"Then I realized what separated us: what I thought about him could not reach him; it was psychology, the kind they write about in books. But his judgment went through me like a sword and questioned my very right to exist. And it was true, I had always realized it; I hadn't the right to exist. I had appeared by chance, I existed like a stone, a plant or a microbe. My life put out feelers towards small pleasures in every direction. Sometimes it sent out vague signals; at other times I felt nothing more than a harmless buzzing."
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Book quotes (page 264 of 1049)
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"I consider Les Nourritures Terrestres as a frightening book: "Look for God in no other place than everywhere." Go and tell that to a workman, an engineer!"
"All the same, they [books] do serve some purpose. Culture doesn't save anything or anyone, it doesn't justify. But it's a product of man: he projects himself into it, he recognizes himself in it; that critical mirror alone offers him his image."
"The Broken Destiny series will be a trilogy, with each book releasing about a year apart."
"When somebody asks me "What are your comic books about?" or "What are your songs about?" there is no answer and I feel like an idiot not having an answer, like I don't know what I am making. I really do know what I'm making, but it's not one thing, it's everything I like, and I see no reason to leave out any of that."
"Sometimes if a script is based on a book, that's what you should do: represent the book."
"Yeah, when you're making a film, the book is a good tool, but once you have the script and you're making a movie, you have to let go of the book."
"As far as ideas about book design: I have plenty. But I also try and let people do their jobs."
"I don't think anything needs to happen in a book."
"A book can just be a description of a stick being snapped in half. If the reader is brought to feel the plight of the stick, well, you can imagine what that would be like."
"A beginning idea for a book might be: a boy emerges from a hole in the ground. He enters a house. The book will take place in the first ten minutes following his arrival."
"Somehow I have the feeling that in some book is the great treasure I've been looking for all my life."
"Clarity is the most important thing to me - in thinking - and so I try in the books to be as clear as possible."
"The books turn out to be about things afterwards. I don't go into them with concepts, for the most part."
"I have a very basic notion of the structure the book might have - that's mostly it. The rest is luck and happenstance."
"I'm confused, and brilliant books help me to be less so."
"I don't read books for pleasure, but in desperation."
"I like small books. I like durable books. I like plain books. I like small type and thin pages."
"Religion, it seems to me, has nothing whatsoever to do with any belief, with any priest, with any church or so-called sacred book. The state of the religious mind can be understood only when we begin to understand what beauty is; and the understanding of beauty must be approached through total aloneness."
"You may be ignorant of all the books in the world, and I hope you are, of all the latest theories, but that is not ignorance."