened him: reading the pencilled notations in the margins of books in the college library.
- J D Salinger
There are books in which the footnotes, or the comments scrawled by some reader's hand in the margin, are more interesting than the text. The world is one of those books.
- George Santayana
What makes cookbooks interesting is to find out about the people and the culture that invented the food.
- Vincent Schiavelli
There are writers in Germany who drink the Absolute like water; and there are books in which even the dogs make references to the Infinite.
- Karl Friedrich Schlegel
Their house had real hardcover books in it, and you often saw them lying open on the sofa, the words still warm from being read.
- David Sedaris
There are too many books in the world to read in a single life time. You have to draw the line somewhere.
- Diane Setterfield
I mainly buy books in my free time.
- Wesley Snipes
I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in.
- Robert Louis Stevenson
You've read half the books in this house? This whole house?"
"Well, approximately half." Sticky said. "To be more accurate, I suppose I've read more like" - his eyes went up as he calculated - "three sevenths? Yes, three sevenths."
"Only three sevenths?" said Kate, pretending to look disappointed. "And here I was prepared to be impressed.
- Trenton Lee Stewart
Real life is physical. Give me books instead. Give me the invisibility of the contents of books, the thoughts, the ideas, the images. Let me become part of a book.... an intertextual being: a book cyborg, or, considering that books aren't cybernetic, perhaps a bibliorg.
- Scarlett Thomas
Life is something we have to experience, really feel, not just study for with books in a library. Learning is about so much more than school. If we're too busy studying, we miss out on the experience.
- Valerie Thomas
It's just different discipline, just doing the voice over. I guess I've done about 5 or 6 audio books in the past and I do the animated voice for a show called Fatherhood on Nickelodeon.
- Blair Underwood
She looked at her shelves, filled with books in which the bad stuff that happened to people was caused by things like witches who lured people into the woods. In a weird way, the world seemed to make more sense that way.
- Anne Ursu
There were thousands of brown books in leather bindings, some chained to the book-shelves and others propped against each other as if they had had too much to drink and did not really trust themselves. These gave out a smell of must and solid brownness which was most secure.
- T H White
I don't write books inadvertently.
- A N Wilson
Everyone should read at least 10 books in their lifetime - it helps your mind, develops your imagination, and can help you escape your reality.
- Megan Wilson
People who read books in public places are regarded with suspicion because they appear self-sufficient. When you seem self-sufficient, other people think that you think you're better than them, and they get resentful.
- Jessica Zafra
One only makes books in order to keep in touch with one's fellows after one has ceased to breath, and thus to defend oneself against the inexorable fate of all that lives - transitoriness and oblivion.
- Stefan Zweig
Except here what happens is that your brain starts to hum.
- Aravind Adiga
There was an extensive collection of cookbooks in the well-stocked library, and he took to pouring over these in the evenings.
- Alexandra Adornetto
I think many of my books, including 'Handle with Care,' including 'My Sister's Keeper,' circle back to how far are we willing to go for the people we love? I think love changes the way we think. It's the thing that takes you out of what your normal set of beliefs would be.
- Jodi Picoult
Please could I say one word?" was the question three times repeated before a rough head bobbed out from the grotto of books in which Mac usually sat. "Did anyone speak?" he asked, blinking in the flood of sunshine that entered with Rose.
- Louisa May Alcott
You say often you wish a library; here I gif you one; for between these two lids (he meant covers) is many books in one. Read him well, and he will help you much; for the study of character in this book will help you to read it in the world, and paint it with your pen.
- Louisa May Alcott
I used to sleep with my books in piles all over my bed and sometimes they were the only thing keeping me warm and always the only thing keeping me alive. Books are the best and worst defense.
- Sherman Alexie
My name is Eva, which means 'life,' according to a book of names my mother consulted. I was born in the back room of a shadowy house, and grew up amidst ancient furniture, books in Latin, and human mummies, but none of those things made me melancholy, because I came into the world with a breath of the jungle in my memory.
