Book Quotes
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I was about 13, in some ways, when I wrote the first book. Approximately 18 when I wrote the second.
Jonathan Franzen
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Storytelling is how history is passed. It's what our ancestors did, it's what everybody's done. It has to come back into a story because otherwise, it's stuck in this book and it's boring and it's academic and I'm not against intelligence and I'm not against education, I don't want to be misunderstood, but we have tell the stories to our young people a little bit early and history gives us a lot of things.
Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr.
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Writing a book is not as tough as it is to haul thirty-five people around the country and sweat like a horse five nights a week.
Bette Midler
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The biggest book for me, when I was fifteen, was Crime and Punishment, which I read in a kind of fever. When I put it down, I thought, if this is what novels are then I want to be a novelist.
Paul Auster
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My specialty as a collector is books that almost have value. When I love a book, I don't buy the first edition, because those have become incredibly expensive. But I might buy a beat-up copy of the second edition, third printing, which looks almost exactly the same as the first edition except that a couple of typos have been fixed.
Lev Grossman
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It’s very nearly 1989 but it’s midnight in the Dark Ages just the thickness of a book away, the thickness of a skull away; just the turn of a page away.
Iain Banks
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The best source for finding an agent is called Literary Agents of North America. It's a complete list of agents, not only by name and address, but by type of book they represent and by what their submission criteria are.
Sara Paretsky
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Perhaps nothing is more magical then the book. Paper, glue and some words and you are taken away from where you sit, stand, dance, or lean.
Robert Farrell Smith
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You'll never be alone if you’ve got a book.
Al Pacino
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What I wanted to create with 'The Luminaries' is a book that had structural patterns built in that didn't matter, but if you cared about them, you could look into the book and see them.
Eleanor Catton
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No one ever writes a book in which he is the bad guy.
Andy Rooney
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'There was only one cadet I ever really hated. Just one name I can think of,' The Boo said. 'That'll make an interesting story for the book, Colonel. Who is the jerk?' I asked. 'It was you, Conroy. Just you. There was something about you that I hated when you first walked into fourth battalion, you worthless bum.'
Pat Conroy
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No matter where I'm going, I always have sunglasses, a book, and some gum in my carry-on.
Dylan Penn
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When you put a book together and arrange it, there's a lot of anxiety and turmoil about what order the poems should be in.
Billy Collins
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Most of physics is about energy, and physicists understand inefficiencies. I wanted to write a book about our energy options in a neutral, human-accessible form.
David J. C. MacKay
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Thou mayest as well expect to grow stronger by always eating as wiser by always reading. Too much overcharges Nature, and turns more into disease than nourishment. 'Tis thought and digestion which makes books serviceable, and give health and vigor to the mind.
R. Buckminster Fuller
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Brilliant. . . . Marriage Confidential is both laugh-out-loud funny and gasp-out-loud shocking, and nothing less than a Feminine Mystique for our time. Mark my words, your marriage will change after reading this book.
Debby Applegate
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I write for the love of writing. If I never published another book, I would still be writing stories.
Christine Feehan
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My husband wrote me love letters while I was on location in Canada and pregnant. They turned into being about food, and it turned it into a cookbook. He called it 'The Tuscan Cookbook for the Pregnant Male.' It was kind of genius. When I took it a book agent, he was like, 'Men don't buy cookbooks.'
Debi Mazar
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I'm really lucky with the people around me. They know me, so they don't confuse the issues, really. They know what a book is and they know who I am and they know the difference between the two.
Anne Enright
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Each book requires a different look. Sometimes I get to take a personal direction that's appropriate for the story. I try to push things within a range. Some are rougher, some more expressionistic, some are slicker graphically and call for a prettier drawing style that I can do. Some have a more classical vibe, and some are in between.
Cliff Chiang
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[Wave of bestselling conservative commentators] it's kind of like reading The Power Of Positive Thinking, or any other advice or how-to book. All they do is reassure people of their basic opinions, and then they can continue to act like they've always acted. I'd say it's time to move on to something else, but I don't know what it would be.
P. J. O'Rourke