Book Quotes - Page 39

• On a certain day shall every soul come to plead for itself, and every soul shall be repaid according to its deeds; and they shall not be wronged.

  Elijah Muhammad

  Soul, Deeds, Holy

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• To live in the world without becoming aware of the meaning of the world is like wandering about in a great library without touching the books.

  Dan Brown

  Touching, Library, World

  Dan Brown (2009). “The Lost Symbol: (Robert Langdon Book 3)”, p.12, Random House

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• In Endless Quest books, you start the plot, and the character has to make choices. Then you have to write one choice over here, one choice over there. The author might get one or two choices out.

  Margaret Weis

  Character, Writing, Two

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• But the writer who endures and keeps working will finally know that writing the book was something hard and glorious, for at the desk a writer must try to be free of prejudice, meanness of spirit, pettiness, and hatred; strive to be a better human being than the writer normally is, and to do this through concentration on a single word, and then another, and another. This is splendid work, as worthy and demanding as any, and the will and resilience to do it are good for the writer's soul.

  Andre Dubus

  Writing, Hatred, Soul

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• There are some beautiful books out there. But the ones that leave me cold are the ones where I feel—it’s that postmodern thing—it’s more experimentation with language than it is a deep compassionate falling into another human being’s experience.

  Andre Dubus

  Beautiful, Fall, Language

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• It would be unfair to say that I prefer the back of a book to its contents, but it is true that the sight of a lot of books gives me the hope that I may some day read them, which sometimes develops into the belief that I have read them.

  Kenneth Clark

  Sight, Giving, Would Be

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• The first page sells this book. The last page sells your next book.

  Mickey Spillane

  Pages, Lasts, Next

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• Hemingway hated me. I sold 200 million books, and he didn't. Of course most of mine sold for 25 cents, but still... you look at all this stuff with a grain of salt.

  Mickey Spillane

  Grain Of Salt, Looks, Literature

  Interview with Michael Carlson, "Crime Time", 2001.

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• I'm a commercial writer, not an author. Margaret Mitchell was an author. She wrote one book.

  Mickey Spillane

  "Writers on Writing". Book by Jon Winokur, 1986.

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• Books have that strange quality, that being of the frailest and tenderest matter, they outlast brass, iron and marble.

  William Drummond

  Iron, Quality, Matter

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• The book can produce an addiction as fierce as heroin or nicotine, forcing us to spend much of our lives, like junkies, in book shops and libraries, those literary counterparts to the opium den.

  Phillip Adams

  Addiction, Library, Fierce

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• A year ago, six months ago, I thought that I was an artist. I no longer think about it, I am. Everything that was literature has fallen from me. There are no more books to be written, thank God. This then? This is not a book. This is libel, slander, defamation of character. This is not a book, in the ordinary sense of the word. No, this is a prolonged insult, a gob of spit in the face of Art, a kick in the pants to God, Man, Destiny, Time, Love, Beauty . . . what you will.

  Henry Miller

  Art, Character, Love Is

  Henry Miller, Mary V. Dearborn (2007). “Crazy Cock”, p.8, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• I can never read this book, just like I can never see a movie that I wrote a screenplay for. I can read it and see it physically, but I can't accurately judge it. I'm too close to it. If I read it ten times I'll have ten different reactions.

  Richard Price

  Judging, Different, Reactions

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• You go into the office and take a book or two from the shelves. You read a few lines, like your life depended on reading 'em right. But you know your life doesn't depend on anything that makes sense, and you wonder where in the hell you got the idea it did; and you begin to get sore.

  Jim Thompson

  Reading, Ideas, Two

  Jim Thompson (1997). “Crime novels: American noir of the 1950s”

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• In lots of books I read, the writer seems to go haywire every time he reaches a high point. He’ll start leaving out punctuation and running his words together and babble about stars flashing and sinking into a deep dreamless sea. And you can’t figure out whether the hero’s laying his girl or a cornerstone. I guess that kind of crap is supposed to be pretty deep stuff—a lot of the book reviewers eat it up, I notice. But the way I see it is, the writer is just too goddam lazy to do his job. And I’m not lazy, whatever else I am. I’ll tell you everything.

  Jim Thompson

  Girl, Running, Jobs

  Jim Thompson (1997). “Crime novels: American noir of the 1950s”

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• If I book a hotel it's actually very funny. It's very nice to be a genuine Mr Smith.

  Robert Smith

  Nice, Genuine, Hotel

  Interview with "Q" magazine, February 2000.

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• You just don't give up. There have been times when everything seemed to conspire against getting a book done or printed, and I would feel like turning my back on the whole thing. But I came back and persisted

  Dee Brown

  Giving Up, Don't Give Up, Done

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• A small number of choice books are sufficient.

  Voltaire

  Small Numbers, Choices, Library

  Voltaire (1824). “A philosophical dictionary: from the French”, p.48

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• I would prefer to have one comfortable room well stocked with books to all you could give me in the way of decoration which the highest art could supply.

  John Bright

  Art, Giving, Way

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• The best book I read in 2007 was Stoner by John Williams. It’s perhaps the best book I’ve read in years.

  Stephen Elliott

  Years, Stoners

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• It's always gratifying to hear from a passionate reader, and as a longtime educator, I'm especially pleased and heartened when that reader is a young student who is inspired to write me and let me know that my book has helped him or her find her way.

  Julia Alvarez

  Writing, Passionate, Way

  Source: ncac.org

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• What is the virtue and service of a book? Only to help me live less gingerly and shabbily.

  Christopher Morley

  Helping, Virtue, Help Me

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• I've always liked getting away with just a little bit of what you're not supposed to. Like my first book, Billy's Booger, got me in trouble with the principal's office.

  William Joyce

  Office, Littles, Firsts

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• I think I settled on the title before I ever wrote the book.

  Frank McCourt

  Thinking, Titles

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• In my opinion, understanding who your target audience is, and what they want, and writing to them (and only them!) is the most important component of being successful as an author.

  John Locke

  Writing, Successful, Target Audience

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