- Isabel Allende
The worst thing in the world was the way I felt when I wanted us to be like the families in the books in the library, when I just wanted Daddy Glen to love me like the father in Robinson Crusoe. (209)
- Dorothy Allison
A lot of books in the self-help section of your bookstore really belong in the fiction section.
- Steve Maraboli
No- I cannot talk of books in a ballroom; my head is always full of something else.
- Jane Austen
No one can draw more out of things, books included, than he already knows. A man has no ears for that to which experience has given him no access.
- Friedrich Nietzsche
I often wonder what I'd do if there weren't any books in the world.
- James Baldwin
Life isn't so complicated for children. They have more time to think about the really important things. That's why I occasionally moralise in my children's books in a way I wouldn't dare when writing for adults.
- Nina Bawden
If you feel... that well-read people are less likely to be evil, and a world full of people sitting quietly with good books in their hands is preferable to world filled with schisms and sirens and other noisy and troublesome things, then every time you enter a library you might say to yourself, 'The world is quiet here,' as a sort of pledge proclaiming reading to be the greater good.
- Lemony Snicket
There are many, many types of books in the world, which makes good sense, because there are many, many types of people, and everybody wants to read something different.
- Lemony Snicket
This wasn't the way I had imagined my adventures, but reality ignored my wishes from the get-go, giving me a body best suited for stacking books in the library, injecting so much fear into my veins that I could only cower in the stairwell when the violence came. Maybe someday my arms and legs would thicken with muscle and the fear would drain away like dirty bathwater. I wish I believed these things would happen, but I didn't.
- David Benioff
Our senses and emotions are the great source of inspiration for creating compelling and interesting art pieces (books included). Each art piece, be it a book, a song, a painting, a photograph or a product should touch our senses and evoke emotions. Emotionless art lacks purpose and interest.
- Serafima Bogomolova
There are certain books in the world which every searcher for truth must know: the Bible, the Critique of Pure Reason, the Origin of Species, and Karl Marx's Capital.
- W E B Du Bois
Tongues in trees, books in running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.
- William Shakespeare
And this, our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.
- William Shakespeare
The fact is that poetry is not the books in the library... Poetry is the encounter of the reader with the book, the discovery of the book.
- Jorge Luis Borges
I know of a wild region whose librarians repudiate the vain superstitious custom of seeking any sense in books and compare it to looking for meaning in dreams or in the chaotic lines of one's hands... They admit that the inventors of writing imitated the twenty-five natural symbols, but they maintain that this application is accidental and that books in themselves mean nothing. This opinion - we shall see - is not altogether false.
- Jorge Luis Borges
He had no settled plan of life, nor looked forward at all, but merely lived from day to day. Yet he read a great deal in a desultory manner, without any scheme of study, as chance threw books in his way, and inclination directed him through them.
- James Boswell
Somewhere the saving and putting away had to begin again and someone had to do the saving and keeping, one way or another, in books, in records, in people's heads, any way at all so long as it was safe, free from moths, silverfish, rust and dry rot and men with matches.
- Ray Bradbury
Are you kidding? I'm supposed to put my books in this filthy tin coffin?
- Kami Garcia
Elend: I kind of lost track of time...
Breeze: For two hours?
Elend: There were books involved.
- Brandon Sanderson
I've only read two books in my life: Baseball Sparkplug and Love Story.
- George Brett
I had a hard time publishing my books in the beginning of my career, because editors were afraid what people would think of THEM, personally, if their name was associated with me.
- Susie Bright
If this nation is to be wise as well as strong, if we are to achieve our destiny, then we need more new ideas for more wise men reading more good books in more public libraries. These libraries should be open to allexcept the censor. We must know all the facts and hear all the alternatives and listen to all the criticisms. Let us welcome controversial books and controversial authors. For the Bill of Rights is the guardian of our security as well as our liberty.
