So many books, so little time.
A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one's neighbor - such is my idea of happiness.
Books are mirrors: you only see in them what you already have inside you.
We spend our lives waiting for our book and it never comes.
My books are water; those of the great geniuses is wine. Everybody drinks water.
I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.
Quiet people have the loudest minds.
She read books as one would breathe air, to fill up and live.
I write to get ideas out of my head
The show must go on, and so must The Book.
There are more writers who read than readers who write.
Never give up. Dare to Dream. Dare to believe.
Say No! Accept the burdens of revenge.
But one learns from books and reels only that certain things can be done. Actual learning requires that you do those things.
The love of learning, the sequestered nooks,
And all the sweet serenity of books
A half-read book is a half-finished love affair.
V-Day…if you need this one day in a year to show everyone else you truly care for “your loved one” I think it’s quite stupid. I hate this commercialism. It’s all artificial, and has nothing to do with real love.
My head’ll explode if I continue with this escapism.
When male authors write love stories, the heroine tends to end up dead.
The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.
Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.
I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.
Be careful about reading health books. Some fine day you'll die of a misprint.
Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?
There are two motives for reading a book; one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.
So, please, oh please, we beg, we pray, go throw your TV set away, and in its place you can install, a lovely bookcase on the wall.
Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.
It is a great thing to start life with a small number of really good books which are your very own.
From the moment I picked up your book until I put it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it.
Five exclamation marks, the sure sign of an insane mind.
A literary academic can no more pass a bookstore than an alcoholic can pass a bar.
I am not absentminded. It is the presence of mind that makes me unaware of everything else.
The covers of this book are too far apart.
I just got out of the hospital. I was in a speed reading accident. I hit a book mark and flew across the room.
They're book addicts.
It's a reflex. Hear a bell, get food. See an undead, throw a knife. Same thing, really.
A successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out of it.
Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.
I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in my life. And I am horribly limited.
Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.
Books say: She did this because. Life says: She did this. Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren't. I'm not surprised some people prefer books.
I am awfully greedy; I want everything from life. I want to be a woman and to be a man, to have many friends and to have loneliness, to work much and write good books, to travel and enjoy myself, to be selfish and to be unselfish… You see, it is difficult to get all which I want. And then when I do not succeed I get mad with anger.
If you have a dream, don’t just sit there. Gather courage to believe that you can succeed and leave no stone unturned to make it a reality.
I could recognise his soul in mine as much as he could find me in his. Our sole existences seemed to have been for this very moment when nothing else mattered.
Don’t let mental blocks control you. Set yourself free. Confront your fear and turn the mental blocks into building blocks.
Fiction is art and art is the triumph over chaos… to celebrate a world that lies spread out around us like a bewildering and stupendous dream.
Writing a long and substantial book is like having a friend and companion at your side, to whom you can always turn for comfort and amusement, and whose society becomes more attractive as a new and widening field of interest is lighted in the mind.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.
Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.
Writing fiction is the act of weaving a series of lies to arrive at a greater truth.
I was flipping channels, watching this cheerleading program on MTV. They took a field hockey girl and “transformed” her into a cheerleader by the end of the show. I was just wondering: what if she liked field hockey better?
When the writing is good, a book becomes a mirror. The reader will see an uncanny familiarity and respond accordingly.
The world’s greatest achievers have been those who have always stayed focussed on their goals and have been consistent in their efforts.
One piece of wisdom a writer quickly learns ~ typos keep you humble.
Simple minded people do things like gossip, lie, spread rumors, and cause troubles. But, I know you're more intelligent.
When I touched her body,
I believed she was God.
In the curves of her form
I found the birth of Man,
the creation of the world,
and the origin of all life.
At the end of the day your ability to connect with your readers comes down to how you make them feel.
Women's fiction is just a marketing category, designed to appeal more to women than to men. But there are stories in that category that any human being would like.
I don't write romance. Read it? Yes. Write it? No.
I wanted to explain that I am constantly overestimating and underestimating the human race - that rarely do I even simply estimate it. I wanted to ask her how the same thing could be so ugly and so glorious, and its words and stories so damning and brilliant...I AM HAUNTED BY HUMANS.
One wants to tell a story, like Scheherezade, in order not to die. It's one of the oldest urges in mankind. It's a way of stalling death.
What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though.
You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.
If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.
After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.
There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts.
Everybody does have a book in them, but in most cases that's where it should stay.
Which of us has not felt that the character we are reading in the printed page is more real than the person standing beside us?
A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.
Read a thousand books, and your words will flow like a river.
Writers are the exorcists of their own demons.
A good story is always more dazzling than a broken piece of truth.
The world is a hellish place, and bad writing is destroying the quality of our suffering.
Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered.
And that's why books are never going to die. It's impossible. It's the only time we really go into the mind of a stranger, and we find our common humanity doing this. So the book doesn't only belong to the writer, it belongs to the reader as well, and then together you make it what it is.
I just knew there were stories I wanted to tell.
An artist is someone who can hold two opposing viewpoints and still remain fully functional.
What amazes me is that most days feel useless. I don't seem to accomplish anything-just a few pages, most of which don't seem very good. Yet, when I put all those wasted days together, I somehow end up with a book of which I'm very proud.
I wrote a book. It sucked. I wrote nine more books. They sucked, too. Meanwhile, I read every single thing I could find on publishing and writing, went to conferences, joined professional organizations, hooked up with fellow writers in critique groups, and didn’t give up. Then I wrote one more book.
The best way to become acquainted with a subject is to write about it.
Being a writer is a good, good thing.
if a book isn't self-explanatory, then it isn't worth reading.
The good, the admirable reader identifies himself not with the boy or the girl in the book, but with the mind that conceived and composed that book.
No book can ever be finished. While working on it we learn just enough to find it immature the moment we turn away from it
Writers are really people who write books not because they are poor, but because they are dissatisfied with the books which they could buy but do not like.
For once the disease of reading has laid upon the system it weakens so that it falls an easy prey to that other scourge which dwells in the ink pot and festers in the quill. The wretch takes to writing.
Imagination is what you do with your inspiration.
This is no book. Whoever touches this touches a man.
You can cover a great deal of country in books.
If you really want to be a writer, nobody can stop you - and if you don't, nobody can help you.
To achieve lasting literature, fictional or factual, a writer needs perceptive vision, absorptive capacity, and creative strength.
Don Quixote could never manage without his patient servant Sancho Panza.
Books are for nothing but to inspire
The glory of a good tale is that it is limitless and fluid; a good tale belongs to each reader in its own particular way.
I'd like to emphasize that when a reader finishes a great novel, he will immediately begin looking for another. If someone loves your book, it increases the chance that he or she will look at mine. So there is no competition between writers. Another writer's success helps build a larger readership for all of us.
A good book will pull you in from the beginning and take you on a journey you'll never forget.
There's nothing on Earth like really nailing the last line of a big book. You have 200 pages to tickle their fancy, and seven words to break their heart.
A well-composed book is a magic carpet on which we are wafted to a world that we cannot enter in any other way.
You can't judge a book by it's cover but you can sure sell a bunch of books if you have a good one.
All novels are sequels; influence is bliss.
When I am dead, I hope it may be said, 'His sins were scarlet, but his books were read.
Words and a book and a belief that the world is words...