Book Quotes

"Well I've written four beauty books as well"

"And that's why I wrote the book, because our country really needs to understand, if people in this nation understood what our foreign policy is really about, what foreign aid is about, how our corporations work, where our tax money goes, I know we will demand change"

John Perkins, Economist

"If I were to write Web now, it would be a much, much darker book"

John M. Ford, Writer

"I don't write for an audience, I don't think whether my book will sell, I don't sell it before I finish writing it"

Ann Patchett, Author

"I don't want to write formula. I don't want to crank these books out like sausages. Every book is different, which takes a hell of a lot of ingenuity on my part"

Sue Grafton, Novelist

"I was doing a children's book on self-esteem, and I really felt like I wanted to shed the shame I'd been feeling - and maybe make it easier for women my age who had probably felt bad about themselves"

Jamie Lee Curtis, Actress

"I had to actually purchase a book to learn the API and write the client. It was pretty frustrating trying to learn the API and develop a product quickly"

Shawn Fanning, Businessman

"I had no books at home. I started to frequent a public library in Lisbon. It was there, with no help except curiosity and the will to learn, that my taste for reading developed and was refined"

Jose Saramago, Writer

"I don't think anyone wants a reader to be completely lost - certainly not to the point of giving up - but there's something to be said for a book that isn't instantly disposable, that rewards a second reading"

John M. Ford, Writer

"I describe my works as books, but my publishers in Spain, in the United States, and elsewhere insist on calling them novels"

Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Novelist

"I think we have some serious problems now, but, if you look back over the last thirty or forty years that my book deals with, I think we are in better shape now than we would have been if all of those cases had not come down"

Floyd Abrams, Lawyer

"When it comes time to sit down and write the next book, you're deathly afraid that you're not up to the task. That was certainly the case with me after Snow Falling on Cedars"

David Guterson, Author

"My book is traditional. It runs counter to the post-modern spirit"

David Guterson, Author

"We all knew the book well because it's the cult book in Latin America. For me, this was a sacred territory. I would not have ventured into it by myself"

Walter Salles, Director

"Books stay with me and have shaped me and made huge impacts on my life"

Stephan Jenkins, Musician

"I am writing a book about the Crusades so dull that I can scarcely write it"

Hilaire Belloc, Poet

"I couldn't live a week without a private library - indeed, I'd part with all my furniture and squat and sleep on the floor before I'd let go of the 1500 or so books I possess"

H. P. Lovecraft, Novelist

"But more wonderful than the lore of old men and the lore of books is the secret lore of ocean"

H. P. Lovecraft, Novelist

"I love to both give and receive very old books"

Augusten Burroughs, Writer

"I was very influenced by The Magic Mountain. It's a book that had a huge impact on me. I loved that as a shape for a novel: put a bunch of people in a beautiful place, give them all tuberculosis, make them all stay in a fur sleeping bag for several years and see what happens"

Ann Patchett, Author

"I think people become consumed with selling a book when they need to be consumed with writing it"

Ann Patchett, Author

"There are certain books in the world which every searcher for truth must know: the Bible, the Critique of Pure Reason, the Origin of Species, and Karl Marx's Capital"

Al Capp, Cartoonist

"So we want an Islamic state where Islamic law is not just in the books but enforced, and enforced with determination. There is no space and no room for democratic consultation. The Shariah is set and fixed, so why do we need to discuss it anymore? Just implement it!"

Abu Bakar Bashir, Activist

"I just had the sense that at least the books that I had read about law just didn't really have enough of that"

Floyd Abrams, Lawyer

"I think the players, I put in the book for example that we should go back to wood rackets, probably they laughed at me, I'm a dinosaur, but I think that you see these great players, have even more variety and you see more strategy, there'd be more subtlety"

John McEnroe, Athlete

"I have assiduously avoided calling my books novels"

Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Novelist

"There's something deeply satisfying when it succeeds, but I'm not going to do another book just to put my name on something and make some money if it's not something I deeply care about"

John McEnroe, Athlete

"I knew that if I wrote a new book every six months or every year, if I continued to read great books, eventually I would write something worthy of publication. I understood I might be in my forties or my fifties or even my sixties, but I felt confident that it would happen"

Augusten Burroughs, Writer

"I have written two nonfiction books, I'm embarrassed to say"

Dirk Benedict, Actor

"When we read a story, we inhabit it. The covers of the book are like a roof and four walls. What is to happen next will take place within the four walls of the story. And this is possible because the story's voice makes everything its own"

John Berger, Artist

"I'd only read a bit of the first book. And I just knew about all the media furor over it. But I'd not read books 2 or 3. I'd just read a bit of it. And I'd seen the films"

David Thewlis, Actor

"My idea of going to hell is going somewhere where there are no books"

James MacArthur, Actor

"After working as a journalist I went to a writing program at Johns Hopkins. It was interesting because it was neither journalistic nor historical, but it emphasized writing style, and afterwards I was asked to write my first book"

Iris Chang, Historian

"The story drove the book. That had a very seminal effect on the way I saw writing and storytelling. If you can set a character in a story that is compelling and has a backbone, you draw people in"

Dick Wolf, Producer

"It is books that teach us to refine our pleasures when young, and to recall them with satisfaction when we are old"

Leigh Hunt, Poet

"My first collection of poems was published by Bloodaxe Books, which was then a very new imprint"

Helen Dunmore, Poet

"I hope that readers will tear through my books because they can't stop themselves - and then, maybe, read them again and find new things there"

Helen Dunmore, Poet

"Everything was going my way. I was happily marching into the history books. Then it all just fell apart"

George Michael, Musician

"Child! Do not throw this book about; refrain from the unholy pleasure of cutting all the pictures out"

Hilaire Belloc, Poet

"When I am dead, I hope it may be said: His sins were scarlet, but his books were read"

Hilaire Belloc, Poet

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