Book Quotes - Page 339

The words are strung together, with their own special grammar-the laws of quantum theory-to form sentences, which are molecules. Soon we have books, entire libraries, made out of molecular "sentences." The universe is like a library in which the words are atoms. Just look at what has been written with these hundred words! Our own bodies are books in that library, specified by the organization of molecules-but the universe and literature are organizations of identical, interchangeable objects; they are information systems.

I like to read a couple books at once. I was reading the Princess Diana book. I'm reading a book about Chicago and the mob. Right now I'm also reading the Bible, beginning to end. I'm very religious. That's how I've gotten to where I am.

Whether I'm being influenced by new music that I'm listening to, books I've read, my friends, or my faith, I'm learning all the time.

On the wall next to the table, next to the scones that provided each table with its own circle of lamplight were quotations about reading, her favorite of which was from Kafka: 'A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.

I've probably had my day in the sun. I think I've influenced a lot of comic book writers

I'm doing research for a large comic book on the Beat Generation guys - Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac and those guys

I thought I had a great opportunity when I started doing my comic book in 1972. I thought there was so much territory to work in.

Simple, practical, brilliant. What a wonderful world it will be when all families give their children the gifts presented in Dr. Reznick’s book. Joy, success . . . and health and happiness are just around the corner!

As the book writer for one big smash and one big smelly flop, I always wondered if anyone knows just what goes into making a great musical. When a show is a hit, the critics trip over themselves not knowing who to laud and applaud the loudest. It's that marvelous score, those urbane lyrics, that irreplaceable star. But only when a show is a flop, does anyone notice the book writer. And then it's always our fault.

I like to read books. I like to listen to music.

Have books ‘happened’ to you? Unless your answer to that question is ‘yes,’ I’m unsure how to talk to you

I didn't have much to say to anybody but kept to myself and my books. With my eyes closed, I would touch a familiar book and draw it's fragrance deep inside me. This was enough to make me happy.

There weren't any curtains in the windows, and the books that didn't fit into the bookshelf lay piled on the floor like a bunch of intellectual refugees.

Lecturing is that mysterious process by means of which the contents of the note-book of the professor are transferred through the instrument of the fountain pen to the note-book of the student without passing through the mind of either.

Rest assured, as long as I am alive any book purporting to be with my cooperation is a falsehood.

I didn't expect the book to sell in the first place. I was hoping for a quick and merciful death at the hands of reviewers but at the same time I sort of hoped that maybe someone would like it enough to give me encouragement. Public encouragement. I hoped for a little, as I said, but I got rather a whole lot, and in some ways this was just about as frightening as the quick, merciful death I'd expected.

I was a first-time writer, so I did as I was told. I hadn't realized it (the original book) had survived, so was surprised and delighted when my dear friend and lawyer Tonja Carter discovered it. After much thought and hesitation, I shared it with a handful of people I trust and was pleased to hear that they considered it worthy of publication. I am humbled and amazed that this will now be published after all these years.

Co-operating critics comb the studios like big-league scouts, prepared to spot the art of the future and to take lead in establishing reputations. Art historians stand by ready with cameras and notebooks to make sure every novel detail is safe for the record. The tradition of the new has reduced all other traditions to triviality.

In the finest critics one hears the full cry of the human. They tell one why it matters to read.

There was a man. And it happened--as such things often so happen--that this man we went back into his days that were gone. Again and again and again he went back. Even as every man, even as you and I, so this man went back into his Yesterdays.

There are still some terrible cliches in the presentation of Indian fiction. The lotus flower. The hennaed hands. In mainland Europe, people still slap these images on my books and I go bananas.

Since religion intrinsically rejects empirical methods, there should never be any attempt to reconcile scientific theories with religion. An infinitely old universe, always evolving, may not be compatible with the Book of Genesis. However, religions such as Buddhism get along without having any explicit creation mythology and are in no way contradicted by a universe without a beginning or end. Creatio ex nihilo, even as religious doctrine, only dates to around AD 200. The key is not to confuse myth and empirical results, or religion and science.

This hand is not very active always, because it was in this hand that I carried my books. My carrying hand was always my strongest. Now I think my other hand has developed more muscles from signing all those autographs.

After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known quotations.

There are some people who read too much: the bibliobibuli. I know some who are constantly drunk on books, as other men are drunk on whiskey or religion. They wander through this most diverting and stimulating of worlds in a haze, seeing nothing and hearing nothing.