Book Quotes
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I think it's very hard for us, for Christians, to understand that it's okay to read a book, for instance, on how to manage your time. There's nothing wrong with that.
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In plotting a book, my goal is to raise the stakes for the characters and, in so doing, keep the reader mesmerized.
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It's just my goal to deliver the best story I can, and I want to make sure each book is better than the last, and in order to do that, I have to take chances.
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I've always been fascinated by the brain. I wrote a lot about brain-tech in my first non-fiction book, 'More Than Human.' So when I decided to write science fiction, that was the technology I gravitated towards.
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Of course, there are those critics - New York critics as a rule - who say, 'Well, Maya Angelou has a new book out and of course it's good but then she's a natural writer.' Those are the ones I want to grab by the throat and wrestle to the floor because it takes me forever to get it to sing. I work at the language.
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Every life is inexplicable, I kept telling myself. No matter how many facts are told, no matter how many details are given, the essential thing resists telling. To say that so and so was born here and went there, that he did this and did that, that he married this woman and had these children, that he lived, that he died, that he left behind these books or this battle or that bridge – none of that tells us very much.
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I was eighteen when I wrote my first book, and I can't remember what it was called. I have no idea where the manuscript is - I lost it when I was twenty-one.
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I wrote a book on grace, and grace is a free gift, but to receive the gift you have to have your hands open. And a lot of people don't have their hands open, there's something they're grasping because there's a lot of things to grasp in a prosperous country.
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What sort of person you grow into should not be achieved by default, and often that's exactly what happens to kids. I see literature as a method of guidance, information, and contemplation, and consider it the greatest compliment possible when a reader tells me that a book of mine really made him/her think.
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I was incredibly lucky that my first book found a large and loyal readership. It changed my life - from being a very withdrawn adult to living in Paris as a full-time writer. It has also given me enormous confidence.
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I write about myself with the same pencil and in the same exercise book as about him. It is no longer I, but another whose life is just beginning.
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A friend of mine who is in the publishing business knew I was writing a book, and he said, 'Have you said anything yet about the good guy? Because I know you spend so much time with the bad guys.' Because they're fun. So then you have to make the good guy fun, in order to compete. That's the challenge.
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I started my Twitter account for selfish reasons: I wanted to have a place to post updates on my book signing tour and stuff like that. I never realized that I'd have so much fun tweeting. It's become the deleted scenes for my DVD of columns and podcasts.
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I did a book in 1996, an overview of black history. In that process I became more aware of a lot of the black inventors of the 19th century.
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The shrine is vowed to freedom, but, my friend, Freedom is but a means to gain an end. Freedom should build the temple, but the shrine Be consecrate to thought still more divine. The human bliss which angel hopes foresaw Is liberty to comprehend the law. Give, then, thy book a larger scope and frame, Comprising means and end in Truth's great name.
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I'm one of those people who go through the world giving other people thrills, but getting few myself except those I read into men on such nights as these. I have the social courage to go on the stage, but not the energy; I haven't the patience to write books; and I never met a man I'd marry. However, I'm only eighteen.
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People who think I have insulted Ireland or Limerick or my family have not read the book!
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Typically, a book takes me about a year to write.
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A best-seller was a book which somehow sold well because it was selling well.
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What is true for book publishing is true for civilization: the books that survive the test of time are humanity's backlist, our collective memory.
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A book cannot apologize for what people may think it should be. It has to be authoritative. That's what I want as a reader - I want to be confident that the book will do its job.
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There are magic moments, involving great physical fatigue and intense motor excitement, that produce visions of people known in the past. As I learned later from the delightful little book of the Abbé de Bucquoy, there are also visions of books as yet unwritten.
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A good book is never exhausted. It goes on whispering to you from the wall.
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Now everything that you do is written in red or black in Angel Gabriel's book. Not for everyone is this record kept, but only for those who have taken a position of responsibility. There is a Law of Sins, and if you do not fulfil all your obligations, you will pay.
