Book Quotes

"A bibliophile of little means is likely to suffer often. Books don't slip from his hands but fly past him through the air, high as birds, high as prices"

William Lyon Phelps, Educator

"I just have to proceed as usual. No matter what happens, nothing helps with the writing of the next book"

Frank McCourt, Author

"If you get a book which is 600 pages, you have to reduce it to a script of 100 pages. In two hours of film, you cannot possibly include all the characters"

Dino De Laurentiis, Director

"A lot of poets too live on the margins of social acceptance, they certainly aren't in it for the money. William Blake - only his first book was legitimately published"

Jim Jarmusch, Director

"The main benefit of the book for the more experienced practitioners is as an evangelical tool. The book will give you some ways of expressing the value and importance of your work that you may not have had before"

Jesse James Garrett, Businessman

"They give me the money, I give them the book. Having input into the adaptation would be kind of like selling a house and coming back three years later and saying, 'Paint it this color!'"

Robert B. Parker, Writer

"If you're writing a book that takes place in New York in the moment, you can't not write about 9-11; you can't not integrate it. My main character's view is the Statue of Liberty and the Trade Center. It doesn't have to take over, but it has to be acknowledged"

Richard Price, Writer

"I started thinking about my relationship with my students; I'm this guy who comes in from book - and movie - land and descends on angel wings into their classroom"

Richard Price, Writer

"In World War II, the book you have in front of you, it was said and it is probably true, that there was not a single American who did not know the name of somebody serving in uniform"

Oliver North, Soldier

"In my first book, Under Fire, I wrote that I revered Ronald Reagan. That was a dozen years ago. I still feel that way. I think he changed the world for the better for my children and my children's children"

Oliver North, Soldier

"So, while I gave up the notions of publishing at that time, I never stopped editing and refining that book. A few years later, in 1987, I thought I had it ready to go out again"

R. A. Salvatore, Author

"I didn't and don't go to Internet for any business purposes. The book sales for me by this point are way beyond any influence I might have, positively, or others might have, negatively"

R. A. Salvatore, Author

"Censorship is a strange situation. There was times when people would burn books because they didn't like what people were doing"

Michael Berryman, Actor

"And religion causes most of the problems, war, and economics of course, and study your history or you're going to repeat it; and if you're burning a Harry Potter book you need some serious counseling, you don't get it, you're missing the whole point"

Michael Berryman, Actor

"When I get back from this book tour, I'm planning to learn the internet. Maybe I can hook up in cyberspace"

Armistead Maupin, Novelist

"This hand is not very active always, because it was in this hand that I carried my books. My carrying hand was always my strongest. Now I think my other hand has developed more muscles from signing all those autographs"

Haile Gebrselassie, Athlete

"All books are either dreams or swords, you can cut, or you can drug, with words"

Amy Lowell, Poet

"I wrote a book called The Taste of New Wine because I couldn't find a book that talked about the reality of the situation and how we were dishonest and afraid"

Keith Miller, Author

"I guess there is also an element of deliberate change involved. Each of my books has been, at least from my point of view, radically different from the last"

George Murray, Poet

"I normally keep a series of draft in a catalogue type of book in which I scribble, sketch and draw ideas"

Jonathan Shapiro, Cartoonist

"Without sounding too pretentious, I was sort of a slave to the narrative. When the narrative cracks in, I have to go where it takes me. I had to go to the Bohemian Grove. It was the obvious end to the book"

Jon Ronson, Journalist

"Then one day I read about a book that said that the church is the only army that shoots its wounded"

Keith Miller, Author

"Screenplays I didn't really care about, journalism, travel books, getting my writer friends to write about their dreams or something. I just determined to write the books I had to write"

Kazuo Ishiguro, Author

"It's not surprising to see in my own work, looking back, and in the work of some of my peers, an attention to family. It's nice to write a book that does tend toward significance and meaning, and where else are you sure of finding it?"

Jonathan Franzen, Novelist

"It's just a matter of writing the kind of book I enjoy reading. Something better be happening at the beginning, and then on every page after, or I get irritated"

Jonathan Franzen, Novelist

"I don't write down my experiences, but I have a very decent memory. I have tons of books in which I write down phrases as they occur to me. That's how I write songs. I'll need a line and I'll go through the books and find it, the right rhyme and everything"

Evan Dando, Musician

"I'm reading a book about Romaine Brooks, a wonderful painter from early in the last century"

Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Poet

"I was unwise enough to actually mention this in public a few times, and in fact to point out that there were two versions of the book now. One of them had somebody else's name on the cover, one had my name on the cover"

Jonathan Franzen, Novelist

"I was about 13, in some ways, when I wrote the first book. Approximately 18 when I wrote the second"

Jonathan Franzen, Novelist

"Probably all the books I've ever written have been efforts to define the boundaries of humanity"

Fred Saberhagen, Author

"It was actually a very nice little book done by a gift book company. They illustrated it with pictures from 1920s football, before there were face guards"

Gregg Easterbrook, Author

"My gut feeling is that paper and ink are going to be with us for a long time yet, and in substantial quantities, though certainly books are now going to be available in other forms"

Fred Saberhagen, Author

"People say that I could sing the phone book and make it sound good"

Edith Piaf, Musician

"In playing the part of Mammy, I tried to make her a living, breathing character, the way she appeared to me in the book"

Hattie McDaniel, Actress

"I guess if one set of my books was selling like Stephen King's, and the other wasn't selling at all, editors would want me to do the ones that sold like Stephen King's. But they seem to be willing to let me pick what I want to do next"

Fred Saberhagen, Author

"A good writer is not, per se, a good book critic. No more so than a good drunk is automatically a good bartender"

Jim Bishop, Journalist

"For books are more than books, they are the life, the very heart and core of ages past, the reason why men worked and died, the essence and quintessence of their lives"

Amy Lowell, Poet

"I just wrote a book, but don't go out and buy it yet, because I don't think it's finished yet"

Lawrence Welk, Musician

"When I'm working on a book, I constantly retype my own sentences. Every day I go back to page one and just retype what I have. It gets me into a rhythm"

Joan Didion, Author

"Well, the whole story is in the book, but the short answer is that I was the first information architect in an organization that was traditionally design-oriented, and I felt I needed a tool to help me gain the trust and support of my colleagues"

Jesse James Garrett, Businessman

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