Books Quotes

I think my books come out very visual, which is an obvious consequence.

Faulkner is a writer who has had much to do with my soul, but Hemingway is the one who had the most to do with my craft - not simply for his books, but for his astounding knowledge of the aspect of craftsmanship in the science of writing.

And so for a couple of years my life was divided between my music and my school books.

I did about 2000 covers altogether, for all sorts of books - from Shakespeare to James Bond - and I always had the idea that I must give 100%, no matter who the author was.

Earth and sky, woods and fields, lakes and rivers, the mountain and the sea, are excellent schoolmasters, and teach some of us more than we can ever learn from books.

I can't read all the books I want to read, I can't watch all the phenomena that interest me in the world. The work calls me, and sometimes I wonder whether this is an obsession and I should drop it, or it's a necessity I'm obliged to fulfill.

I write from my imagination, not from what I've read in books or seen on TV or to make money. I wrote from an idea I was passionate about.

The proper study of mankind is books.

I've written a lot of really good books. Now we'll see if I can write any more good books. I mean there's a chance I won't, but I'm going to try.

The book salesman should be honored because he brings to our attention, as a rule, the very books we need most and neglect most.

I've discovered writers by reading books left in airplane seats and weird hotels.

Interestingly, I never thought I'd do an adaptation. I've also been quite against them. I think trying to translate one medium to another is wrong. I never really felt that books fitted into film. Generally people are disappointed, aren't they?

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.

I think that's not a question that one can answer accurately. I read a whole range of books, quite a lot of history at the time, and still do read a lot. I read very widely.

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.

In the later books I am much more at home in the use of language to describe things. I had never thought of that until a critic pointed that out.

I knew I would read all kinds of books and try to get at what it is that makes good writers good. But I made no promises that I would write books a lot of people would like to read.

Books can only reveal us to ourselves, and as often as they do us this service we lay them aside.

I spent my first two years at a small all-male college in Virginia called Hampden-Sydney. That was like going to college 120 years ago. The languages, a year of rhetoric, all of the great books, Western Man courses, stuff like that.

Being the first to do something like this also registers a lot of attention that the line might not have gotten if all four books had just appeared from one company.

I have piles of poetry books in the bathroom, on the stairs, everywhere. The only way to write poetry is to read it.

The White House used to belong to the American people. At least that's what I learned from history books and from covering every president starting with John F. Kennedy.

I'm not a great shopper but I do buy a lot of books. I'm the publishers' friend - I buy a hundred books a year and read four.

Most of my inspiration, if that's the word, came from books themselves.

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.