Book Design Quotes

Throughout his last half-dozen books, for example, Arthur Koestler has been conducting a campaign against his own misunderstanding of Darwinism. He hopes to find some ordering force, constraining evolution to certain directions and overriding the influence of natural selection. [ ... ] Darwinism is not the theory of capricious change that Koestler imagines. Random variation may be the raw material of change, but natural selection builds good design by rejecting most variants while accepting and accumulating the few that improve adaptation to local environments. ~ Stephen Jay Gould

A picture book is a motorcycle: small, loud, fun, and zippy.
An easy reader is a chartered bus: obliged to carry a rather dull passenger roster of sanctioned curriculum, plus the baggage of an approved, limited vocabulary. The trick is to design your chartered bus to be as cool and sexy as a motorcycle. ~ Mo Willems

In a badly designed book, the letters mill and stand like starving horses in a field. In a book designed by rote, they sit like stale bread and mutton on the page. In a well-made book, where designer, compositor and printer have all done their jobs, no matter how many thousands of lines and pages, the letters are alive. They dance in their seats. Sometimes they rise and dance in the margins and aisles. ~ Robert Bringhurst

My publishers will make any kind of a beautiful book I design and send in to them, but ... For poetry they have less use than a rooster would have for skates. ~ Gene Stratton-Porter

A bleak, black book, it engenders awe and despair. I have read it in its entirety 4 1/2 times, each time finding its resonance and beauty so great as to demand another reading. As I read, I found myself devastated by the thoroughness of the book's annihilating sensibility and revived by the beauty of its language, the complexity of its design, the melancholy, horror and stoic sympathy in its rendering of what we used to call the human condition. ~ Michael Silverblatt

The real tight interface is between the book and the reader-the world of the book is plugged right into your brain, never mind the [virtual reality] bodysuit. ~ Bill McKibben

It's hard to read through a book on the principles of magic without glancing at the cover periodically to make sure it isn't a book on software design. ~ Bruce Tognazzini

For his major contributions to the analysis of algorithms and the design of programming languages, and in particular for his contributions to the "art of computer programming" through his well-known books in a continuous series by this title. ~ Donald Knuth

The name of a great writer is usually bigger than the title of his book. Both literally and figuratively. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

They should make new ways to better design buildings and books. The computer was the end of Swiss typography! ~ Emil Ruder

Forty minutes later, I leaned back in my chair, and looked at the thousand or so pages of manuscript towering on my desk. It hit me. Holy cow. This author had total control over this book. Total. And it was one of seven. One. Of. Seven. ~ Carla Bolte

I hate to see great works of literature ghettoized, whereas others that conform to the rules, conventions, and procedures of the genre we call literary fiction get accorded greater esteem and privilege. I also have a problem with how books are marketed, with certain cover designs and typefaces. They're often stamped with an identity that has nothing to do with their effect on the reader. ~ Michael Chabon

A book has got to smell. You have to hold it in your hands and pray to it. ~ Ray Bradbury

All I know is, being away from you ... makes it hard to breathe. I miss you so much ~ Samantha Towle

Many, many times I find that whatever is looking good on the screen doesn't always look or feel good on the body. So who do we design for - do we design for the screen, or do we design for women? ~ Alber Elbaz

I wouldn't ever presume to say that I am a comic book fan. ~ Ray Stevenson

From David learn to give thanks for everything. Every furrow in the book of Psalms is sown with the seeds of thanksgiving. ~ Jeremy Taylor

The First Book: Go ahead, it won't bite. Well ... maybe a little. More a nip, like. A tingle. It's pleasurable, really. You see, it keeps on opening. You may fall in. Sure, it's hard to get started; remember learning to use knife and fork? Dig in: you'll never reach bottom. It's not like it's the end of the world
just the world as you think you know it. ~ Rita Dove

Everyone by now presumably knows about the danger of premature optimization. I think we should be just as worried about premature design - designing too early what a program should do. ~ Paul Graham

One of the first things my father taught me was that the library was made for and available to me. It's a place where you not only learn from books but you learn responsibility - how to borrow, take care of, and give back. ~ Marcus Samuelsson

Some people manage their writing by saying, 'I need to get 2,000 words written today,' others by saying, 'I will write for X hours.' Not me. I start with a plan for the book, break it down into scenes, and I know what scenes need to get written each day. If the scene takes more words than I thought, so be it. ~ Ramez Naam

Now, because he knows that his economic theories don't work, he's been spending these last few days calling me every name in the book. Lately he's called me a socialist for wanting to roll-back the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans so we can finally give tax relief to the middle class. I don't know what's next. By the end of the week he'll be accusing me of being a secret communist because I shared my toys in kindergarten. I shared my peanut butter and jelly sandwich. ~ Barack Obama

Perhaps what should make you feel better is the thought I would kill you, that I'm obsessed with you enough to do that. I'd rather you not live than that you live apart from me. ~ John Wiltshire

I am becoming increasingly difficult to please as a reader, but I adore being surprised by a really wonderful book, written by someone I've never heard of before. ~ Alexandra Fuller

