We cannot tear out a single page of our life, but we can throw the whole book in the fire.
Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him.
You that would judge me, do not judge alone this book or that, come to this hallowed place where my friends’ portraits hang and look thereon; Ireland’s history in their lineaments trace; think where man’s glory most begins and ends and say my glory was I had such friends.
My favorite book is ‘Speed of Trust’ by Stephen Covey.
When Holly Madison, Hef’s former chief girlfriend, came out with a tell-all book about life in the Mansion, the most bizarre revelation was that, prior to the man’s infamous orgies, all of the live-in girlfriends were required to put on matching pink flannel pajamas.
I’m a huge Marvel Comics fan, and I’m a huge ‘Wolverine’ fan, I like the ‘X-Men’ comic book.
My mom would always read a book to me at night from when I was three. Now, I can’t go to sleep without reading a book. At the same time, once I read, it’s difficult for me to go to sleep, as I have an overactive imagination and I start thinking.
A book is good company. It is full of conversation without loquacity. It comes to your longing with full instruction, but pursues you never.
A picture book is a small door to the enormous world of the visual arts, and they’re often the first art a young person sees.
There’s so much more to a book than just the reading.
This is the sixth book I’ve written, which isn’t bad for a guy who’s only read two.
Today, if you want to access a typical out-of-print book, you have only one choice – fly to one of a handful of leading libraries in the country and hope to find it in the stacks.
Architecture is a very dangerous job. If a writer makes a bad book, eh, people don’t read it. But if you make bad architecture, you impose ugliness on a place for a hundred years.
There was a best-selling book in the late ’60s and ’70s called ‘The Adventurers’ by Harold Robbins. The lead character’s name was Dax. Anyone that’s roughly my age that’s named Dax is named from that book.
As long as your intentions are solid and about growth and progression and being productive and not being idle, then you’re doing good in my book.
The books that help you most are those which make you think that most. The hardest way of learning is that of easy reading; but a great book that comes from a great thinker is a ship of thought, deep freighted with truth and beauty.
I write for no other purpose than to add to the beauty that now belongs to me. I write a book for no other reason than to add three or four hundred acres to my magnificent estate.
Sometimes the best reading comes just by accident. Someone talks about a book, or you’re just wandering the stacks in the library, and you find a book that you love.
When you are reading about a book, you focus on the main character, of course. When you have something in common with them and connect with them, you remember the lessons they learned, and then you can apply them to your life. So you can live the best life you can.
I didn’t know much. It wasn’t possible to buy a book about Nurmi, but I found out that in order to be faster over 10,000m, he ran 5,000m many times in training. And to be better at 5,000m, he ran 1,500m many times. And to be better at 1,500m, he ran four times 400m in training.
I’d like to know what I could do if I really had the time to spend on writing a book, with no columns or shows to do at the same time.
Anything created by human beings is already in the great book of nature.
The influence of ‘Hidden Fortress’ comes up a lot because it was printed in a book once. The truth is, the only thing I was inspired by was the fact that it’s told from the point of view of two peasants, who get mixed up with a samurai and princess and a lot of very high-level people.
A great book begins with an idea; a great life, with a determination.
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.
Honestly, I get character ideas from the most inane places. Sometimes a song will give me an idea. Sometimes I will just hear a snippet of conversation that ends up having nothing to do with the book that emerges.
The best time to plan a book is while you’re doing the dishes.
The book salesman should be honored because he brings to our attention, as a rule, the very books we need most and neglect most.
Reading is so private, and it is often a reader’s habit to finish a book, close the covers, and plunge into the next one without a backward glance.
It’s very inconvenient because every time I finish, let’s say, a chapter of a book, I think I’m going to ring Richard and then realize: Oh, Christ, I’ve buried him. I buried him last year.
Writing a book of poetry is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo.
Perfection is an unattainable goal. It isn’t going to be perfect. Just get words down on paper, and when you stumble to what you think is the end of the book, you will have hundreds of pages of words that came out of your head. It may not be perfect, but it looks like a book.
Over the years, people I’ve met have often asked me what I’m working on, and I’ve usually replied that the main thing was a book about Dresden.
Weird people follow you in the streets, you can’t sit alone in a restaurant or a cafe and read a book in peace, and I think everybody values those moments of being alone.
When I was living in Mexico and writing a book called ‘Aztec,’ I had to make a deliberate effort to ignore a lot of the ‘typically Mexican landscape’ around me – banana and citrus groves, roses and carnations, burros and toros – because they did not exist in Mexico in the 15th century, the time of my book.
Every book is a new journey. I never felt I was an expert on a subject as I embarked on a project.
I remember reading the book in high school and always thinking of Gatsby as this strong, stoic, suave, mysterious man who had everything under control. But when I read it as an adult, I realised he is a hollow man, a shell of a person trying to find meaning, who is not completely in touch with reality.
When I look back at my career as an author, I don’t look at the first book that was ever published as to where my career began – I look to the first book that I ever wrote.
Writing a screenplay is so spare, it kind of reminded me that I really should celebrate what I can do in a book, which is description: for example, places, people, locations.
I once joked in a book that there are three things you can’t do in life. You can’t beat the phone company, you can’t make a waiter see you until he is ready to see you, and you can’t go home again.
The basic challenge of any book is you know you’re going to be working on it for three or four years or more. So you want to have a subject that will keep you engaged.
The first novel I wrote was a monster – clocking in at 180,000 words – but it died a death, a death it deserved. It was called ‘The Gods First Make Mad.’ It was a good title, but it was the only good thing about the book. I didn’t let that put me off.
If there is a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, you must be the one to write it.
My father always said, ‘Never trust anyone whose TV is bigger than their book shelf’ – so I make sure I read.
With screenplays and teleplays, they are mapped, really, in the blueprint of a finished product, which is something you’re going to watch on a screen. But a book is an end to itself, really.
If you imagine writing 1,000 words a day, which most journalists do, that would be a very long book a year. I don’t manage nearly that… but I have published slightly too much recently.
I’m always imposing my taste in books on others. I hope that people enjoy being surprised by a book they might not otherwise read – I enjoy the surprise myself when others do this to me.
I don’t go by the rule book… I lead from the heart, not the head.
I was a litigation lawyer. That’s all very logical. Become a litigation lawyer. Become successful. Have a nice office. But there was some pull inside of me saying, self-publish this book. I followed that intuition and it’s been a great choice for me in my life.
I read the Steve Jobs book, and that kind of changed everything. I’ve been, like, an Apple geek my whole life and have always seen him as a hero. But reading the book, and learning about how he built the company, and maintaining that corporate culture and all that, I think that influenced me a lot.
To me, the greatest invention of my lifetime is the laptop computer and the fact that I can be working on a book and be in an airport lounge, in a hotel room, and continue working; I fire up my laptop, and I’m in exactly the same place I was when I left home – that, to me, is a miracle.
When I am working on a book or a story, I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you, and it is cool or cold, and you come to your work and warm as you write.
Wear the old coat and buy the new book.
I have a very short attention span, so sitting down with a book is very difficult for me.
