Book Quotes - Page 278

Obviously loss of family is huge and critical, but I think really it's more about losing a sense of family. The horror of that kind of incompleteness. Writing this book, I tried not to think about my father, which does no one any good fictionally. I did try to imagine not just the horror of that moment, but the horror of having witnessed it, and the lifelong void. And I think that's what's so frightening.

The idea of the writer who writes nineteen novels, with various ups and downs and levels of experimentation, isn't around so much now. There's a focus, I think, on fewer books, with more pressure on each book to succeed. With that there comes, I think, a certain pressure towards shapeliness in fiction. Towards neatness. And I think writers feel that, and it can effect how they write.

This book was company for me - I wrote these things when I was in hotels, far from where I normally live. I never intended to publish it.

How can you not understand?" He pointed at her books. "You read novels. Obviously, I'm here to rescue you. Don't I look like Sir Galahad?" He raised his arms dramatically. "My strength is as the strength of ten, Because my heart is pure---

Pulvis et umbra sumus. It's a line from Horace. 'We are dust and shadows'. Appropriate, don't you think?" Will said. "It's not a long life, killing demons; one tends to die young, and then they burn your body - dust to dust, in the literal sense. And then we vanish into the shadows of history, nary a mark on the page of a mundane book to remind the world that once we existed at all.

You may be the only guy my age I've ever met who knows what bergamot is, much less that it's in Earl Grey tea." "Yes, well," Jace said, with a supercilious look, "I'm not like other guys. Besides," he added, flipping a book off the shelf, "at the Institute we have to take classes in basic medicinal uses for plants. It's required." "I figured all your classes were stuff like Slaughter 101 and Beheading for Beginners." Jace flipped a page. "Very funny, Fray.

And maybe it would have bitten you in half," said Will. "What you are describing, the transformation into a demon, is the last stage of the pox." "Will!" Charlotte threw up her hands. "Why didn't you say so?" "You know, the books on demon pox are in the library," Will said with an injured tone. "I wasn't preventing anyone from reading them." "Yes, but if Benedict was going to turn into an enormous serpent, you'd think you could at least have mentioned it," said Charlotte. "As a matter of general interest.

Imagine a revised edition of Shakespeare... a big, thick book with an elegant cover... You open it and find that there are no pages, just an empty box of space. On the back wall of the box is a small mirror. You look into it, see yourself, and now you know all you need to know about Shakespeare.

In the shop we buy and sell them, but in truth books have no owner. Every book you see here has been somebody’s best friend.

In fact I don't think of literature, or music, or any art form as having a nationality. Where you're born is simply an accident of fate. I don't see why I shouldn't be more interested in say, Dickens, than in an author from Barcelona simply because I wasn't born in the UK. I do not have an ethno-centric view of things, much less of literature. Books hold no passports. There's only one true literary tradition: the human.

I was raised among books, making invisible friends in pages that seemed cast from dust and whose smell I carry on my hands to this day.

I write books that way - I put a first line down and say, "Where does this go?"

The Nephilim was something I'd known about since I was really young. If you're familiar with the first book of the Bible, Genesis, you see the sons of God seduce some of the women on the earth and they produce a race of people known as the Nephilim. According to legend they taught man about war, astrology, and magic. I'm fascinated by the idea.

The starry vault of heaven is in truth the open book of cosmic projection, in which are reflected the mythologems, i.e., the archetypes. In this vision astrology and alchemy, the two classical functionaries of the psychology of the collective unconscious, join hands.

I’m waiting for the day when Rush Limbaugh’s pharmacist writes a book.

Books keep the mind active. Without them, complacency is a huge danger.

Most of us... are simply just trying to get through the day. And wait for those times in their life that are markers, that put things into relief. That's why we like movies and books so much.

Television is actually closer to reality than anything in books. The madness of TV is the madness of human life.

A big book is a big misfortune.

Be Careful Of Books. Be Careful With Books. Be Careful Or One Can Become A Weapon-Wielder. Be Careful Or One Can Become The Victim.

My own view is that the Churches should frankly recognise that the majority of the British people are not Christians and, therefore, cannot be expected to live Christian lives. There ought to be two distinct kinds of marriage: one governed by the State with rules enforced on all citizens, the other governed by the Church with rules enforced by her on her own members." --about the only statement i agree with in this book

The State exists simply to promote and to protect the ordinary happiness of human beings in this life. A husband and wife chatting over a fire, a couple of friends having a game of darts in a pub, a man reading a book in his own room or digging in his own garden-that is what the State is there for. And unless they are helping to increase and prolong and protect such moments, all the laws, parliaments, armies, courts, police, economics, etc., are simply a waste of time.

I wrote this story for you, but when I began it I had not realized that girls grow quicker than books. As a result you are already too old for fairy tales, and by the time it is printed and bound you will be older still. But some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again. You can then take it down from some upper shelf, dust it, and tell me what you think of it. I shall probably be too deaf to hear, and too old to understand a word you say, but I shall still be your affectionate Godfather, C. S. Lewis.

I never exactly made a book. It's rather like taking dictation. I was given things to say.

Read and Re-Read--"Re-reading, we always find a new book.