[Ulysses] appears to have been written by a perverted lunatic who has made a speciality of the literature of the latrine… I have no stomach for Ulysses… James Joyce is a writer of talent, but in Ulysses he has ruled out all the elementary decencies of life and dwells appreciatively on things that sniggering louts of schoolboys guffaw about. In addition to this stupid glorification of mere filth, the book suffers from being written in the manner of a demented George Meredith. There are whole chapters of it without any punctuation or other guide to what the writer is really getting at. Two-thirds of it is incoherent, and the passages that are plainly written are devoid of wit, displaying only a coarse salacrity intended for humour. ~ Aramis

I started to book good television jobs in 2010. I started to get really close to exceptional jobs in 2011, and then I got 'Arrow' in 2012. I know how lucky I am because just getting the lead in a pilot doesn't guarantee that that pilot is going to turn into something great. ~ Stephen Amell

In one such shop I saw lots of books in the window. I was reminded that humans have to read books. They actually need to sit down and look at each word consecutively. And that takes time. Lots of time. A human can't just swallow every book going, can't chew different tomes simultaneously, or gulp down near-infinite knowledge in a matter of seconds. They can't just pop a word-capsule in their mouth like we can. Imagine! Being not only mortal but also forced to take some of that precious and limited time and read. No wonder they were a species of primitives. By the time they had read enough books to actually reach a state of knowledge where they can do anything with it they are dead. ~ Matt Haig

One of the things I love most about second person is that it reminds the reader that they are reading a text. It doesn't allow them to drift into the story and not notice that they are reading a book - a book that has an author. ~ Rob Roberge

Reviewers do not read books with much care ... their profession is more given to stupidity and malice and literary ignorance even than the profession of novelist. ~ Anthony Burgess

The good, the admirable reader identifies himself not with the boy or the girl in the book, but with the mind that conceived and composed that book. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

I don't want the world to give me anything for my books except money enough to save me from the temptation to write only for money. ~ George Eliot

My hot-as-fuck Mistress makes nachos, watches football, and has a book club. Careful, baby, I'm gonna start thinking you're a real person and not an angel sent from heaven to jack my shit."
She started laughing, through it saying, "I'm sure you'll agree I'm no angel."
He moved his face close to her. "Don't know about that. ~ Kristen Ashley

If I can write it, I can cope. And I've been writing many books, but in every book, I try to explore something in my own soul that I need to solve, I need to understand. ~ Isabel Allende

Some people read business books looking for confirmation. I read them in search of disquiet. Confirmation is cheap, easy and ineffective. Restlessness and the scientific method, on the other hand, create a culture of testing and inquiry that can't help but push you forward. ~ Seth Godin

If after reading this book you come to my home and brutally murder me, I do not blame you. ~ Jesse Andrews

Books that are books are all that you want, and there are but a half dozen in any thousand. ~ Henry David Thoreau

To implement a true urban renaissance, you first need a Grand Design elaborated by strong leadership . ~ Minoru Mori

The power of a text is not time-bound. The words go on doing their work. ~ Jeanette Winterson

I don't profess any religion; I don't think it's possible that there is a God; I have the greatest difficulty in understanding what is meant by the words 'spiritual' or 'spirituality.'

[Interview, The New Yorker, Dec. 26, 2005] ~ Philip Pullman

He called back with an incredible report: there were people lined up around the store already.
Wow, I thought.
Wow!
Wow didn't begin to cover it. People lined up on two floors of the store to talk to Chris and get their books signed, hours before he was even scheduled to arrive. Chris was overwhelmed when he got there, and so was I. The week before, he'd been just another guy walking down the street. Now, all of a sudden he was famous.
Except he was still the same Chris Kyle, humble and a bit abashed, ready to shake hands and pose for a picture, and always, at heart, a good ol' boy.
"I'm so nervous," confided one of the people on the line as he approached Chris. "I've been waiting for three hours just to see you."
"Oh, I'm sorry," said Chris. "Waitin' all that time and come to find out there's just another redneck up here."
The man laughed, and so did Chris. It was something he'd repeat, in different variations, countless times that night and over the coming weeks.
We stayed for three or four hours that first night, far beyond what had been advertised, with Chris signing each book, shaking each hand, and genuinely grateful for each person who came. For their part, they were anxious not just to meet him but to thank him for his service to our country-and by extension, the service of every military member whom they couldn't personally thank. From the moment the book was published, Chris became the son, the brother, the nephew, the cousin, ~ Taya Kyle

Life is loss. But out of that, as the book stresses, comes freedom. If we can accept that nothing is permanent, and change is inevitable, if we can adapt, then we're going to be happier people. ~ Louise Penny

This summer-sweet night is only one minute upon one minute upon another
Beautiful cacophony, sugar upon lips, dancing to exhaustion
I thought of you, before this minute upon another minute upon another
Until, numb, my lips fell onto the mouth of another, and I was undone.

~from Golden Tongue: The Poems of Steven Slaughter which is a fictional book in
Ballad: A gathering of faerie ~ Maggie Stiefvater