- John F Kennedy
Focus in on the genre you want to write, and read books in that genre. A LOT of books by a variety of authors. And read with questions in your mind.
- Nicholas Sparks
You can't enjoy art or books in a hurry.
- E A Bucchianeri
I am a writer of books in retrospect. I talk in order to understand; I teach in order to learn.
- Robert Frost
Christmas poem to a man in jail
hello Bill Abbott:
I appreciate your passing around my books in
jail there, my poems and stories.
if I can lighten the load for some of those guys with
my books, fine.
but literature, you know, is difficult for the
average man to assimilate (and for the unaverage man too);
I don't like most poetry, for example,
so I write mine the way I like to read it.
- Charles Bukowski
Do you know that if you take the books in an average school library and stretched out all those words into a single line, the line would go all the way around the world? Actually, I made that up, but doesn't it sound like it should be true?
- Neal Shusterman
Books in a large university library system: 2,000,000. Books in an average large city library: 10,000. Average number of books in a chain bookstore: 30,000. Books in an average neighborhood branch library: 20,000.
- Anthony Burgess
At one point, trying to explain her unhappiness, Sanna was to say to Miss Love, "I read some psychology books in college. Everything that's supposed to warp a child happened to me." Miss Love, who had been raped as an adolescent, replies, "Everything that could warp a child happened to me, too. But understanding that doesn't help. It's interesting but it doesn't help. I figure that what you do with your life now is all that counts. I try not to look back.
- Olive Ann Burns
We had to figure out how to produce books in a cost-effective way.
- Levar Burton
My main wish is to get my books into other people's rooms, and to keep other people's books out of mine.
- Samuel Butler
We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library, whose walls are covered to the ceiling with books in many different languages. The child knows that someone must have written those books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the the languages in which they are written. The child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books, a mysterious order, which it does not comprehend but only dimly suspects.
- Albert Einstein
I've had many more thousands of books in my possession than my shelves at home would indicate. At one time, I tried to keep them all, but that quest soon became impossible; I now only keep the ones I'm sure I'm going to reread, the ones I'm definitely going to read before I die, and the ones I can't bear to part with because of an aesthetic or emotional attachment.
- Lewis Buzbee
It's not as if I don't have anything to read; there's a tower of perfectly good unread books next to my bed, not to mention the shelves of books in the living room I've been meaning to reread. I find myself, maddeningly, hungry for the next one, as yet unknown. I no longer try to analyze this hunger; I capitulated long ago to the book lust that's afflicted me most of my life.
- Lewis Buzbee
There are certain books in the world which every searcher for truth must know: the Bible, the Critique of Pure Reason, the Origin of Species, and Karl Marx's Capital.
- Al Capp
There is no substitute for books in the life of a child. (1952)
- Mary Ellen Chase
It could be said that a single person has written all the books in the world such central unity is in them that they are undeniably the work of a single all-knowing master.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
The Bible is one of the most genocidal books in history.
- Noam Chomsky
Always buy pornographic books in hardback because they're easier to hold with one hand.
- Robert Clark
Otis was inspired by a boy who sat across the aisle from me in sixth grade. He was a lively person. My best friend appears in assorted books in various disguises.
- Beverly Cleary
Do you want to guess what's in here?" I asked Dash.
"I think I've got it figured out already. There's a new supply of red notebooks in there, and you want us to fill them in with clues about the works of, say, Nicholas Sparks."
"Who?" I asked. Please, no more broody poets. I couldn't keep up.
"You don't know who Nicholas Sparks is?" Dash asked.
I shook my head.
"Please don't ever find out," he said.
- Rachel Cohn
I know that I am very popular in Holland, in fact I have visited Amsterdam several times to publicize my books. I have a great publisher in Holland and they have published all of my books in Dutch.
- Jackie Collins
I'd never have written the big books in London.
- Jilly Cooper
To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise..
