"A good writer preserves an air of freedom in his prose, so that the reader won't know how a story will end - even if he's reading a history book."
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Book quotes (page 114 of 1049)
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"Changing the world doesn't require much money. Again, think in terms of empowerment and not charity. How much were Gandhi's teachers paid? How much did it cost to give Dr. Martin Luther King the books that catalyzed his mind and actions?"
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"I gauge success in years, not weeks. The weekend box-office approach to book launches is short sighted and encourages crappy books."
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"Whenever I finish a book, I go off and have some kind of adventure. Having had an adventure in my writing chair or on my writing sofa, an internal adventure, then I need to balance that off with an external adventure, so I'll go tramping through Africa or whitewater rafting or float to Hawaii in a martini shaker or something."
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"Normally book ideas come to me in a moment."
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"So many (too many) books are published every year, and it seems everyone is writing a book. Perhaps we should all be reading more and writing less!"
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"I have consistently loved books that I've read when I've been sick in bed."
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"I have the wonderful pleasure of finishing the book and closing it. And I don't read them later."
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"The idea of a wanton woman is something I have inserted into almost all of my books. An outlaw figure who is disallowed in the community because of her imagination or activity or status - that kind of anarchic figure has always fascinated me. And the benefits they bring with them, in spite of the fact that they are either dismissed or upbraided - something about their presence is constructive in the long run."
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"I don't go to church on Sunday, don't get on my knees to pray, or memorize the books of the Bible, I got my own special way"
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"I have long profited from Adele Ahlberg Calhoun's gifts in the field of spiritual development, and I am delighted that she has compiled her experience with spiritual disciplines into book form. I highly recommend it and I look forward to using it as a resource at our church."
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"(T)here was a story they used to tell at home about a girl whose punishment was that every time she opened her mouth, snakes and toads came out, snakes and toads with every word. The book didn't say what she did about it, but I've always assumed she probably ended up keeping her mouth shut."
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"I like to have books around to give me ideas-to get the verbal part of my brain to start working."
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"The abundance of books is distraction"
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"The world of comic book collecting is not a pretty place. For a bunch of guys who like good-over-evil stories, you sure meet a lot of morally bankrupt assholes."
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"Like most writers, we like to find what we know and pass it along to anyone who cares. When that's done, as soon as we've said the best we can say, there's nothing else about us that's remotely interesting to anybody else, and we go back behind the walls. We can be intimate in books, we can be intimate in talks, but then we need time to be alone."
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"Anything we need to know, we can learn it from a book. Reading, careful study, a little practice, and we’re throwing knives expertly, overhauling engines, speaking Esperanto like natives."
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"Individuals somehow are led to find my books at times that are important to them. The mail that I get very, very often will say, "I was at a difficult time in my life, and someone gave me a copy.""
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"The art, the new, the ability to connect the dots and to make an impact - sooner or later, that can only come from one who creates, not from a teacher and not from a book."
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"I'm dyslexic. If you can reconcile yourself to not being able to burn through books, which you shouldn't any way, you can slow the whole process down. Then, because of my disability, there is more for me in imaginative literature than there is for other people."
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