Book Quotes - Page 465

I want books written out of a brain and heart and soul crowded and vital with Life, spelled with a big L. I want poetry bursting with passion. I don't care a hang for the 'verbal felicities.' They'll do for the fringe, but I want the garment to warm me first.

Book sense makes sense because someone has gone through it before and able to share it with you. Your job is to listen and discern.

It's absolutely philistine not to recognize what a great book 'An American Dream' is. Norman Mailer is his own worst enemy, and if you don't catch him in a defensive position, he'll admit it. I'd really like to help that man.

Sometimes I want to have a mental book burning that would scour my mind clean of all the filthy visions literature has conjured there. But how to do without 'The Illiad?' How to do without 'Macbeth?

Sometimes if I can't sleep and I am up in the night, I will start researching things - it could be an image I've seen, or a book I am reading.

I wanted a bookstore because the book business is the business of life.

I'm not thinking in any big thematic or conceptual terms - especially in this book [Lincoln in the Bardo] when I was trying to make the voices more active, more energetic.

I had a couple of friends, but I was mostly the kid with his nose in a book.

The cheaper books become, the less money is spent on books.

I should write a book. I've always wanted to write a book. I should write a book about kids who see dead people.

Among the Diaries beginning with the second quarter of our century, there is frequent mention of a lady then becoming famous for her beauty and her wit: "an unusual combination," in the deliberate syllables of one of the writers, who is, however, not disposed to personal irony when speaking of her.

When you're born in this world you're given a ticket to the Freak Show. And when you're born in America, you're given a front row seat. And some of us get to sit there with notebooks.

I'd say that about 82 percent of what I write is bad, but don't go by me; I'm as bad a judge as I am a writer. Look, if it were all good, you'd be paying twice as much for this book.

This is the sixth book I've written, which isn't bad for a guy who's only read two.

I've only read two books in my life: Baseball Sparkplug and Love Story.

Two people getting together to write a book is like three people getting together to have a baby. One of them is superfluous.

One of the greatest creations of the human mind is the art of reviewing books without having read them.

Reading means borrowing.

When a book and a head collide and a hollow sound is heard, must it always have come from the book?

You can make initial contact with someone who does not speak your language with signs or smiles, but to communicate you need words. So it is with a nation; to understand it you have to read its books

And as for me, thogh that I can but lyte, On bakes for to rede I me delyte, And to hem yeve I feyth and ful credence, And in myn herte have hem in reverence So hertely, that ther is game noon, That fro my bokes maketh me to goon, But hit be seldom, on the holyday; Save, certeynly, when that the month of May Is comen, and that I here the foules singe, And that the floures ginnen for to springe, Farwel my book and my devocion.

We choose--or choose not--to be alone when we decide whom we will accept as our fellows, and whom we will reject. Thus an eremite in a mountain is in company, because the birds and coneys, the initiates whose words live in his 'forest books,' and the winds--the messengers of the Increate--are his companions. Another man, living in the midst of millions, may be alone, because there are none but enemies and victims around him.

Television and comic books are, and continue to be, probably the biggest influence in my life. It's the biggest influence on everybody's life.

Do not accept what you hear by report, do not accept tradition, do not accept a statement because it is found in our books, nor because it is in accord with your belief, nor because it is the saying of your teacher. Be lamps unto yourselves. Those who, either now or after I am dead, shall rely upon themselves only and not look for assistance to anyone besides themselves, it is they who shall reach the topmost height.

A book is always an emergence above everyday life. A book is expressed life and thus is an addition to life.