- Henry David Thoreau
He was intrigued by the power of words, not the literary words that filled the books in the library but the sharp, staccato words that went into the writing of news stories. Words that went for the jugular. Active verbs that danced and raced on the page.
- Robert Cormier
So far it's 43 books in 25 years.
- Bernard Cornwell
Obviously people read the books in order to be entertained.
- Patricia Cornwell
Books, indeed, were his sole luxuries
- Edgar Allan Poe
The funny thing is, I'm not really a big reader, not a big fan of books in the first place.
- Macaulay Culkin
Think of me, the uneducated child reading books in my room at 22 Hyde Park Gate -- now advanced to this glory... Yes; all that reading, I say, has borne this odd fruit. And I am pleased.
- Virginia Woolf
Like most uneducated Englishwomen, I like reading--I like reading books in the bulk.
- Virginia Woolf
I don't write down my experiences, but I have a very decent memory. I have tons of books in which I write down phrases as they occur to me. That's how I write songs. I'll need a line and I'll go through the books and find it, the right rhyme and everything.
- Evan Dando
I bet if you look at the average teenager and the average adult, the average teenager has read more books in the last year than the average adult. Now of course the adult would be all like, 'I'm busy, I got a job, I got stuff to do.' WHATEVER! READ! I mean, you're watching CSI: Miami. Why would you be watching CSI: Miami, when you could be READING CSI: Miami, the novelization?
- John Green
Radar threw his books into his locker and shut it. Then the din of conversation around us quieted just a bit as he turned his eyes toward the heavens and shouted, IT IS NOT MY FAULT THAT MY PARENTS OWN THE WORLD'S LARGEST COLLECTION OF BLACK SANTAS.
- John Green
Have you really read all those books in your room?"
Alaska laughing- "Oh God no. I've maybe read a third of 'em. But I'm going to read them all. I call it my Life's Library. Every summer since I was little, I've gone to garage sales and bought all the books that looked interesting. So I always have something to read.
- John Green
November is Jewish book month, so Jewish Community Centers all around the country have book fairs where they invite authors and sell books in advance of the holidays.
- Anita Diament
So it is that a writer writes many books. In each book, he intended several urgent and vivid points, many of which he sacrificed as the book's form hardened.
- Annie Dillard
For all the books in his possession, he still failed to read the stories written plain as day in the faces of the people around him.
- Emma Donoghue
I have piles of poetry books in the bathroom, on the stairs, everywhere. The only way to write poetry is to read it.
- Carol Ann Duffy
The old man was peering intently at the shelves. 'I'll have to admit that he's a very competent scholar.'
Isn't he just a librarian?' Garion asked, 'somebody who looks after books?'
That's where all the rest of scholarship starts, Garion. All the books in the world won't help you if they're just piled up in a heap.
- David Eddings
If an army of monkeys were strumming on typewriters, they might write all the books in the British Museum.
- Arthur Eddington
I had a briefcase at one point, but it was a kind of 1980s New Wave briefcase. It was made of some kind of cardboard and it had metal hinges. It was kind of faux industrial looking, and I used to carry my books in it rather than a backpack. I didn't want to have normal student accoutrements.
- Jeffrey Eugenides
One reads books in order to gain the privilege of living more than one life. People who don't read are trapped in a mine shaft, even if they think the sun is shining.
- Garrison Keillor
If I finish a book a week, I will read only a few thousand books in my lifetime, about a tenth of a percent of the contents of the greatest libraries of our time. The trick is to know which books to read.
- Carl Sagan
All of the books in the world contain no more information than is broadcast as video in a single large American city in a single year. Not all bits have equal value.
- Carl Sagan
The books in Mo and Meggie's house were stacked under tables, on chairs, in the corners of the rooms. There where books in the kitchen and books in the lavatory. Books on the TV set and in the closet, small piles of books, tall piles of books, books thick and thin, books old and new. They welcomed Meggie down to breakfast with invitingly opened pages; they kept boredom at bay when the weather was bad. And sometimes you fall over them.
