Books Quotations | Page 4

You can read books on stuff all day long, but until you get out there and just do it, if you want to start playing, and you want to make some music, then go out and play. Go find yourself a venue and play, even if it's in your home. Just play every day. You win the fight by fighting.

As repressed sadists are supposed to become policemen or butchers so those with an irrational fear of life become publishers.

I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me.

Agatha Christie's writing is incredibly skillful because her books are incredibly intellectually puzzling and challenging.

I never talk about books in progress. I could decide to change it to a series of seafood recipes, after all.

I've been told, and I think I recognize it, that there's a cinematic quality to my writing, with a sense of image and place and scene - and, some would say, my tendency to finish my books the way Hollywood finishes its films.

When I'm writing, I try not to think things like, 'Gosh, I have to finish writing this book.' Books are very long and it's easy to get discouraged. Instead I think to myself, 'Wow, I have this great story idea, and today I'm going to write two pages of it. That's all - just two pages.'

I think the most important lesson isn't necessarily to try and write a different book every time, or to try and brand yourself and write one specific kind of book, but to write the kind of books you love to read.

In books by women and for women, it should come as no surprise that heroines are the heroes of the action, finding themselves, their power and their future through love.

My son was born during my last semester in college. His due date was Thanksgiving, but he didn't show up until finals week. I brought my books to the hospital and didn't think anything of it. That is what a father is supposed to do.

I have always loved reading books for children and young adults, particularly when those books are mysteries.

The mood in which my book was conceived and executed, was in fact to some extent a passing one.

I would never require anyone to read any book. That seems antithetical to why we read - which is to choose a book for our personal reasons. I always shudder when I'm told my books are on required reading lists.

I read every one of the books on the shelf marked American Negro Literature. I became a nationalist, a colour nationalist, through the writings of men and women who lived a world away from me.

I won a Marshall scholarship to read philosophy at Oxford, and what I most wanted to do was strengthen public intellectual culture - I'd write books and essays to help us figure out who we wanted to be.

Twenty years on, the books are still fun to write and I've still got lots of stories I want to tell, mainly about social injustice and people chewed up by the system.

Ulysses could have done with a good editor. You know people are always putting Ulysses in the top 10 books ever written but I doubt that any of those people were really moved by it.

It's possible there are no two books in publishing history more dissimilar than 'Human Traces' and 'Devil May Care.' And that was really the attraction of it.

I really love being a weirdo who writes a lot of different things for a lot of different ages. I have been considering doing a guide on my website so that a reader who liked one of my books could find the other books that he or she might like, because I know some of the books are really different from the rest.

If you look through the shelves of science books, you'll find row after row of books written by men. This can be terribly off-putting for women.

Between 2 and 5 I'm reading in to find out what's been going on while I've been asleep.

If you spend all your time reading books that you only pretend to understand, year after year, there isn't much room for anything else.

No matter how many books you've written, whenever you sit down to write a new book, you always feel the same challenge - how do you shape this story into a book that people are going to love.

I've really written my books for my husband and our family. They've brought us closer together by allowing us to discuss things that were unspoken for so long.

I have no personal agenda in whether or not a library keeps 'Whale Talk' or 'Athletic Shorts' or any of my books shelved.

People would react to books by authors like James and Austen almost on a gut level. I think it was not so much the message, because the best authors do not have obvious messages. These authors were disturbing to my students because of their perspectives on life.

I was a pretentious child. I grew up without a television. I read a lot of books and I loved Shakespeare. Still do.

Smart people often talk trash about happiness and worse than trash about books on happiness, and they have been doing so for centuries - just as long as other people have been pursuing happiness and writing books about it.

I have two bookcases that used to be filled with cookbooks, but now it's mostly books about politics and government. I might just give this all up and run for office.

I got tired of books where the boy is a bit thick and the girl's very clever. Why does it have to such an opposition? Why can't they be like the girls and boys that I know personally, who are equally funny and equally cross? Who get things equally wrong and are equally brave? And make the same mistakes?

I needed more knowledge in rigging and knotting. I started collecting books on knots and really learning more and more. That's how it started. And also in magic, of course. With a piece of rope, you can do magic.

To me, it was a sad fate to have been born into a period and a world where everything was in tip-top order, and the only real excitement was to be found in history books and occasionally also in the paper.

For commercial books in a genre, readers' and editors' expectations may be fairly rigid. Some romance lines, for instance, issue fairly detailed writers' guidelines explaining exactly what must happen in a book they publish (and what must not).

While reading 'David Copperfield' in the middle of the night - probably because of the light, I had insomnia for the first time - I looked out of the window and thought, 'If this is what books can do, this is what I want to do.'

I read all the time... I read a lot of history books.

Every once in a while, I get mad. 'The Lorax' came out of my being angry. The ecology books I'd read were dull... In 'The Lorax,' I was out to attack what I think are evil things and let the chips fall where they might.

