If a secret history of books could be written, and the author’s private thoughts and meanings noted down alongside of his story, how many insipid volumes would become interesting, and dull tales excite the reader!
I really struggled, growing up, with reading and writing. I had a hard time to do that, but I was really passionate about storytelling and about books.
I have to live my books before I write them.
I look at books as being a form of activism. Sometimes they’ll show us a side of the world that we might not have known about.
I’ve had nine of my books adapted to film, and almost all were enjoyable. I’ve been very lucky with Hollywood, and look forward to more movies being adapted. But I don’t get involved in that process. I know nothing about making movies and I stay away from it and hope for the best.
I considered that I had to write stories about the people I had met, with whom I’d worked, the history of my books – just in case I up and die.
Books are funny little portable pieces of thought.
I’ve been writing all these books that have been largely autobiographical and yet, really, they don’t tell you anything about me. I just use my life story as a kind of device on which to hang comic observations. It’s not my interest or instinct to tell the world anything pertinent about myself or my family.
I like to read Bengali novels and short stories. I am not that fond of reading English books, as I don’t have a connect with it.
A man can stand a lot as long as he can stand himself. He can live without hope, without friends, without books, even without music, as long as he can listen to his own thoughts.
Unlike with the majority of library books, when you enter a term into a search engine there is no guarantee that what you will find is authoritative, accurate or even vaguely true.
I regret all of my books.
Master books, but do not let them master you. Read to live, not live to read.
I have three kids who like Harry Potter so I was sort of aware of it. You can’t really move from it: it’s on buses, in stores, it’s everywhere. One of my kids has read the books; the other two are too small but they like the movies.
I didn’t learn black history in school. I had to go find Malcolm X books.
I hate when books are written from the wrong perspective; when they’re written by adults for tweenagers. Like, do you truly remember what it’s like to be 12? No, not really.
I’ve seen a lot of people buy my books and then fall asleep on the plane soon afterwards.
For a highly motivated learner, it’s not like knowledge is secret and somehow the Internet made it not secret. It just made knowledge easy to find. If you’re a motivated enough learner, books are pretty good.
In a television interview, I said that diversity in our children’s books should include the adventures of disabled children, travellers and gipsies, LGBT teens, different cultures, classes, colours, religions. It shouldn’t be a token gesture, nor do such stories need to be ‘issue-based’.
I spent my first two years at a small all-male college in Virginia called Hampden-Sydney. That was like going to college 120 years ago. The languages, a year of rhetoric, all of the great books, Western Man courses, stuff like that.
My heart goes out to victims and survivors of the Hurricane Katrina tragedy and to their families. This disaster will go down in history books as one of the largest natural disasters in U.S. history.
One way an author dies a little each day is when his books go out of print.
What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books.
When I was writing my first two books I was also freelancing and teaching and doing other odd jobs.
While I’ve worked on many topics and written many books, I have not abandoned my interest in multiple intelligences.
The first author I remember being obsessed by, actually realizing ‘I like the way he writes and I like the way he tells stories,’ was C.S. Lewis and the ‘Narnia’ books.
He who studies medicine without books sails an uncharted sea, but he who studies medicine without patients does not go to sea at all.
Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them in: but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents.
Mum had done everything you need to educate a kid. She made me a kid who likes books and she told me about ‘Wind in the Willows’ and read it and I thought this is weird, Rat, Mole, Toad and my first ever Bolshie thought – you know about ‘The Wind in the Willows.’
In life, we like tranquility; in books, we love tension.
When you buy my books, you kind of know what you’re in for. It’s kind of self-selecting. If you have a delicate sensibility, and you’re easily grossed out, you probably will never read one of my books.
Reading time is precious. Don’t waste it. Reading bad books, or books that are wrong for a certain time in your life, can dangerously turn you off the activity altogether.
You cannot write for children They’re much too complicated. You can only write books that are of interest to them.
Very conscious of the fact that an effort was being made to destroy my mind, because I was deprived of books, deprived of any means of writing, deprived of human companionship. You never know how much you need it until you’re deprived of it.
Of all the ways of acquiring books, writing them oneself is regarded as the most praiseworthy method. Writers are really people who write books not because they are poor, but because they are dissatisfied with the books which they could buy but do not like.
My only dream is to get old and finally have time to read all the books that I’m collecting.
I have had moments where I’ve had mental-health issues and I’ve felt like yoga and meditating and reading these Buddhist self-help books actually really help.
Books, the children of the brain.
My favorite books, art pieces, films, and music, always have something jarring about them.
I’m totally into new age and self-help books. I used to work in a bookstore and that’s the section they gave me, and I got way into it. I just loved the power of positive thinking, letting yourself go.
Read some good, heavy, serious books just for discipline: Take yourself in hand and master yourself.
I am something of an aficionado of thrift stores. In my youth, I regularly searched their shelves for old books.
What excites me about picture books is the gap between pictures and words. Sometimes the pictures can tell a slightly different story or tell more about the story, about how someone is thinking or feeling.
Shooting for ‘Gandhi’ was a revelation for me. We were all given scripts and then we were asked to do our homework. I searched for books on Kasturba, but I found only two books, that’s all. So I had to rely on my own skills.
As a child I was really into fantasy books with elves and goblins and swords, and I went through a phase for a few years when I was reading endless series. But in the end I became totally fed-up with all these sub-Tolkien rip-offs because they all end up doing the same old things and there’s no rigour to it.
Next to acquiring good friends, the best acquisition is that of good books.
I have a lot of artifacts – books on witchcrafts and talismans. I have a big, big collection of original occult books from the 1800s and 1700s, and some of the oldest books on apparitions and vampires. All original printings. It’s not that I’m a crazy believer, I just find it to be amazing research material.
Books are to be distinguished by the grandeur of their topics even more than by the manner in which they are treated.
I grew up with six brothers, and I’m from Chicago, so princesses and Barbie dolls were not around the house. It was more like sports and comic books, so getting to work for Marvel is like my version of being able to be a princess.
The best way to obtain truth and wisdom is not to ask from books, but to go to God in prayer, and obtain divine teaching.
I was reading a lot of books I admired, and thought that I would like to write something like that someday.
Nine-tenths of tactics are certain, and taught in books: but the irrational tenth is like the kingfisher flashing across the pool, and that is the test of generals.
I read all types of books. I read Christian books, I read black novels, I read religious books. I read stuff like ‘Rich Dad, Poor Dad’ and ‘The Dictator’s Handbook’ and then I turned around and read science-fiction novels.
There was a gap in minority heroes in animation, books, and storytelling for me as a kid, and being a father now, I felt the responsibility I had to the next generation to create stories that allow us to wish and dream and build worlds that inspire young people who haven’t traditionally had these heroes to look up to.
We have talked long enough in this country about equal rights. It is time now to write the next chapter – and to write it in the books of law.
Sometimes people who sell books are seen as corporate salesmen, and people who sell reading are seen as literacy advocates, but you can’t really separate the two.
My mother had all these maxims – like, classy girls never chew gum, never read comic books, never get their ears pierced, never get their hair dyed.