- Cornelia Funke
-And there's this twelve thousand dollars item for books.
-That supposed to be twelve hundred, the twelve thousand is for paper.
towels. Besides there is already that bequest for the library.
-Did it say books in so many words? No. It's just a bequest for the library.
-Use it for pegboard. You need pegboard in a library. Books you don't know what you're getting into.
- William Gaddis
Current "literature" [is] well-written books in which disgusting people do disgusting things to other disgusting people for no apparent reason and with no apparent resolution.
- Roberta Gellis
Young minds - young brains - need stories and ideas like the ones in those [censored and banned] books in order to grow. They need ideas that you disagree with. They need ideas that I disagree with. Or they'll never be able to figure out what ideas they believe in.
- Lev Grossman
There are 10,000 books in my library, and it will keep growing until I die. This has exasperated my daughters, amused my friends and baffled my accountant. If I had not picked up this habit in the library long ago, I would have more money in the bank today; I would not be richer.
- Pete Hamill
The Potter books in general are a prolonged argument for tolerance, a prolonged plea for an end to bigotry. And I think it's one of the reasons that some people don't like the books, but I think that's it's a very healthy message to pass on to younger people that you should question authority and you should not assume that the establishment or the press tells you all of the truth.
- J K Rowling
I'd love to see a good script of one of my books, in these years of animations and comic book sequels, and had so many written over the years, but none quite clicked.
- Carl Hiaasen
(about organizing books in his home library, and putting a book in the Arts and Lit non-fiction section)
I personally find that for domestic purposes, the Trivial Pursuit system works better than Dewey.
- Nick Hornby
... because real thoughts come from outside and travel with us like the noodle soup we take to work; in other words, inquisitors burn books in vain. If a book has anything to say, it burns with a quiet laugh, because any book worth its salt points up and out of itself.
- Bohumil Hrabal
I feel I've got 10 books in me.
- Robert Hunter
They were steaming out of the station before Maia asked, 'Was it books in the trunk?'
'It was books, admitted Miss Minton.
And Maia said, 'Good.
- Eva Ibbotson
I was drawn to boxing because I got beat up as a kid. I was the kid with the piano books in a New York neighbourhood.
- Billy Joel
There are two kinds of books in the world--the boring kind they make you read in school and the interesting kind that they won't let you read in school because then they would have to talk about real stuff like sex and divorce and is there a God and if there isn't then what happens when you die, and how come the history books have so many lies in them.
- Louanne Johnson
After this, Boy became very curious about the mansion where the clothes and the food came from. He made me describe everything. Then he asked Good Thing 'Are there books in this mansion, too?'
'And pictures and jewels,' Good Thing said through me. 'What does Master wish me to fetch? There is a golden harp, a musical box like a bird, a'
'Just books,' said Boy. 'I need to learn. I'm still so ignorant.
- Diana Wynne Jones
The worst book I've never read is the book I've never written, nor will I ever write. That book is "Food, God, Sex", which is not to be confused with "Eat, Pray, Love". My book was going to be about calories, the cosmos, and orgasms, but I just don't think there's a market for that type of thing among all the other children's books in the world.
- Jarod Kintz
On my list of things to be when I grew up was a character in a Gary Larson comic. With one of his books in my hands, I would spend hours and hours laughing. And then I'd finally stop laughing long enough to actually open the book. I'm not sure what the younger me would think about me if he could see me now. To be honest, I'm not sure he'd be terribly impressed. He'd probably put his hands on his hips and hump his dismay.
- Jarod Kintz
There are certain books in the history of the world that should never have been written. This book makes all those look like masterpieces.
- Jarod Kintz
I want to type one of my books into a free online translation website, and convert it from English to German and then publish the results as an exercise in the absurd.
- Jarod Kintz
I love ebooks. I love the idea of storing books in "The Cloud", because honestly, reading and rainy days go together like peanut butter and umbrellas.
