Book Clip Quotes

Issib wasn't thrilled to see him. I'm busy and don't need interruptions."

"This is the household library," said Nafai. "This is where we always come to do research."

"See? You're interrupting already."

"Look, I didn't say anything, I just came in here, and you started picking at me the second I walked in the door."

"I was hoping you'd walk back out."

"I can't. Mother sent me here." Nafai walked over behind Issib, who was floating comfortably in the air in front of his computer display. It was layered thirty pages deep, but each page had only a few words on it, so he could see almost everything at once. Like a game of solitaire, in which Issib was simply moving fragments from place to place.

The fragments were all words in weird languages. The ones Nafai recognized were very old.

"What language is that?" Nafai asked pointing, to one.

Issib signed. "I'm so glad you're not interrupting me."

"What is it, some ancient form of Vijati?"

"Very good. It's Slucajan, which came from Obilazati, the original form of Vijati. It's dead now."

"I read Vijati, you know."

"I don't."

"Oh, so you're specializing in ancient, obscure languages that nobody speaks anymore, including you?"

"I'm not learning these languages, I'm researching lost words."

"If the whole language is dead, then all the words are lost."

Orson Scott Card

But the terrible past of nighttime disappearances was locked within the pages of that history book; she never imagined she would one day disappear as easily as her forefathers. ~ Anthony Marra

There are certain emotions in your body that not even your best friend can sympathize with, but you will find the right film or the right book, and it will understand you. ~ Bjork

One of the best things Henry Miller ever said was that art goes all out. It's all out. It goes full length ... A big book is an all-out book in which you limit your life to things that pertain directly to the book. ~ Nelson Algren

The only thing that makes me put down a book is if the characters are boring, or the situations aren't fraught with the potential for some great change or I don't mind if an author torments his protagonist, but I do expect a decent payoff in the end. ~ Michael Boatman

And I saw it didn't matter
who had loved me or who I loved. I was alone.
The black oily asphalt, the slick beauty
of the Iranian attendant, the thickening
clouds
nothing was mine. And I understood
finally, after a semester of philosophy,
a thousand books of poetry, after death
and childbirth and the startled cries of men
who called out my name as they entered me,
I finally believed I was alone, felt it
in my actual, visceral heart, heard it echo
like a thin bell. ~ Dorianne Laux

It would be good for religion if many books that seem useful were destroyed. When there were not so many books and not so many arguments and disputes, religion grew more quickly than it has since. ~ Girolamo Savonarola

I've never met an author I can't love to hate or a book I haven't paid full price for. ~ Keith M. Weller

A book,
a book full
of human touches,
of shirts,
a book
without loneliness, with men
and tools,
a book
is victory. ~ Pablo Neruda

Virginia Woolf's great novel, 'Mrs. Dalloway,' is the first great book I ever read. I read it almost by accident when I was in high school, when I was 15 years old. ~ Michael Cunningham

Have I got a black book? Yes, it's called a mobile phone. I do get offers. There is no shortage of people if you want to go on dates - working in TV, living in L.A., it is there if you want it. ~ Simon Cowell

Once I have the idea for a story. I start collecting all kinds of helpful information and storing it in three-ring notebooks. For example, I may see a picture of a man in a magazine and say, 'That's exactly what the father in my book looks like!' ... I save everything that will help
maps, articles, hand-jotted notes, bits of dialogue from conversations that I overhear. ~ Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

This ain't no cloud, folks! And so, instead of calling this new creative energy source "the cloud," this book will henceforth use the term that Craig Mundie, the computer designer from Microsoft, once suggested. I will call it "the supernova" - a computational supernova. The ~ Thomas L. Friedman

All that is necessary, as it seems to me, to convince any reasonable person that the Bible is simply and purely of human invention - of barbarian invention - is to read it. Read it as you would any other book; think of it as you would of any other; get the bandage of reverence from your eyes; drive from your heart the phantom of fear; push from the throne of your brain the cowled form of superstition - then read the Holy Bible, and you will be amazed that you ever, for one moment, supposed a being of infinite wisdom, goodness and purity, to be the author of such ignorance and of such atrocity. ~ Robert Green Ingersoll

So I thought I should write five pages a day. And that's what I did. Eventually I had a book. ~ Don Winslow

Everyday we are writing a page in a book we call life. So write it better, write it with love. ~ Debasish Mridha

Encourage others each and every day–nothing's more important than our words.

Did you know that, on average, each of us speaks about twenty-five thousand words daily? My last book didn't have that many words. A lot of language is flowing out of our mouths every day and having an impact on those around us. But how much of that flow is fulfilling God's intended purpose for our speech? How much of it reflects pride, rather than a gospel-motivated humility? ~ C.J. Mahaney

People wanted me to do a CD-ROM of 'Hitchhiker's,' and I thought, 'No, no.' I didn't want to just sort of reverse-engineer yet another thing from a book I'd already written. I think that the digital media are interesting enough in their own right to be worth originating something in. ~ Douglas Adams

A simple look can not and will not uncover even a simple book. ~ Ferrrer Joey Palomar Fesico

Gomez is a by-the-book cop. He's the only character not to break bad. ~ Steven Michael Quezada

Many, perhaps most, very learned people prefer the company of their books to sitting in a crowd listening to history and art being mangled; furthermore, it is unlikely that the venerable scholars will stand up afterward to declare, "This lecture was a load of crap." The more profound a professor's distaste with the proceedings, the more likely he is to melt away at the end of the talk. ~ Camille Paglia