I love writing for young adults because they are such a wonderful audience, they are good readers, and they care about the books they read.

I tend to think of the reading of any book as preparation for the next reading of it. There are always intervening books or facts or realizations that put a book in another light and make it different and richer the second or the third time.

There will be birthdays in the next twelve months; books keep well; they're easy to wrap: buy those books now. Buy replacements for any books looking raggedy on your shelves.

My love of books - not just of their tactile pleasures but of their astonishing variety - was born in a book-filled house; my father is a scholar.

I spent a lot of time at my grandparents in the school holidays, and the only books in the house were a copy of the Bible and Agatha Christie's 'Murder at the Vicarage.' I developed a taste for murder mysteries and then later discovered libraries, second-hand bookshops, and jumble sales.

I really like the group tour better than going it alone. First of all, it kind of takes the pressure off a little. I'm not a naturally extroverted person. But I also like it because it brings in new fans. For example, someone who really loves Aprilynne Pike's books might pick up mine and vice versa.

Today I still feel like the most illiterate person ever to have roamed the campuses of Wellesley and Harvard, where I later transferred. I remain intimidated by all the books I haven't read, but over the years I've come to realize that being a student is a lifelong adventure.

Men do not understand books until they have a certain amount of life, or at any rate no man understands a deep book, until he has seen and lived at least part of its contents.

I want to inspire through example. I hope my books motivate others to open doors and windows that will help them to embrace their own truth, light and joy.

I'm floating between multiple media. I really wish you could buy the hardcover book and it would come with the digital download and audible version. I spend stupid amounts of money because I'm usually buying my books in at least two formats.

Ted Williams is one of the best hitters ever to play the game, and I didn't get a chance to see him play, so all I could do was read books and look at pictures.

I still don't think I've ever read a Nancy Drew book; I probably read three or four 'Hardy Boys' books when I was 10, 11, 12, and I didn't love them at the time. Even then, they felt dated to me, like the word chum - 'my chum and I.' However, the 'Encyclopedia Brown' books, I read all of them.

But for me, being an editor I've been an editor of all kinds of books being an editor of poetry has been the way in which I could give a crucial part of my time to what I love most.

To reject the word is to reject the human search.

With a book, you're guaranteed the audience has a certain skill level and that the audience has to make an ongoing effort to consume this product and that the project is being consumed by just one person at a time. I really want to play to that strength because it's one of the few advantages books still have.

My son craves picture books about Transformers and Ninja Turtles and the Hulk; they show one fantastic creature smashing or zapping another into smithereens on page after page. They are dull and ugly and show no interesting stories or models of conflict resolution or character building.

We all had to learn Southern accents. It wasn't a big research show. With the 'Wounded Knee' project, I locked myself in my apartment with history books so I would know what we're talking about.

His knowledge of books had in some degree diminished his knowledge of the world.

Children will not pretend to be enjoying books, and they will not read books because they have been told that these books are good. They are looking for delight.

A lot of times, people complain about how books and stories change when they're translated to the screen. But I think sometimes people forget that a lot of changes have to be made because we're not in a book when we're watching a movie.

I read in a weird way. It comes in waves, and then I start, like, five different books at once. It takes me six months to a year to finish them all, since I read mostly on planes.

Pat Moynihan could write books with one hand and legislate with the other. I can't; I have a short attention span. The slightest distraction would take me away from writing.

There are movies I've seen or books I've read that attach themselves in a way that's greater than the ability to understand why. How do you explain that kind of connectedness?

At the close of my visit, my Hawaiian friends urged me strongly to publish my impressions and experiences, on the ground that the best books already existing, besides being old, treat chiefly of aboriginal customs and habits now extinct, and of the introduction of Christianity and subsequent historical events.

Wagner's philosophy had absolutely nothing to do with Bruckner. Bruckner hadn't written a single word against Jews. Wagner's book on the Jews was one of the most infamous books of the 19th century.

I know that the last thing a book wants is to just sit around unread, serving as an element of interior decorating. So when I have people over, all they have to do is glance at my books, and I implore them to take a few home with them. If I am really ambitious, I pack books into boxes and donate them to prisons.

I can remember that on the shelves at home, there were these books by Thomas Wolfe. 'Look Homeward Angel' and 'Of Time and the River.' 'Of Time and the River' had just come out when I was aware of his name. My parents had a hard time convincing me that he was no kin whatsoever. My attitude was, 'Well, what's he doing on the shelf, then?'

I do feel that Paula Deen should not have lost her job, and I've said this on the air. The marketplace should have decided. The marketplace decided something different. Her books are No. 1.

Before 'Veronica Mars,' I was not, and probably am still not, much of a crime reader. My mom left out a copy of 'Helter Skelter' when I was 10, and I secretly read it, and then I spent all my teenage years afraid of hippies. I kept away from crime books for, like, ten years.