- Jarod Kintz
We tend to read each other's books in sizeable chunks as they are written. I don't know that you could say we are ruthless with each other - in fact, I suppose we are very kind. There are ways to make suggestions which are not destructive.
- Jonathan Kellerman
One day I would have all the books in the world, shelves and shelves of them. I would live my life in a tower of books. I would read all day long and eat peaches. And if any young knights in armor dared to come calling on their white chargers and plead with me to let down my hair, I would pelt them with peach pits until they went home.
- Jacqueline Kelly
I've taken over the guest room wardrobe too- plus, I've arranged all my shoes on the bookshelves on the landing. (I put the books in boxes. No one ever read them. anyway.)
- Sophie Kinsella
I think Walking Dead is one of the friendliest new reader type books in that every time a new trade is shipped out, a new issue is shipped out at the same time.
- Robert Kirkman
Sometimes I miss out the morning's painting session and instead study my Japanese books in the open.
- Gustav Klimt
There are books that I own that somehow even without reading them they mean something to me. So I think people have a relationship with books in a library whether you've come specifically to read them or not.
- Rem Koolhaas
I bought some books in order to learn the first principles of philosophy.
- Johann Heinrich Lambert
The difference between people who believe they have books inside of them and those who actually write books is sheer cussed persistence - the ability to make yourself work at your craft, every day - the belief, even in the face of obstacles, that you've got something worth saying.
- Jennifer Weiner
I learned to read at the age of five, in Brother Justiniano's class at the De la Salle Academy in Cochabamba, Bolivia. It is the most important thing that has ever happened to me. Almost seventy years later I remember clearly how the magic of translating the words in books into images enriched my life, breaking the barriers of time and space..
- Mario Vargas Llosa
I have friends who read my books in Greek.
- Brian Lumley
I spent my life folded between the pages of books. In the absence of human relationships, I formed bonds with paper characters.
- Tahereh Mafi
In a library in Missouri that was covered with vines
Lived thousands of books in a hundred straight lines
A boy came in at half past nine
Every Saturday, rain or shine
His book selections were clan-des-tine.
- Rebecca Makkai
For Borges, the core of reality lay in books; reading books, writing books, talking about books. In a visceral way, he was conscious of continuing a dialogue begun thousands of years before and which he believed would never end.
- Alberto Manguel
Disease, and most specially opprobrious, suppressed, secret disease, creates a certain critical opposition to the world, to mediocre life, disposes a man to be obstinate and ironical toward civil order, so that he seeks refuge in free thought, in books, in study.
- Thomas Mann
Sheer scholarship alone cannot reveal to us the gospel of grace. We must never allow the authority of books, institutions, or leaders to replace the authority of KNOWING Jesus Christ personally and directly. When the religious views of others interpose between us and the primary experience of Jesus as the Christ, we become unconvicted and unpersuasive travel agents handing out brochures to places we have never visited.
- Brennan Manning
Professional reviewers read so many bad books in the course of duty that they get an unhealthy craving for arresting phrases.
- Evelyn Waugh
I never read a single book as a child. I did not read as a child. I worked on the farm. I had books in the classroom, but that was it. I never read a single book outside of the classroom.
- Story Musgrave
I spend a lot of time preparing. I think a lot about what I want to do. I have prep books, little notebooks in which I write everything down before a sitting. Otherwise I would forget my ideas.
- Helmut Newton
A bottle of wine contains more philosophy than all the books in the world.
- Louis Pasteur
Who knows for what we live, and struggle, and die? Wise men write many books, in words too hard to understand. But this, the purpose of our lives, the end of all our struggle, is beyond all human wisdom.
- Alan Paton
Books were everywhere in their large apartment. Histories, biographies, novels, studies on Quebec antiques, poetry. Placed in orderly bookcases. Just about every table had at least one book on it, and oftern several magazines. And the weekend newspapers were scattered on the coffee table in the living room, in front of the fireplace. If a visitor was the observant type, and made it further into the apartment to Gamache's study, he might see the story the books in there told.
