Books Quotes

Those who decide to use leisure as a means of mental development, who love good music, good books, good pictures, good plays, good company, good conversation - what are they? They are the happiest people in the world.

The worst thing about new books is that they keep us from reading the old ones.

I know that I am very popular in Holland, in fact I have visited Amsterdam several times to publicize my books. I have a great publisher in Holland and they have published all of my books in Dutch.

The experience gathered from books, though often valuable, is but the nature of learning; whereas the experience gained from actual life is one of the nature of wisdom.

People are always coming up to me with my books and saying, 'You write these things I think but I could never say.'

As any student of literature knows, the books that last are often not the books that are most popular when they are written. Both 'Moby Dick' and 'The Great Gatsby' were complete failures, critically and commercially, when they first appeared.

I'm not too interested in books about India.

Instead of hoping that some day the boys' club will open its doors, we can form our own clubs, define 'worthy' our own way, and celebrate the books and voices that we decide deserve celebration.

I believe in books that do not go to a ready-made public. I'm looking for readers I would like to make. To win them, to create readers rather than to give something that readers are expecting. That would bore me to death.

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.

That by listening to some music, by reading some books, by looking at paintings, and most important by hanging out with one another - by collaborating with one another and creating your own network - you can achieve something that is much better than what is out there.

I was very interested in vaudeville. It was the only sort of discipline that was a five-minute act on stage, which is what I really enjoyed and saw myself doing. And I bought books on it.

If writers learn more from their books than do readers, perhaps I may have begun to learn.

If a spectator with a philosophical mind, somebody accustomed to reading books, gets the same kind of information in a movie, he might not fully understand it.

A theme in a lot of my books - and in my own life - is making choices that you feel you should make, or what society wants you to make, as opposed to what is truly right for you.

The reason that there are so few good books written is that so few people who write know anything.

Quentin and I were constantly finding something new that we had in common and comic books were one of them. I think we were talking about comic books much earlier in our relationship, before I had the part.

We probably put about four or five comic books out a year and probably about two or three art books and various trade paperbacks - maybe four or five of those a year - and that's what we do now.

I don't read books much.

If you think you have it tough, read history books.

No, I got a GED in my 30s. My kids know that I never stop learning, and they know I love reading. I have books overflowing everywhere. I am current on today's events and I read the paper every day, and we talk about it, so they see that appetite.

Books let us into their souls and lay open to us the secrets of our own.

I do read books. I suppose it's more or less the same thing, but at least I'm alone and I'm an individual. I can stop anytime I want, which I frequently do.

You know, I don't only play for the record books.

Most of us... are simply just trying to get through the day. And wait for those times in their life that are markers, that put things into relief. That's why we like movies and books so much.

The things I keep going back to, rereading, maybe they say more about me as a reader than about the books. Love in the Time of Cholera, Pale Fire.

Books were this wonderful escape for me because I could open a book and disappear into it, and that was the only way out of that house when I was a kid.

The new spirituality will bring about what I'm calling the 'end of better.' And that is in fact what is called for in the next of the series of books that I've been writing.

I have personally seen statements that were longer than some books I have read.

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.