"My own books drive themselves. I know roughly where a book is going to end, but essentially the story develops under my fingers. It's just a matter of joining the dots."
Read quote
6 likes
Book quotes
Book
21K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Topics related to Book
Browse quotes that often appear alongside book — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Book quotes (page 113 of 1049)
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"Sometimes words need music too. Sometimes the descriptions are not enough. Books should be written with soundtracks, like films."
Read quote
6 likes
"It was Sci-Fi and fantasy that got me reading, and Sci-Fi writers in particular have pack rat minds. They introduce all sorts of interesting themes and ideas into their books, and so for me it was a short leap to go from the fantasy and Sci-Fi genres to folklore, mythology, ancient history and philosophy. I did not read philosophy because I set out to become a philosopher; I read it because it looked interesting."
Read quote
6 likes
"Sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads."
Read quote
6 likes
"There is no future for e-books, because they are not books. E-books smell like burned fuel."
Read quote
6 likes
"I am Plato's Republic. Mr. Simmons is Marcus. I want you to meet Jonathan Swift, the author of that evil political book, Gulliver's Travels! And this other fellow is Charles Darwin, and-this one is Schopenhauer, and this one is Einstein, and this one here at my elbow is Mr. Albert Schweitzer, a very kind philosopher indeed. Here we all are, Montag. Aristophanes and Mahatma Gandhi and Gautama Buddha and Confucius and Thomas Love Peacock and Thomas Jefferson and Mr. Lincoln, if you please. We are also Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John."
Read quote
6 likes
"A book has got smell. A new book smells great. An old book smells even better. An old book smells like ancient Egypt."
Read quote
6 likes
"Style and Structure are the essence of a book; great ideas are hogwash."
Read quote
6 likes
"Of all my Russian books, the defense contains and diffuses the greatest 'warmth' which may seem odd seeing how supremely abstract Chess is supposed to be"
Read quote
6 likes
"He [Lincoln] had mastered it {the Bible] absolutely...mastered it so that he became almost 'a man of one Book', who knew that Book and who instinctively put into practice what he had been taught therein."
Read quote
6 likes
"Many a person who could not comprehend Rousseau, and would be puzzled by Montesquieu, could understand Paine as an open book. He wrote with a clarity, a sharpness of outline and exactness of speech that even a schoolboy should be able to grasp."
Read quote
6 likes
"Happy the People whose Annals are blank in History Books!"
Read quote
6 likes
"Of all the things which man can do or make here below, by far the most momentous, wonderful, and worthy are the things we call books."
Read quote
6 likes
"If a book comes from the heart, it will contrive to reach other hearts; all art and author-craft are of small amount to that."
Read quote
6 likes
"Growing up I never got into comic books at all. I didn't have any inspiration for it."
Read quote
6 likes
"Books are the money of Literature, but only the counters of Science."
Read quote
6 likes
"I am mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, the sale of a book can become a subject of inquiry, and of criminal inquiry too."
Read quote
6 likes
"Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free."
Read quote
6 likes
"Are we to have a censor whose imprimatur shall say what books may be sold, and what we may buy? And who is thus to dogmatize religious opinions for our citizens? Whose foot is to be the measure to which ours are all to be cut or stretched? Is a priest to be our inquisitor, or shall a layman, simple as ourselves, set up his reason as the rule of what we are to read, and what we must believe?"
Read quote
6 likes
"Books constitute capital. A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not, then, an article of mere consumption but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital."
Read quote
6 likes