I write books to find out about things.
I guess my guilty pleasure would be listening to the British audio versions of the ‘Harry Potter’ books.
A friend in the War Office warned me that I was in Kitchener’s black books, and that orders had been given for my arrest next time I appeared in France.
The books of C.S. Lewis had a very profound, indirect effect on me.
Sometimes the very best of all summer books is a blank notebook. Get one big enough, and you can practice sketching the lemon slice in your drink or the hot lifeguard on the beach or the vista down the hill from your cabin.
I read a lot of Zen books. And I grew up surfing, so that has always been my escape.
We shouldn’t teach great books; we should teach a love of reading.
It is an awfully sad misconception that librarians simply check books in and out. The library is the heart of a school, and without a librarian, it is but an empty shell.
All the books on my shelves, when I would go to them to look for help with my anguish, they all just seemed so crass. They didn’t get it. Those books don’t understand. Nobody understands.
Books are something social – a writer speaking to a reader – so I think making the reading of a book the center of a social event, the meeting of a book club, is a brilliant idea.
There are too many books I haven’t read, too many places I haven’t seen, too many memories I haven’t kept long enough.
There was a time when the world acted on books; now books act on the world.
I wish I had known that education is the key. That knowledge is power. Now I pick up books and watch educational shows with my husband. I’m seeing how knowledge can elevate you.
I don’t plot my books rigidly, follow a preconceived structure. A novel mustn’t be a closed system – it’s a quest.
A free and democratic society is not the norm. When you look to the history books, world history was not based on great democratic societies but on imperialism, absolute rule, kings, queens, monarchs, dictators.
Most of the great books on prayer are written by ‘experts’ – monks, missionaries, mystics, saints. I’ve read scores of them, and mainly they make me feel guilty.
A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.
I know at my church a lot of the times we sung from hymn books and as we got older we started to change with time. I can honestly say that I was never influenced to write for the church.
Being attracted to my own sex was as much part of who I was as being short or blonde or drawn to the library, but I was made to grow up feeling ‘other.’ Most books, films – even advertisements – didn’t reflect how I felt, and I often watched the world from the outside.
All books are either dreams or swords, you can cut, or you can drug, with words.
Life is all about sharing. If we are good at something, pass it on. That is the pleasure I get from teaching – whether it is television or books. We should all share.
Observation more than books and experience more than persons, are the prime educators.
I read a lot of obscure books and it is nice to open a book.
I look forward the day that I could work on my farm, create music, write books, and be with the wife and kids around the clock – and live a normal life.
Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.
To study the phenomena of disease without books is to sail an uncharted sea, while to study books without patients is not to go to sea at all.
I read a lot of nonfiction – especially books about the brain.
The three books I’ve written in Florida about L.A. are my best takes on the physicality of the city, as far as description goes.
The true treasure lies within. It is the underlying theme of the songs we sing, the shows we watch and the books we read. It is woven into the Psalms of the Bible, the ballads of the Beatles and practically every Bollywood film ever made. What is that treasure? Love. Love is the nature of the Divine.
If my books can help children become readers, then I feel I have accomplished something important.
I asked a French critic a couple of years ago why my books did so well in France. He said it was because in my novels people both act and think. I got a kick out of that.
The good books stick around for a reason. There is a reason that we come back to them and they are so rewarding.
I know many books which have bored their readers, but I know of none which has done real evil.
I’ve always done more than I ever thought I would. Becoming a professor – I never would have imagined that. Writing books – I never would have imagined that. Getting a Ph.D. – I’m not sure I would even have imagined that. I’ve lived my life a step at a time. Things sort of happened.
Inflation is taxation and taxation is theft that takes more money out of hard-working Americans’ pocket books.
Look at a book. A book is the right size to be a book. They’re solar-powered. If you drop them, they keep on being a book. You can find your place in microseconds. Books are really good at being books, and no matter what happens, books will survive.
I knew I would read all kinds of books and try to get at what it is that makes good writers good. But I made no promises that I would write books a lot of people would like to read.
Jim Longenbach, poet, critic, and my husband, is always passing along life-changing books for me to read.
My only books were woman’s looks, and folly’s all they’ve taught me.
Perhaps it is partly that we need to love books ourselves as parents, grandparents and teachers in order to pass on that passion for stories to our children. It’s not about testing and reading schemes, but about loving stories and passing on that passion to our children.
If you think you have it tough, read history books.
Aeroplanes interested me, and at the outbreak of the Second World War, I joined the RAF as a volunteer reservist. I took the opportunity of studying the books which the RAF made available for radio mechanics and looked forward to an interesting course in radio.
I got into writing because books and stories were always a big part of my life. I loved listening to them and then reading them, and I loved making them up.
Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove anything.
Basically, books were a luxury item before the printing press.
After all manner of professors have done their best for us, the place we are to get knowledge is in books. The true university of these days is a collection of books.
Every book you pick up has its own lesson or lessons, and quite often the bad books have more to teach than the good ones.
These are not books, lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on the shelves.
Ted Williams is one of the best hitters ever to play the game, and I didn’t get a chance to see him play, so all I could do was read books and look at pictures.
With a few flowers in my garden, half a dozen pictures and some books, I live without envy.
I had no ambition to be a writer because the books I read were too good, my standards were too high.
Books have this function that help me to understand the work I’ve done, to wrap it up.
I’m not into fame. I’m not into making money, outside of financing my books. I’m not into status. My thing is basically about time – not wasting it.
Just as movies, radio, and television evolved into new forms over time, the ebook will also become something more than just a way to read books. It will become its own specific and unique way of creating and sharing experience.
There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.
If you read a lot of books, you’re considered well-read. But if you watch a lot of TV, you’re not considered well-viewed.
It’s hard for children’s authors to be accepted when they try to write adult books. J.K. Rowling is the exception because people are so eager to read anything by her, but it took Judy Blume three or four tries before she had a success.
Do activities you’re passionate about – which make your heart and soul feel perky – including things like working out, cooking, painting, writing, yoga, hiking, walking, swimming, being in nature, being around art, or reading inspiring books.
