Book Quotes
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A book is sent out into the world, and there is no way of fully anticipating the responses it will elicit. Consider the responses called forth by the Bible, Homer, Shakespeare - let alone contemporary poetry or a modern novel.
Chaim Potok
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All art involves conscious discipline. If one is going to paint, do sculpture, design a building or write a book, it will involve discipline in time and energy — or there would never be any production at all to be seen, felt or enjoyed by ourselves or others. To develop ‘Hidden Art’ will also, of course, take time and energy – and the balance of the use of time is a constant individual problem for all of us: what to do, and what to leave undone. One is always having to neglect one thing in order to give precedence to something else. The question is one of priorities
Edith Schaeffer
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Once you finish a book, it doesn't belong to you anymore. You're giving it to other people. If something in what a writer writes can excite the imagination and the feelings of the reader, then that reader carries it around forever. Nothing is more vivid than good fiction.
Paul Auster
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Once we know the plot and its surprises, we can appreciate a book's artistry without the usual confusion and sap flow of emotion, content to follow the action with tenderness and interest, all passion spent. Rather than surrender to the story or the characters - as a good first reader ought - we can now look at how the book works, and instead of swooning over it like a besotted lover begin to appreciate its intricacy and craftmanship. Surprisingly, such dissection doesn't murder the experience. Just the opposite: Only then does a work of art fully live.
Michael Dirda
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If the real world were a book, it would never find a publisher.
Jasper Fforde
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Reading groups, readings, breakdowns of book sales all tell the same story: when women stop reading, the novel will be dead.
Ian Mcewan
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And so I write the way I myself would like the book to be – if I were a child. I write for the child within me.
Astrid Lindgren
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Amidst the flood of dangerous reading, I plead for my Master's book; I call upon you not to forget the book of the soul. Do not let newspapers, novels, and romances be read, while the prophets and Apostles be despised. Do not let the exciting and sensual swallow up your attention, while the edifying and the sanctifying can find no place in your mind.
J. C. Ryle
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She is never alone when she has Her Books. Books, to her, are Friends. Give her Shakespeare or Jane Austen, Meredith or Hardy, and she is Lost - lost in a world of her own. She sleeps so little that most of her nights are spent reading.
E. M. Delafield
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A good picture book can almost be whistled. ... All have their own melodies behind the storytelling.
Margaret Wise Brown
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I probably am a cranky writer, but I am actually a fairly nice, normal person. Since I'm a grouchy writer, of course I have friends whose books are doing way better than mine.
Sarah Vowell
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I think having a good agent is key. I've been with mine for ten years now, and she's very honest with me. There are a lot of times I've sent her books that were not so good because I was tired of writing, or panicked about money, and she's told me flat out, "You don't want this to be your next book. Trust me."
Sarah Dessen
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It's not a case of: 'Read this book and then you'll think differently. I've written this book, and I don't think differently.
Daniel Kahneman
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I've been teaching classes on memoirs since 1986, and I've been reading them all my life, and I think that I would like to write a critical book that might have some of those how-to elements in it.
Mary Karr
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Many books in my library are now behind and beneath me. They were good in their way once, and so were the clothes I wore when I was ten years old; but I have outgrown them. Nobody ever outgrows Scripture; the book widens and deepens with our years.
Charles Spurgeon
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Much of our adult morality, in books and out of them, has a stuffiness unworthy of childhood. Our grown-up conclusions often rest on perilously soft bottom.
E. B. White
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The health benefits, both mental and physical, of humor are well documented. A good laugh can diffuse tension, relieve stress, and release endorphins into your system, which act as a natural mood elevator. In Norman Cousin's book, Anatomy of an Illness, Cousin's describes the regimen he followed to overcome a serious debilitating disease he was suffering from. It included large doses of laughter and humor. Published in 1976, his book has been widely accepted by the medical community.
Cherie Carter-Scott
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Read every book, blog, website, whatever, about what you want to be an expert in.
James Altucher