I'm a geophysicist and all my earth science books when I was a student, I had to give the wrong answer to get an A. We used to ridicule continental drift. It was something we laughed at. We learned of Marshall Kay's geosynclinal cycle, which is a bunch of crap.

One of the last books I read was 'Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime' by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin. It gives a really good behind-the-scenes look at the campaigns. I didn't ask the president how accurate it was. I wouldn't ask him that.

I love thinking of movie stars who could play the characters in the books I write.

I have to write three books a year to make a reasonable living out of writing - unless, of course, she gets a major American film deal. Phryne has been optioned since the very first book, but to make a historical TV movie, it costs $30,000 a day extra for the historical detail to be correct, so most people aren't doing it.

I've written a lot of books now; I've been published for over 30 years. I hope with every book I learn something new, and with every new novel I try to improve the process of writing.

People still try to sell books that way - as 'books can take you to foreign lands.' We've given children this idea that reading and books are a nice option, if you want that kind of thing. I hope we can get over that idea.

I was always writing the books that I wanted to write, books that demanded to be written at the time. But, like most writers, you start off feeling your way.

The truly great books are always novels: 'Anna Karenina,' 'The Brothers Karamazov,' 'The Magic Mountain.' Just as with 'Shahnameh,' I browse these books from time to time to remember how a great book works on us or to teach my students at Columbia University.

When I first met my husband, he had a very good job - company car, pension plan, grudging respect from his staff - the lot. I, on the other hand, was badly paid and devoid of ambition. Then I had a couple of books published and confounded all expectations by starting to earn more than he did.

I first became aware of Charles Darwin and evolution while still a schoolboy growing up in Chicago. My father and I had a passion for bird-watching, and when the snow or the rain kept me indoors, I read his bird books and learned about evolution.

Every city and town in America would be bankrupt if they kept their books the way private-sector companies keep their books - because of the obligation cities and towns have taken upon themselves to provide health care for their retirees.

This is what I have discovered - and it has been a gift in itself - that books live over and over again in different people's minds. That I might mean one thing as I write, but a reader's experiences will take it somewhere else. That is like a conversation, I think. It is a true connecting up.

We had library books in our house, but not our own. So you had 14 days to read them. There would be eight books a fortnight in our house and I'd read as many of those as I could.

As a mother, I love the Leapster handheld because it really delivers on educating children while they play. My daughter enjoys it because it's fun and touches on all of the activities she is interested in - videos, books and art.

The reason I'm writing funny books is that I wish there were more.

Serial killers are everywhere! Well, perhaps not in our neighborhood, but on our television screens, at the movie theatres, and in rows and rows of books at our local Borders or Barnes and Noble Booksellers.

I've sold a lot of different product. Very briefly, I sold Time Life Books on the phone.

My father was the child of academics and was probably destined to become an academic himself but vetoed that idea. Bailed, dropped out of graduate school and just went to work for an insurance company. But the house was full of books and music and all of that.

The books I read, if they intrude on my writing, do so as weather will pass through and touch a landscape - affecting it, yes, but only now and then leaving a permanent mark.

I was raised in Harlem. I never found a book that took place in Harlem. I never had a church like mine in a book. I never had people like the people I knew. People who could not find their lives in books and celebrated felt bad about themselves. I needed to write to include the lives of these young people.

Since, in the best Southern tradition, I was named Edmund Valentine White III, sometimes when people look up my books on Amazon they find 'Chocolate Drops from the South' by my grandfather.

I have been blessed with friends who do things rather than buy things: friends who will change books at the library, take a bag of your old clothes to a thrift store, bring you cuttings and plant them in a window box, fill the bird feeder in your garden when you can't get out.

I think books with spiritual themes simply point to the deeper mysteries of life - to what lies beyond us, to what's hidden inside of us, or perhaps to an understanding of what truly matters.

As a boy, I devoured comics but never saw what we now describe as a picture book.

My wife likes me to point out that she puts our daughter down to sleep more often than I do, which gives me time to write stupid books about it.

If you read all your history books, there are no women in them.

As the news agenda goes into warp speed, it becomes ever more difficult for authors writing about current events to keep their books timely and relevant.

Really good books need a chaos element: something weird or inexplicable.

Many people tell me that they don 't know what to feel when they finish one of my books because the story was dark, or complicated, or strange. But while they were reading it, they were inside my world and they were happy. That's good.

Books are a finer world within the world.

Books are my art. The movie is someone else's art. But it's great marketing for books.

I'm a feminist. The women in my books in recent years have been powerful characters and I love to see a woman with a cute bottom walking past.

'Caught' is a novel of forgiveness, and the past and the present - who should be and who shouldn't be forgiven. None of my books are ever just about thrills, or it won't work.

Because I've a track record of talking about books I never write, in Australia they think I'm about to write a book about Jane Austen. Something I said at some festival.

To study the phenomena of disease without books is to sail an uncharted sea, while to study books without patients is not to go to sea at all.