Book quotes
21K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside book — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"I was really inspired by seeing self published zines and mini-comics: seeing someone else make work that was either really personal, or was just done entirely themselves. It really showed me what was possible for my own art, and I hope that my books will inspire readers in the same way."
"Most of my books have been written in the form of fantasy."
"Books, Manuals, Directives, Regulations. The geometries that circumscribe your working life draw norrower and norrower until nothing fits inside them anymore."
"'Tis pleasant, sure, to see one's name in print. A book's a book, although there's nothing in 't."
"There is one other book, that can teach you everything you need to know about life... it's The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, but that's not enough anymore."
"There isn’t any particular relationship between the messages, except that the author has chosen them carefully, so that, when seen all at once, they produce an image of life that is beautiful and surprising and deep. There is no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no causes, no effects. What we love in our books are the depths of many marvelous moments seen all at one time."
"Listen: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time."
"Noam Chomsky has a book, which I read for the first time when I was in Spain, called 'Fear of Democracy'. There is your answer. Fear of democracy. In Honduras, they had a sham democracy. It was run by elites, what was called a liberal democracy, but in reality was a false democracy."
"I got tired and embarrassed by the constant poverty of those years. I told Doug [ Brinkley] this is really going to be a horrible downer of a book [The Proud Highway] if all it's going to be is about being broke. I didn't like being reminded of desperation at all times."
"The importance and influence of books on me has been cumulative: the result of hearing and reading lots of stories about interesting people and places."
"I have a good collection of cookery books. This is not so much because I like cooking, but because I like eating."
"My writing has to support more than my research habit, but I love to curl up with a book about some dusty corner of history."
"Am I allowed to ask my book / whether it's true I wrote it?"
"It should be possible to exist with only a short shelf of books, to read and give away. After all - we may not open a book, once read, for ten years or more. But the act of reading has made it part of us - to relinquish it would be to lose an extension of our being."
"Ideally, we should like to define a good book as one which 'permits, invites, or compels' good reading"
"The alphabet was a great invention, which enabled men to store and to learn with little effort what others had learned the hard way-that is, to learn from books rather than from direct, possibly painful, contact with the real world."
"Do not make Mistakes about Character. That is the worst and yet easiest error. Better be cheated in the price than in the quality of goods. In dealing with men, more than with other things, it is necessary to look within. To know men is different from knowing things. It is profound philosophy to sound the depths of feeling and distinguish traits of character. Men must be studied as deeply as books."
"How does the saying go? When two locusts fight, it is always the crow that feasts.' Is that a Luo expression?' I asked. Sayid's face broke into a bashful smile. We have a similar expression in Luo,' he said, 'but actually I must admit that I read this particular expression in a book by Chinua Achebe. The Nigerian writer. I like his books very much. He speaks the truth about Africa's predicament. the Nigerian, the Kenya - it is the same. We share more than divides us."
"I get a thick book full of death, destruction, strife, and chaos. That's what I take with my morning tea."
"This book [Dreams from My Father] was more of a reflection on my public life, now as a U.S. senator and before that as a state senator; how my perspectives around the issues of the day are shaped by my background."