- Louise Penny
I think we did a great job of putting together a program that would have made good e-books available had people been buying e-books in any real numbers.
- Thomas Perry
...books, ingeniously coupled with music and alcohol, enabled the Irish to transcend reality.
- Joe Queenan
It is true, Monsieur," Raoule went on, shrugging her shoulders, "that I have had lovers in my life as I have books in my library, to know, to study. But I have had no passion, I have not written my own book yet! I always found myself alone when we were two. One is not weak when one remains master of one's self in the midst of the most stupefying pleasures.
- Rachilde
I read a book a day when I was a kid. My family was not literary; we did not have any books in the house.
- Amy Tan
Books inviting us to read, on the bookshelves stand.
Piers for bridges that will lead, into Fairyland
- Rainer Maria Rilke
It's so disappointing, to put it mildly, that people know so much about my life. Because it means that they're always trying to look at my books in terms of my life.
- Salman Rushdie
I asked him what, if anything, got him down about teaching. He said he didn't think that anything about it got him exactly down, but there was one thing, he thought, that frightened him: reading the pencilled notations in the margins of books in the college library.
- J D Salinger
There are books in which the footnotes, or the comments scrawled by some reader's hand in the margin, are more interesting than the text. The world is one of those books.
- George Santayana
What makes cookbooks interesting is to find out about the people and the culture that invented the food.
- Vincent Schiavelli
There are writers in Germany who drink the Absolute like water; and there are books in which even the dogs make references to the Infinite.
- Karl Friedrich Schlegel
Their house had real hardcover books in it, and you often saw them lying open on the sofa, the words still warm from being read.
- David Sedaris
There are too many books in the world to read in a single life time. You have to draw the line somewhere.
- Diane Setterfield
I mainly buy books in my free time.
- Wesley Snipes
I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in.
- Robert Louis Stevenson
You've read half the books in this house? This whole house?"
"Well, approximately half." Sticky said. "To be more accurate, I suppose I've read more like" - his eyes went up as he calculated - "three sevenths? Yes, three sevenths."
"Only three sevenths?" said Kate, pretending to look disappointed. "And here I was prepared to be impressed.
- Trenton Lee Stewart
Real life is physical. Give me books instead. Give me the invisibility of the contents of books, the thoughts, the ideas, the images. Let me become part of a book.... an intertextual being: a book cyborg, or, considering that books aren't cybernetic, perhaps a bibliorg.
- Scarlett Thomas
Life is something we have to experience, really feel, not just study for with books in a library. Learning is about so much more than school. If we're too busy studying, we miss out on the experience.
- Valerie Thomas
It's just different discipline, just doing the voice over. I guess I've done about 5 or 6 audio books in the past and I do the animated voice for a show called Fatherhood on Nickelodeon.
- Blair Underwood
She looked at her shelves, filled with books in which the bad stuff that happened to people was caused by things like witches who lured people into the woods. In a weird way, the world seemed to make more sense that way.
- Anne Ursu
There were thousands of brown books in leather bindings, some chained to the book-shelves and others propped against each other as if they had had too much to drink and did not really trust themselves. These gave out a smell of must and solid brownness which was most secure.
- T H White
I don't write books inadvertently.
- A N Wilson
Everyone should read at least 10 books in their lifetime - it helps your mind, develops your imagination, and can help you escape your reality.
- Megan Wilson
People who read books in public places are regarded with suspicion because they appear self-sufficient. When you seem self-sufficient, other people think that you think you're better than them, and they get resentful.
- Jessica Zafra
One only makes books in order to keep in touch with one's fellows after one has ceased to breath, and thus to defend oneself against the inexorable fate of all that lives - transitoriness and oblivion.
- Stefan Zweig
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