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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"You always need that spark of imagination. Sometimes I'm midway through a book before it happens. However, I don't wait for the muse to descend, I sit down every day and I work when I'm not delivering lambs on the farm."
"Pay attention to your passions. They are the key to starting and finishing the book you are meant to write. I don't believe in talent. I believe in passion."
"Quit smoking in the hope of growing old. It takes a long time to write. People go to books for wisdom and older authors tend to have more of it."
"The Book of Revelation is a description of one path to the New Jerusalem, but this scenario is not inevitable."
"I have done scenes as Harvey Two-Face. It's interesting. I won't tell you exactly what we're going for, but I think that I can say that it will use all of today's technology to create this character. He's going to be interesting, and I think that's what makes this character important in the movie-you get to see him as he was before, as in the comic books. Harvey is a very good guy in the comic books. He's judicious. He cares. He's passionate about what he loves and then he turns into this character. So you will see that in this film."
"Chris [Nolan] comes at this with such a different take on Batman, so I didn't feel that I had to be true to any other actor playing this role. Of course, I read the comic books. His relationships with Lt. Gordon and with Batman, with Gotham City, those really helped me the most."
"I thought I was writing for a fairly hip, intelligent crowd; I just thought there were more of them out there. But they're not. They're not out there waiting. They're not gonna use their intelligence on your book."
"Take all that you can of this book upon reason, and the balance on faith, and you will live and die a happier man. (When a skeptic expressed surprise to see him reading a Bible)"
"If you are resolutely determined to make a lawyer of yourself, the thing is more than half done already. It is but a small matter whether you read with anyone or not. I did not read with anyone. Get the books, and read and study them till you understand them in their principal features; and that is the main thing. It is of no consequence to be in a large town while you are reading. I read at New Salem, which never had three hundred people living in it. The books, and your capacity for understanding them, are just the same in all places."
"I believe the Bible is the best gift God ever gave to man. All the good from the Savior of the world is communicated to us through that book." On a personal spiritual note, Lincoln confessed, "I have been driven many times to my knees with the overwhelming conviction, that I had nowhere else to go."
"It was many and many a year ago, In a kingdom by the sea, That a maiden there lived whom you may know By the name of Annabel Lee;-- And this maiden she lived with no other thought Than to love and be loved by me."
"Many years ago, I contracted an intimacy with a Mr. William Legrand. He was of an ancient Huguenot family, and had once been wealthy; but a series of misfortunes had reduced him to want."
"The mental features discoursed of as the analytical, are, in themselves, but little susceptible of analysis. We appreciate them only in their effects. We know of them, among other things, that they are always to their possessor, when inordinately possessed, a source of the liveliest enjoyment."
"I knew nothing about the technique of story writing, and now, after eighteen years of writing, I still know nothing about the technique, although with the publication of my new novel, Tarzan and the Lost Empire, there are 31 books on my list."
"One can think of a secretary actively operating a filing system, of a librarian actively cataloguing books, of a computer actively sorting out information. The mind however does not actively sort out information. The information sorts itself out and organises itself into patterns. The mind is passive. The mind only provides an opportunity for the information to behave in this way. The mind provides a special environment in which information can become self-organising. This special environment is a memory surface with special characteristics."
"Born originals, how comes it to pass that we die copies? That meddling ape imitation, as soon as we come to years of indiscretion, (so let me speak,) snatches the pen, and blots out nature's mark of separation, cancels her kind intention, destroys all mental individuality. The lettered world no longer consists of singulars: it is a medley, a mass; and a hundred books, at bottom, are but one."
"A dedication is a wooden leg."
"No book is of much importance; the vital thing is, What do you yourself think?"
"It is not book learning young men need, nor instruction about this and that, but a stiffening of the vertebra which will cause them to be loyal to a trust, to act promptly, concentrate their energies, do a thing."
"Every TV show I've ever made, every game I've ever built, and every book I've ever published has had the common thread of building the biggest, brightest spotlight imaginable and then flipping it around to shine on you."
