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 enjoying myself writing, because I don't know what's going to happen when I take a ride around that corner. You don't know at all what you're going to find there. That can be thrilling when you read a book, especially when you're a kid and you're reading stories."
"I started writing at the kitchen table after midnight. It took ten months to finish that first book; I sent it to a publisher and I got some kind of prize, so it was like a dream - I was surprised to find it happening."
"I could have been a cult writer if I'd kept writing surrealistic novels. But I wanted to break into the mainstream, so I had to prove that I could write a realistic book."
"My priority is my books, at least at this point. What I have to do is write the narrative of this time."
"It's true though: time moves in its own special way in the middle of the night," the bartender says, loudly striking a book match and lighting a cigarette. "You can't fight it."
"Like a Chinese box, the world of the novel contained smaller worlds, and inside those were yet smaller worlds. Together, these worlds made up a single universe, and the universe waited there in the book to be discovered by the reader."
"I've always liked libraries. They're quiet and full of books and full of knowledge."
"The curious thing about individuals is that their singularity always goes beyond any category or generalization in the book."
"I don't know how many good books I still have in me; I hope there are another four or five."
"I hate requests. They make me feel unhappy. It's like when I take a book out of the library. As soon as I start to read it, all I can think about is when I'll finish it."
"Any explanation or logic that explains everything so easily has a hidden trap in it. I'm speaking from experience. Somebody once said if it's something a single book can explain, it's not worth having explained. What I mean is don't leap to any conclusions."
"It is the same with anything - you have to learn through your own experience, paying your own way. You can't learn it from a book."
"The others in the dorm thought I wanted to be a writer, because I was always alone with a book, but I had no such ambition. There was nothing I wanted to be."
"My only passions were books and music. As you might guess, I led a lonely life… Not that I knew what I wanted in life - I didn’t. I loved reading novels to distraction, but didn’t write well enough to be a novelist; being an editor or a critic was out, too, since my tastes ran to the extremes. Novels should be for pure personal enjoyment, I decided, not part of your work or study. That’s why I didn’t study literature"
"I myself, as I'm writing, don't know who did it. The readers and I are on the same ground. When I start to write a story, I don't know the conclusion at all and I don't know what's going to happen next. If there is a murder case as the first thing, I don't know who the killer is. I write the book because I would like to find out. If I know who the killer is, there's no purpose to writing the story."
"There are moments when you feel trapped, ill at ease. A year later the same feeling can turn out to be the theme of a book."
"All the books I have written have been one book, from the beginning."
"I think my books come out very visual, which is an obvious consequence."
"For me the end of a book is just as exciting as it is for a reader."
"I don't need validation, recognition or praise. What I need are facts and the facts are that one of my books gets sold, somewhere in the world, every second."