When I was young I longed to write a great novel that should win me fame. Now that I am getting old my first book is written to amuse children ~ L. Frank Baum

You can tell you're reading a really good book when you forget all about everything else and know you'll die if you get to at least the end of the chapter ~ Christopher Paul Curtis

Recently while browsing in a secondhand bookstore I bought a paperback copy of The Intellectual and the City, but I was unable to read it. When I got home I discovered that the original owner had highlighted the entire book - literally. Every line on every page had been drawn through with a bright green Magic Marker. It was a terrifying example of a mind that had lost all power of discrimination. ~ Florence King

Every book that is banned is a badge of honor. ~ Pramoedya Ananta Toer

Sometimes it is the reader that sucks, not the book. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Soul receives from soul that knowledge, therefore not by book nor from tongue. If knowledge of mysteries come after emptiness of mind, that is illumination of heart. ~ Rumi

The memoir was a very personal book. I wrote it as a personal journey and search about who my father was and how my family had come together and come apart - sorting all that out, you know, issues of personal identity. ~ Barack Obama

I am the first person to go to Barnes & Noble and buy the new self-help book. I like to fill out the surveys, then I get my friends' opinions on how I answered to see if I was being honest with myself or not. ~ Jessica Simpson

I am a reader. I am a writer. People assume I do these things to escape. You couldn't be more right. I'm escaping a world I don't like. A world I have no control in. In this world, I am nothing. I am a color, a height, a weight, a number. But in the world of books and writing, I am amazing. I am powerful. I am different. People are better. Worlds are endless. Change is possible. Life is manageable. ~ Philip K. Dick

For is not a Book the most reliable of Companions
and generally among the most stimulating as well? No need to worry about amusing or pleasing or making a good impression on a Book, when its only purpose is to entertain and, perhaps, instruct. And if it should fail in that purpose, one can merely return it to its shelf, without so much as a by-your-leave and no occasion for anxiety about its wounded Pride, either. ~ Natalie Wexler

I'm always horrified whenever I finish anything. Horrified and desolate. My instinct for perfection should inhibit me from ever finishing anything; it should in fact inhibit me from ever beginning. But I become distracted and do things. My accomplishments are not the product of my applied will but a giving away of my will. I begin because I don't have the strength to think; I finish because I don't have soul enough to stop things. This book is my cowardice. ~ Fernando Pessoa

I am kinda lost, don't know who I am, what am doing, and why I am in it. Everything around me is more like a weird dream.

I wish I could wake up. Before the dream finishes me. ~ Ratish Edwards

Drop something?" he asked, trying to suppress a smile but failing miserably at the act.
I nodded and smiled back at him sheepishly, unable to find my voice to respond in any other way.
"Interested in locks, I see," he commented.
I nodded again.
"Well, here you go," he said, and he handed the book to me.
I nodded.
Oh crap, why did I just nod? Take the book! I screamed inside my head. Take it!
I took it slowly. He kept looking at me, smiling. ~ Markelle Grabo

Use the power of your imagination

I know some things do seem far out or very unlikely, but don't ever say: "I can't imagine that." You see somebody really fit and energetic when you're trying to get back in shape, you may think: "I can't imagine looking like that." You may drive by a nice house and say, "I can't imagine living in this neighborhood." Or you may have thought: "I can't imagine publishing a book." "I can't imagine owning my own business." "I can't imagine being that successful."
The problem is you're being limited by your own imagination. You've got to change what you're seeing. Don't let negative thoughts paint those pictures. Use your imagination to see yourself accomplishing dreams, rising higher, overcoming obstacles, being healthy, strong, blessed, and prosperous. ~ Joel Osteen

Written on the body is a secret code only visible in certain lights: the accumulations of a lifetime gather there. In places the palimpsest is so heavily worked that the letters feel like Braille. I like to keep my body rolled up away from prying eyes, never unfold too much, or tell the whole story. I didn't know that Louise would have reading hands. She has translated me into her own book. ~ Jeanette Winterson

There is no book that has had as much opposition as the Bible. Men have laughed at it, they have scorned it, they have ridiculed it, they have made laws against it. ~ Adrian Rogers

After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known quotations. ~ H.L. Mencken

Unlike most readers in Antiquity who read their books aloud, we have developed the convention of reading silently. This lets us read more widely but often less well, especially when what we are reading - such as the plays of Shakespeare and Holy Scripture - is a body of oral material that has been, almost but not quite accidentally, captured in a book like a fly in amber. ~ Jaroslav Pelikan

Ultimately, there's always been a link between comic books and video games, and comic books and movies, and then basically all three steadily becoming this sort of transmedia. ~ Troy Duffy

But what was between them went further than a mating ceremony or a back carving or a witnessed exchange of commitment. He couldn't put his finger on the why of it ... but she was his missing puzzle piece, the twelfth in his dozen, the first and the last pages of his book. And at some level that was all he needed. ~ J.R. Ward

Every burned book or house enlightens the world; every suppressed or expunged word reverberates through the earth from side to side. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Clarissa is still sometimes shocked, more than thirty years later to realize that it was happiness; that the entire experience lay in a kiss and a walk. The anticipation of dinner and a book. ~ Michael Cunningham