Book Quotes - Page 570

Success is not measured by bestseller lists. Certain types of great books sell very well; other types of great books don’t sell a lot. But they’re both great.

Make sure your characters are worth spending ten hours with. That’s how long it takes to read a book. Reading a book is like being trapped in a room for ten hours with those characters. Think of your main characters as dinner guests. Would your friends want to spend ten hours with the characters you’ve created? Your characters can be loveable, or they can be evil, but they’d better be compelling. If not, your reader will be bored and leave.

Books have been my classroom and my confidant. Books have widened my horizons. Books have comforted me in my hardest times. Books have changed my life.

We ought to regard books as we do sweetmeats, not wholly to aim at the pleasantest, but chiefly to respect the wholesomest; not forbidding either, but approving the latter most.

He [Pliny the Elder] used to say that 'no book [etc] was so bad but some good might be got out of it'.

My favorite books, art pieces, films, and music, always have something jarring about them.

Nothing, it appears to me, is of greater value in a man than the power of judgment; and the man who has it may be compared to a chest filled with books, for he is the son of nature and the father of art.

I've been asked before, "Who are your heroes?" and these types of questions. I always find it hard to identify a single person or a single book or this sort of thing. I've always been forward looking. I was raised with the notion that you can do pretty much anything you want. You're able to accomplish anything you set out to accomplish. I was given a sense of confidence and I never really felt the need to - or I've never had the benefit, I should probably say - of being inspired by outside heroes.

A towering theoretical achievement of exceptional elegance...Like most great books, Sociobiology is unpedantic, lucid, and eminently accessible.

I am rich because I sell a lot of books, but it's not my drive.

At the age of 9, I read David Copperfield by Dickens. At 14, I read War and Peace by Tolstoy. They're both books I have reread regularly since.

Most books are about aspects of human knowledge - Few people write books about human ignorance, despite the fact that there would be much more to write about

Its no coincidence that the word holiday suggests a holy day, or that the longest book in the Torah concerns the Sabbath. If you wish to advance in any sphere, the best way is to take a retreat.

I wanted to bring the book out right now because I think anyone who cares about Tibet knew there would be disturbances in the run up to the Olympics [2008]. Many Tibetans feel it's their last chance to broadcast their suffering and frustration and pain to the world before the Olympics take place and China is accepted as a modern nation and the world forgets about Tibet.

There are books that one needs maturity to enjoy just as there are books an adult can come on too late to savor.

It's hard to come up with a 'quote' about myself. Perhaps I could say that most of my writing has been concerned with understanding between people. Whether of different races, or religions, or even in the same family I tried in my books... to deal with the subject of understanding the other fellow.

A good book isn't written, it's rewritten.

Underground comics were produced by individuals - they were the auteur variety, rather than the production-line sort of comic book aimed at pleasing a vast general audience. Mainstream comics never appealed to me: they seemed sterile in their stylistic consistency, and were quickly consumed, the stories interesting only for so long as you were reading them.

Underground comics were striking in that they seemed largely unedited - in a typical book, with stories by five to ten creators, some stories would be shockingly bad, and others would be startlingly brilliant. This was a lively and exciting combination. The artwork and stories, good and bad, were all so different - I'd stare at the pages and lose track of time. This was a world where anything could happen, and I wanted to go there.

I'm not at all a linear thinker. I know the feeling I want to convey, but the form is what I struggle to find. I'm sure I'd fail if I tried to write a grant proposal or a book proposal.

Books were put out, and 'had a run,' / Like coinage from the mint; / But which could fill the place of one, / That one they wouldn't print?

Whites were the winners, blacks were the losers, we wrote the history books, and they didn't feature.

When I finish a book, I get extremely restless; I have to aggressively find ways to occupy myself; going off into the woods alone, doing things that are physically or mentally demanding to keep myself busy until the next big idea comes.

The novelist now usurps the chair of the educator, the pulpit of the preacher, the columns of the journalist. Yet his original purpose of entertaining may have been his highest purpose. (introduction to Gladiator, Book League Monthly, 1930)

Each book starts from ashes really. I don't feel that I have this to say or that to say or this story to tell or that story to tell, but I want to be occupied with the writing process while I'm living.