Books Quotes - Page 15

It wouldn’t matter if he was a bad boy , if you got rid of your bad habit. Be encouraged

People talk about books that write themselves, and it's a lie. Books don't write themselves. It takes thought and research and backache and notes and more time and more work than you'd believe.

Throughout the ages, the wisdom has been taught. Now the language has changed, and truth is given in the language of science.

One is never too young for fine literature . . .

At one magical instant in your early childhood, the page of a book—that string of confused, alien ciphers—shivered into meaning. Words spoke to you, gave up their secrets; at that moment, whole universes opened. You became, irrevocably, a reader.

Yeah, right. Instead of watching TV, we'll practice our weird magical powers. Great. What's next? Zooming around on flying carpets?

Books open and broaden our minds allowing us to challenge ourselves to become more than we are, by setting positive goals for ourselves, and overcoming doubts about our ability to receive the education we want to achieve.

It seemed that having girlfriends was a sign of innocence and a boundless capacity to care about other women. The hearts in that photograph and multiple strings attached to multiple other hearts. Everything was less about cliché and more about camaraderie. We weren't out for ourselves, we were out for each other. When had I forgotten that? When had I cut the pink wire?

Have you ever asked yourself this question "what can God do through me?" The preacher has no platform if the people has no sense of mission.

Books were already a familiar refuge, after all, and they still took me in without the slightest judgment. They don’t close to you the way a person can. You might feel as though you don’t belong anywhere, least of all in your own home, you might feel bound to a person whose actions you abhor yet unable to divorce yourself, struggling to individuate in their shadow—“all these feelings you wouldn’t dare articulate to another person, no matter how highly trained—but you can bring your whole untempered self to books. You can ask them anything, and though you may need to search for the resonant lines, though the answer may come at a slant, they will always speak to you, they will always let you in.

How, and when shall these things come to pass? wherefore are our years few and evil?

One of the great things about books is sometimes there are some fantastic pictures.

Come with me,' Mom says.To the library. Books and summertimego together.

This is a love story. It’s about the good old days, when men were men and women were women and books were books.

When you do away with God you become your own god, because you recognise no greater power in the universe than yourself.

We need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.

Iniquity shall be increased above that which now thou see, or that thou hast heard long ago.

Our clients' faces, with the customary outward paleness and inner glow of the book lover.

I am drawn mostly, insistently to the human voice. How powerful and necessary the solo voice, the experience of being someone, something else for a little while. This is and will remain literature’s killer app, the thing most impervious to threat by everything that’s not the word.

But books were full of stories and stories were full of lies and lies hurt Jesus's feelings, so I didn't know what to think. I blamed my family. They were the ones who taught me so much about telling stories, and how not to do it, and then, in inspired moments of surprise, how to tell one so good you forgot what day it was, and I liked forgetting what day it was, so I made certain life choices that would allow me to get paid to forget what day it was and teach others to forget what day it was, which is, after all, what I think heaven probably is: the whole world, forgetting what day it is. You have to, I bet, with an endless supply of them.

Fiction is like a spider's web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners.

I knew all about reading a lot. About how it could take you to a world what was better than the real one. A world where there were adventures and mysteries and magic. Except, of course, books ended eventually, and then you had to go back to being yourself.

Was I (am I not still?) a victim of words and books merely, and are books just an excuse for living, living things out in parenthesis, even in the most desolate stony place as I was, quotations and misquotations raining down on me thick and fast – words, words, words – the multitude of words, a parody of rain? For after all, as old Mrs Feany said, the rain is healthy. And the rain it raineth everyday. But the stuff of books and solitude and spying on the poor, could they be healthy? Or were my doubts the real heresy and treason? What book ever changed the world? It seems a solipsism to say that what changes the way we see the world, changes the world, but it is not. Where do you want me to begin? The Bible, Das Kapital? The Divine Comedy, The Satanic Verses?

Books are like truth serum-- if you don't read, you can't figure out what's real.

