Book Quotes - Page 801

A manuscript not submitted is a book not published.

Sometimes I look back and think, "How did I write that? The book is smarter than I am!" I have never written strategically, but rather, followed the dictates of my muse.

That is a goal, to step out on stage and to actually be present. Honestly alive and present. Although, it doesn't always happen. We're fallible, we're imperfect. That's what a lot of books are written about; that's what a lot of religions have sought after is that kind of zen mentality of just being totally neutral and open and vulnerable to all of the forces in the universe without being attached to them.

I think books are just a great ticket to get you outside of yourself. You can not be you for a second and live in the shoes of a character, which is a special thing.

I was an English major in university and that got me into novels, but I read a lot of books as a kid.

I don't necessarily think I look to books for ideas, but sometimes when I'm in the process of reading a great book, I just think about it all of the time.

I'll force myself to sit down and read a couple of chapters of a great book or I'll force myself to sit and listen to some amazing music or I'll go see a play. I find that watching or experiencing other forms of art gets my brain in action. It makes me feel connected to the creative energies and then that tends to get things going.

You should want to fight the biggest fights you can and so you could maximize your stature in the sport, on the front pages of the newspapers, and your pocket book.

I often envy a filmmaker or a playwright or an author where people are like, "Yeah, I sat down every night and read your book and it was beautiful." Or, "Yeah, I went to the movies and all I did was watch the movie because that's all you could do at the movies." Where with music, it's like, "Ugh, I love your music. I listen to it while I'm jogging thinking about how I hate my body." But it is also the privilege of being a musician is you can have your music in this documented form and play it live and that's, I think, what draws me to it the most.

I write to get myself writing. That and read Wallace Stevens' "An Ordinary Evening in New Haven" for the umpteenth time. Certain authors for me, certain books, just by reading a phrase I feel I can write.

I read a lot, but at the same time I'm not a particularly good or diligent or discriminating reader. I go through maybe close to a thousand or more books a year, but a lot of times I'll only read bits and pieces of any one individual text.

I think at a certain point the book develops a certain weight, or pressure. You've been pushing the rock up the hill for a long time and then it starts to roll and things do start to come together in the last two thirds.

I keep a daily journal of whatever weird thought comes into my mind, like when I had a dream I was in North Dakota in the middle of a blizzard and for some reason the Egyptian pyramids were there, too - that I was able to shuffle into the book.

In some ways all of my fiction is like a conversation I'm having with the writers I read when I was first falling in love with books.

You can't count on notoriety lasting very long, and there's no way to predict whether anyone will care about your books or you in three years, let alone ten or twenty.

Book publishing would be so much easier without the authors.

I will not write a lame follow-up. It could take me 20 years. But I will never turn in a book that I'm not happy with.

"Both Christianity and Islam are logocentric," he told his students, "meaning they are focused on the Word. In Christian tradition, the Word became flesh in the book of John: 'And the Word was made flesh, and He dwelt among us. 'Therefore, it was acceptable to depict the Word as having a human form. In Islamic tradition, however, the Word did not become flesh, and therefore the Word needs to remain in the form of a word … in most cases, calligraphic renderings of the names of the holy figures of Islam."

I don't read horror, ever. When I was 15, I made the mistake of reading part of 'The Exorcist.' It was the first and last horror book I've ever opened.

I still get up every morning at 4 A.M. I write seven days a week, including Christmas. And I still face a blank page every morning, and my characters don't really care how many books I've sold.

We did not have a television while I was growing up, and so I read voraciously. My earliest memory of being utterly transfixed by a book was Madeleine L'Engle's 'A Wrinkle in Time.

I think one reason my books have found mainstream success is that they're written from a skeptical point of view.

I don't know where I would place myself in the literary landscape. I really just write the book that I would want to read. And I put on the blinders, and I really - it is, for me, that simple.

The Bible did not arrive by fax from heaven. The Bible is the product of man, my dear. Not of God. The Bible did not fall magically from the clouds. Man created it as a historical record of tumultuous times, and it has evolved through countless translations, additions, and revisions. History has never had a definitive version of the book.

You can watch an episode of Friends or an episode of Law & Order and just drop in, but you're not going to in the middle of Season 4, Episode 5 of Lost. It's like picking up a Harry Potter book and flipping to a chapter. You have to read it from beginning to end.