Book Quotes
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Five minutes in an old book quickly reveals that most of what is being sold today as new insights into human behavior is merely the rediscovery of knowledge we have had for centuries.
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Religion, it stops people from thinking because they think all the answers are in that one book; it impedes progress; it justifies crazy people. Flying planes into a building was a faith-based initiative.
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Whatever's good about your book should be good on page 1, or very few editors are going to get to page 2.
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We think this is a good title for our first read because it has such a broad-based appeal. And because it was chosen as the 2001 best book for young adults by the American Library Association.
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And rather than make the book unwieldy I have eschewed notes-reluctantly when some obscure passage or allusion seemed to ask for a timely word; with more equanimity when the temptation was to criticize or 'appreciate.' For the function of the anthologist includes criticizing in silence.
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Michael Jackson is an extremely productive ethnographer, a serious reader of phenomenological and existential philosophy, and a remarkable writer at a level that one rarely sees in anthropology. Lifeworlds, unsurprisingly, is no exception. The several essays included here fit into an impressive whole that set out a compelling case for a type of ethnography of which Jackson is one of the masters. The writing is strong and the critical reflections impressive. This book defines an approach to anthropology that is resonant enough to challenge the leading models of our time.
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Memoirs have dominated the literary scene now for ten or 20 or even 30 years: most of them seem to use the conventions of fiction and it's astonishing how in so many of these books people seem to be able to remember conversations that took place when they were five years old and give three pages of coherent dialogue, which is utterly impossible.
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I worked in publishing before I became an author, so I knew how a book gets made.
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I don't want to name names because they'd be mad at me if I did, but people who are significant novelists can't get published by real publishers at this point, or have to go through two years of trying after writing a novel that's taken them five or six years and simply can't get the thing in print. Or it gets in print and it doesn't get reviewed in the New York Times Book Review and disappears without a trace. I mean, it's terrifying. I don't know how anybody can stand it. It's such an enormous amount of work and the economics of it are really quite brutal.
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I'm addicted to email, but other than that, there are practical things - being able to buy a book on the internet that you can't find in your local bookshop. This could be a lifeline if you live further from the sources.
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In the press this week, NBC has been calling me every name in the book. In fact, they think I'm such an idiot they now want me to run the network.
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I always save a huge book for a flight, because then you read it at both airports and on the plane and by the time you get home you're a quarter of the way through and it doesn't feel so unmanageable any more.
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I used to go to the library all the time when I was kid. As a teenager, I got a book on how to write jokes at the library, and that, in turn, launched my comedy career.
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There's no way you can misunderstand the teachings of the Qur'an, there's no way you can misunderstand the teachings of the Bible, there's no way you can misunderstand the teachings of the Bhaghavad Gita, or of the Book of Mormon, or of the other sacred texts of many of those religions.
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I keep one simple rule that I only move in one direction - I write the book straight through from beginning to end. By following time's arrow, I keep myself sane.
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I wouldn't write a book, because saying the word I over and over again would nauseate me.
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Books have that strange quality, that being of the frailest and tenderest matter, they outlast brass, iron and marble.
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Every book for me is a chapter in the long book which will finally be closed on the day of my death.
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But for me if I'm gonna read about something I'd rather read a pamphlet or the instructions to a synthesizer than a book on Buddhism.
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I'm passionate again about writing. This is important to me; it's got to be the comeback book.
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You can never step into the same book twice, because you are different each time you read it.
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The rosary was said every evening. I always liked that sentence about the medieval Churches, that they were the Bibles of the poor. The Church was my first book and I would think it is still my most important book.
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It's a very 18th-century thing to have a book broken into several volumes.
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I think they thought it was very arrogant of me to write the end of my seven books series when I didn't have a publisher and no-one had heard of me
