Book Quotes - Page 697

My novels are never truly finished, even if they're published and sitting on the shelf. While I may no longer be interested in spending time with that particular set of characters, I can't help but think about all the ways the book could be different, the small, insignificant tweaks that no one but me would ever notice.

We read the world - television, movies, songs, books - and the people in it through the lens of our own lives.

One of my friends who writes novels says that once the book is published, it's a separate thing from you; it becomes its own. I feel that way when I read - and that applies to the experience of reading my work in public, too. The essays are a barrier between me and the audience, and it feels like a disappearing act. Poof! I'm gone, and the woman I've created on the page emerges.

Nikki Giovanni! I got a book of hers from the library, and there was this woman who could paint me on paper with words - my whole little experience. I thought it was wonderful.

I love books, letters and texts visually as objects, and textually, for their content. The same book I write serves a different purpose when included in an exhibition of mine than when read on its own, outside of it.

I would categorize my books as literature, and I hope that is how they would be consumed. The books do not rely on the artwork to be understood, but I need my art practice to write them.

I think the term "artist's novel" for me has referred to writing which supports an art practice or a more specifically a particular artwork or project. The nonfiction novellas and nonfiction novel I have written play a role in my artwork as objects - which I will return to, but I write the books to exist autonomously.

I want my books to exist in the literary world, not only in the art world. I am interested in having a dialogue with other writers, and the readers of those writers. Someone who is reading a book of mine might not have visited my exhibitions related to it, but can still have a full, literary experience with that book. This would be a completely different experience from stepping into the show, not having read the book. One form is not illustrative of the other.

I'm suspicious of dreams in books too. Because they're boring and too self-serving.

Religion, it seems to me, has nothing whatsoever to do with any belief, with any priest, with any church or so-called sacred book. The state of the religious mind can be understood only when we begin to understand what beauty is; and the understanding of beauty must be approached through total aloneness.

You may be ignorant of all the books in the world, and I hope you are, of all the latest theories, but that is not ignorance.

Never buy hardcover books. They are designed to sell to those who don't actually read. Along with books, many other things can be read: natural scenery, love, officialdom, business¡­

My grandfather says that's what books are for," Ashoke said, using the opportunity to open the volume in his hands. "To travel without moving an inch.

I dream of writing a book like LOVERS some day. It is so spare but so rich. It is history made intimate, and a masterpiece of compression.

I don't really get hate mail, which surprises me, but people have better things to do than to write hate mail to somebody who writes a book about hating everything, I guess.

Any pile of stunted growth unaware that entertainment is just that and nothing more deserves to doom themselves to some dank cell somewhere for having been so stupid!! Movies, books, T.V., music - they're all just entertainment, not guidebooks for damning yourself!

I get really bored if I don't have more than one thing going on.

People who read books in public places are regarded with suspicion because they appear self-sufficient. When you seem self-sufficient, other people think that you think you're better than them, and they get resentful.

I certainly wouldn't be writing books if it hadn't been for the feminist blogosphere, and I think that's a really amazing thing.

I know I certainly wouldn't be writing books if it hadn't been for the feminist blogosphere, and I think that's a really amazing thing. And just the sheer power of outreach I think is incredible. It used to be that if someone was to get involved in feminism, it was probably because they were already interested. They were already interested in feminism; they were already interested in being an activist, and they found their way to like a NOW meeting or to a consciousness-raising group or something like that.

I am the first person to go to Barnes & Noble and buy the new self-help book. I like to fill out the surveys, then I get my friends' opinions on how I answered to see if I was being honest with myself or not.

Even though I have so many things to figure out, I'm very much at peace. I don't feel like I'm closing the chapter on this phase of life - I feel like I'm closing the book and starting a new one.

I went through a whole phase when I was younger of being obsessed with Tolstoy and Kafka and Camus, all those really, beautiful, dark depressing books.

One of my most exciting Saturday nights was just me and a bottle of wine and a crochet book.

I know that I'm already in the history books and that people are going to remember me as the prisoner of war and the fabricated stories, but you know, to me I was just another soldier over there doing my job.