"Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren't."
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Book quotes
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Book quotes (page 128 of 1049)
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"When you're young - when I was young - you want your emotions to be like the ones you read about in books. You want them to overturn your life, create and define a new reality. Later, I think, you want them to do something milder, something more practical: you want them to support your life as it is and has become. You want them to tell you that things are OK. And is there anything wrong with that?"
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"I would love mainland Chinese to read my book. There is a Chinese translation which I worked on myself, published in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Many copies have gone into China but it is still banned."
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"Although my book is banned I am still allowed to go to China and travel. There is no longer the kind of control that Mao used to have-there have been deep fundamental changes in society."
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"Over the years I have photographed thousands of people. I have never stopped being curious and trying to discover new worlds. I have used my camera as a mirror for my subjects as well. I remember photographing a woman in her 80s for my book, Wise Women, who told me it had been a long time since anyone had really been interested in "seeing" or photographing her. When she saw the picture, she burst into tears. She saw something in the photograph, an inner beauty and soul, she felt had long ago vanished."
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"If I had to pick a single word to describe what my pictures are all about, I would say 'secrets.' As a child I always had a secret world and my favorite book was “A Secret Garden."
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"It is not at all incredible, that a book which has been so long in the possession of mankind should contain many truths as yet undiscovered."
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"Nor do they trust their tongue alone, but speak a language of their own; can read a nod, a shrug, a look, far better than a printed book; convey a libel in a frown, and wink a reputation down."
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"What do we, as a nation, care about books? How much do you think we spend altogether on our libraries, public or private, as compared with what we spend on our horses?"
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"One day's exposure to mountains is better than a cartload of books."
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"I have a low opinion of books: they are piles of stones set up to show coming travelers where other minds have been, or at best signal smokes to call attention."
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"Reading a good book helps us to feel un-alone."
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"When I'm working on a book, I constantly retype my own sentences. Every day I go back to page one and just retype what I have. It gets me into a rhythm."
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"The book you don't read won't help."
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"The book is not really the container for the book. The book itself is the narrative. It's the thing that people create."
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"The wheel is an extension of the foot, the book is an extension of the eye, clothing an extension of the skin, electric circuitry an extension of the central nervous system."
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"A successful book cannot afford to be more than ten percent new."
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"I do, indeed, close my door at times and surrender myself to a book, but only because I can open the door again and see a human face looking at me."
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"Mystery books. I must read a hundred a year. . . I just wish some of them were harder to figure out."
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"The wine urges me on, the bewitching wine, which sets even a wise man to singing and to laughing gently and rouses him up to dance and brings forth words which were better unspoken."
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