Book Quotes
-
It has long been a tradition among novel writers that a book must end by everybody getting just what they wanted, or if the conventional happy ending was impossible, then it must be a tragedy in which one or both should die. In real life very few of us get what we want, our tragedies don't kill us, but we go on living them year after year, carrying them with us like a scar on an old wound.
Willa Cather
-
If 'The Wild One' were filmed today, Marlon Brando and the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club would all have to wear helmets. I used to be afraid that when (Hells) Angels became movie stars and Cal the hero of the book, the bikerider would perish on the coffee tables of America. But now I think that this attention doesn't have the strength of reality of the people it aspires to know, and that as long as Harley-Davidsons are manufactured other bikeriders will appear, riding unknown and beautiful through Chicago, into the streets of Cicero.
Danny Lyon
-
You can't. Do you hear me? You think you've figured something out? You run over here so pleased with yourself because you changed your mind. Now you're certain. You're so... sloppy. You don't know anything. The book, the math, the dates, the writing, all that stuff you decided with your buddies, it's just evidence. It doesn't finish the job. It doesn't prove anything.
David Auburn
-
There are numerous cases of that, where one of our writers discovers another writer whom he likes, and we then take that book on. So it's a very close relationship. We can do that because we're so small.
James Laughlin
-
No good book has ever been written that has in it symbols arrived at beforehand and stuck in. ... I tried to make a real old man, a real boy, a real sea and a real fish and real sharks. But if I made them good and true enough they would mean many things
Ernest Hemingway
-
On this International Day for the Abolition of Slavery let us reaffirm the inherent dignity of all men, women and children. And let us redouble our efforts to build societies in which slavery truly is a term for the history books.
Ban Ki-moon
-
When I think about the books I've written, it probably takes 150,000-200,000 words to get a 50,000 page book. Highlighting something and hitting Cmd-X is second nature.
Brad Feld
-
My favorite kind of book is a domestic drama that's grounded in reality yet slightly unhinged.
Maria Semple
-
Often in the past, there have been authors that were deeply disappointed in their adaptation, but that's because they haven't accepted the fact that a movie is a different thing, and it can't possibly be the same as the book.
Lois Lowry
-
It's not like I've got 100 ideas. I finish a book, and I've got none.
Peter Carey
-
I first read Harper Lee's 'To Kill a Mockingbird' as a teen in school, like you did. I read the book alone, eating lunch at my locker, neatly scored oranges my mother divided into five lines with a circle at the top, so my fingers could dig more easily into the orange skin. To this day, the smell of oranges reminds me of 'Mockingbird.'
Margaret Stohl
-
I think if you can take something out and it doesn't change the book, it doesn't need to be there.
Rebecca Stead