I can FEEL her next to me. This UNION. Of WARMTH. Of CARING. Of the INDESCRIBABLE. As if there were NO PARTING and NEVER could be.

All the labour of man is for his mouth, and yet the appetite is not filled.

This was like watching murder. Defilement. And it was something worse than either of those things. Even among his family, black trade as they were, books were holy things.

[B]riefing is not reading. In fact it is the antithesis of reading. Briefing is terse, factual and to the point. Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting. Briefing closes down a subject, reading opens it up.

Give her books, where other people did all the running around and courting; it was far easier to read about such matters than to experience them herself.

I sort of fell.""Percy! Six hundred and thirty feet?

Of course. You get everything from books.

Ask the womb of a woman, and say unto her, If thou bring forth children, why dost thou it not together, but one after another? pray her therefore to bring forth ten children at once.

When you lose yourself in a book the hours grow wings and fly.

Books are the only things worth stealing.

The greatest book is not the one whose message engraves itself on the brain, as a telegraphic message engraves itself on the ticker-tape, but the one whose vital impact opens up other viewpoints, and from writer to reader spreads the fire that is fed by the various essences, until it becomes a vast conflagration leaping from forest to forest.

Free time is a terrible thing to waste. Read a book.

Without story books is like a person with no soul.

A good book will surely become an event in your life.

I place my fingers upon these keys typing 2,000 dreams per minute and naked of spirit dance forth my cosmic vortex upon this crucifix called language.

Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun: But if a man live many years, and rejoice in them all; yet let him remember the days of darkness; for they shall be many. And all that cometh is vanity.

This is the best time to be an author.

What is odd is not that so many of the iconic news photos of the past, including some of the best-remembered pictures from the Second World War, appear to have been staged. It is that we are surprised to learn they were staged and always disappointed.

Computers don't kill books people do.

It is not so much as to say that something has occured; but to describe the very essence of the occurance. One must take hold of his readers and pull them into his world...the world that he has penned, with the utmost care and attentiveness. And then, when the readers are fully submerged in this magnificently crafted place of wonder; they will see, and touch, and smell, and feel all the elements of the author's imagination.

See, the sad thing about a guy like you is, in 50 years you're gonna start doin' some thinkin' on your own and you're going to come up with the fact that there are two certainties in life: one, don't do that, and two, you dropped 150 grand on a fuckin' education you could have got for a dollar fifty in late charges at the public library!

You're never alone when you're reading a book.

Be passionate about what you write, believe in your ability to convey timeless ideas, and let no one tell you what what you're capable of.

The books I read when I was twenty completely changed when I read them when I was sixty.

And what do you like to do, little man?" "I like-books," James had said. While standing in the bookshop, with a parcel of books under his arm. The lady had given him a pitying look. "I read-erm-rather a lot," James went on, dreary master of the obvious. King of the obvious. Emperor of the obvious.

... a writer concocts a different story for every reader.

Lacey-girl, books take you anywhere. Any place you want to go. You remember that always.

The book's always better than the movie.

Some are born to greatness; some achieve greatness; some have greatness thrust upon them.' It is in this way that the librarian has become a censor of literature... books that distinctly commend what is wrong, that teach how to sin and how pleasant sin is, sometimes with and sometimes without the added sauce of impropriety, are increasingly popular, tempting to the author to imitate them, the publishers to produce, the bookseller to exploit. Thank heaven they do not tempt the librarian.

I can hear the library humming in the night, a choir of authors murmuring inside their books along the unlit, alphabetical shelves, Giovanni Pontano next to Pope, Dumas next to his son, each one stitched into his own private coat, together forming a low, gigantic chord of language.

I study men like I study books: I skim their midsections.

reading books is great, reading pictures much better, especially those that shows you the future

Fears can be a healthy thing, they give you something to conquer

Bookshop and libraries are great celestial places to be.

The stories I read gives strength to my spirit.

Henry did not want to be fixed, was somehow convinced that the fix would be a lie, something that would lessen him.