Book Quotes
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I think books with weak or translucent plots can survive if the character being drawn along the path is rich, interesting and multi-faceted. The opposite is not true.
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You're all alone when you're a writer. Sometimes you just feel you need a humanity bath. Even a ride on the subway will do that. But it's much more interesting to talk about books. After all, that's what life used to be for writers: they talk books, politics, history, America. Nothing has replaced that.
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I actually love history. I've devoured book after book of stories from World War I and World War II. They're really two sections of world history that really interest me.
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It wasn't until I was 37 that I grasped the great truth that you've got to write your own books and nobody else's, and then everything followed from there.
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I’m just another memory in a box in the closet collecting dust. I’m just another promise that you broke when we broke up. I’m just another old flame. We were burning hot until we burned out. I’m just another first name in your little black book with the ink crossed out. Just another girl, just another girl…
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A good book written for children can be read by adults
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I spent my life in the library reading books.
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If a book comes from the heart, it will contrive to reach other hearts; all art and author-craft are of small amount to that.
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..holding a book but reading the empty spaces.
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If you're flying with your children, it's best to book them on the same flight and not on one where they have more legroom and are leaving at a different time. They could get there earlier than you, and that causes resentment. Two-year-olds can also never figure out those connecting flights. It just makes it harder, so travel as a family.
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I think you keep two sets of books. In one set, you record the truth -- how well you are really doing. This is the secret set -- just for you and loved ones. In the other set are more modest entries and statements, and these are for public consumption!
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I fear that I can no longer travel without technology. Twenty years ago, I loved getting on a bus in West Africa and taking off for a city I'd never been to before, relying on advice from out-of-date travel books and fellow passengers on the bus. Now, I end up using TripAdvisor, Yelp, and Google Maps. I probably eat and sleep better when I'm on the road, but I miss the mystery of travel when it was more random and unpredictable.
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The civil liberties types who are fighting this issue have to fight it, owing to the nature of the laws, as a matter of freedom of speech and stifling of free expression and so on. But we know what's really involved, dirty books are fun. That's all there is to it. But you can't get up in a court and say that.
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The Quantum Universe has a quotation from me in every chapter - but it's a damn good book anyway.
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A good book is a good book, and there are a lot of different ways to approach writing or reading one.
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There is the myth that writing books for children is easier than writing books for grownups, whereas we know that truly great books for children are works of genius, whether it's 'Alice in Wonderland' or the 'Gruffalo' or 'Northern Lights.' When it's a great book, it's a great book, whether it's for children or not.
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For me, writing is more a process of discovering the book than planning it.
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I don't like outlining, because books are organic things. Sometimes a book doesn't want to be written in a certain way.
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Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there.
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I try to create new characters in each book I write. That's what makes writing fun and interesting for me.
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The fact that people go to Portland to visit a tiny feminist bookstore-no matter what the impetus is for them getting there-the fact that they go in there and look around and shop for books or stationery or whatever, is a major source of pride for me.
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I've had journals ever since I was really little. Sometimes I write poems and stuff, but for the most part I write down what happens to me during the day that I don't want to forget. So I have books filled with little things like that.
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I always want my books to reach a positive point in the end.
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We too are called to withdraw at certain intervals into deeper silence and aloneness with God, together as a community as well as personally; to be alone with Him — not with our books, thoughts, and memories but completely stripped of everything — to dwell lovingly in His presence, silent, empty, expectant, and motionless. We cannot find God in noise or agitation.
