Book Quotes - Page 479

I'd never seen [Haughton] Forrest's work before until I came across it on the front of an ANZ book. I then researched a whole lot of his work.

Within the new self-help books for women, patriarachy and male domination are rarely identified as forces that lead to the oppression, exploitation, and domination of women. Instead, these books suggest that individual relationships between men and women can be changed solely by women making the right choices.

I've yet to find the exact word to describe the enjoyment that an evening spent riffling through old pattern books can bring.

I have always felt like an artist when I work on a book. I see no reason why the word should always be confined to writers of fiction and poetry.

A novel can educate to some extent, but first a novel has to entertain. That's the contract with the reader: you give me ten hours and I'll give you a reason to turn every page. I have a commitment to accessibility. I believe in plot. I want an English professor to understand the symbolism while at the same time I want the people I grew up with - who may not often read anything but the Sears catalog - to read my books.

People read books to escape the uncertainties of life.

Now, I swore an oath to uphold the laws on the books... Now, I know some people want me to bypass Congress and change the laws on my own... Believe me, the idea of doing things on my own is very tempting. I promise you. Not just on immigration reform. But that's not how - that's not how our system works. That's not how our democracy functions. Thats not how our Constitution is written.

There are so many times in my life when I wish I had the power to destroy anyone who would threaten or seek to humiliate the people I love. When you were a small, shy, awkward kid like me, and you saw and experienced some of the things I did and you can do nothing, you're going to gravitate to those comic books and fantasies where the nerd gets bit by a radioactive spider and can beat up the bad guys.

It is profound philosophy to sound the depths of feeling and distinguish traits of character. Men must be studied as deeply as books.

I couldn't imagine a book with many characters in it and one of them not being gay. It would have felt like a glaring and problematic omission for me. But I also wanted to write that character as a person, not just a gay person.

A book is like a money-changer: it pays you back in another form what you brint to it.

Each spine was an encapsulated memory, each book represented hours, days of pleasure, of immersion into words.

The fact of the matter is that you should really stop concerning yourself with writing a book because anyone can write a book that totally sucks. There is nothing special about that.

Scholars are those who have read in books, but thinkers, men of genius, world-enlighteners, and reformers of the human race are those who have read directly in the book of the world.

Reading is merely a surrogate for thinking for yourself; it means letting someone else direct your thoughts. Many books, moreover, serve merely to show how many ways there are of being wrong, and how far astray you yourself would go if you followed their guidance. You should read only when your own thoughts dry up, which will of course happen frequently enough even to the best heads; but to banish your own thoughts so as to take up a book is a sin against the holy ghost; it is like deserting untrammeled nature to look at a herbarium or engravings of landscapes.

Nevertheless, one learned very early that books had to be respected; they were all putative Bibles and to some small degree had a share in holiness.

There's an east wind coming all the same, such a wind as never blew on England yet. It will be cold and bitter, Watson, and a good many of us may wither before its blast. But it's God's own wind none the less and a cleaner, better stronger land will lie in the sunshine when the storm has cleared.

It is with nations as it is with individuals. A book of history is a book of sermons.

I never really set out to research any of these stories. I try to lead an interesting life though. I guess the closest I came to research was when I applied to work at the state mental institution in Austin, TX. I wanted to work the night shift like Ken Kesey did when he wrote One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. I thought that might inspire me to write a book that great.

The most important thing about writing a book is having book parties.

Education ent only books and music - it's asking questions, all the time. There are millions of us, all over the country, and no one, not one of us, is asking questions, we're all taking the easiest way out.

Essential characteristic of the really great novelist: a Christ-like, all-embracing compassion.

Keepers of books, keepers of print and paper on the shelves, librarians are keepers also of the records of the human spiritthe records of men's watch upon the world and on themselves.

Every book is a kind of struggle, and it's a miracle when it comes out.

It has always been very difficult for writers to survive commercially in India because the market was so small. But that's not true at all any more. It's one of the world's fastest growing and most vibrant markets for books, especially in English.