Book Of Sketches Quotes

Hateful bitch of a world, it wouldn't ever last. ~ Jack Kerouac

No matter what our achievements might be, we think well of ourselves only in rare moments. We need people to bear witness against our inner judge, who keeps book on our shortcomings and transgressions. We need people to convince us that we are not as bad as we think we are. ~ Eric Hoffer

I read hard, or not at all; never skimming, never turning aside to merely inciting books; and Plato, Aristotle, Butler, Thucydides, Sterne, Jonathan Edwards, have passed like the iron atoms of the blood into my mental constitution. ~ Frederick William Robertson

the book is silent so long as you need silence, eloquent whenever you want discourse. he never interrupts you if you are engaged, but if you feel lonely he will be a good companion. he is a friend who never deceives or flatters you, and he is a comrade who does not grow tired of you. ~ Al-Jahiz

There are those who say that life is like a book, with chapters for each event in your life and a limited number of pages on which you can spend your time. But I prefer to think that a book is like a life, particularly a good one, which is well to worth staying up all night to finish. ~ Daniel Handler

Plato spoke of the Sisters of Fate on the last 3 pages of his book, "The Republic" when he said: "Then the Sisters of Fate take all of our choices and weave them on their loom into the fabric of destiny. Hear the word of Lachesis, the daughter of Necessity. Mortal souls, behold a new cycle of life and mortality. Your genius will not be allotted to you, but you will choose your genius; and let him who draws the first lot have the first choice, and the life which he chooses shall be his destiny. Virtue is free, and as a man honors' or dishonors her he will have more or less of her; the responsibility is with the chooser - God is justified" [Quote from Plato's Republic written 360BCE In the Public Domain] ~ D.M. Hoover

Proud to announce that Esfir Is Alive has been selected as a 2016 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Finalist in Young Adult Fiction. ~ Andrea Simon

A particularly good book had a way of opening new spaces in one's mind. It even invited you to come back later and rummage through what you'd learned. ~ Roshani Chokshi

I really have reached a point where I can write a book about all of this. ~ O.J. Simpson

Writers know - especially new writers - [that] a lot of it [creative process] is the prewriting stage, the talking, brainstorming, the narrative arc and the character sketches. ~ Jenna Bush

It's a bit scary to see my book come true: the recent (if minor) LA earthquakes, Hurricane Sandy, the Boston bomber, and so on - much of it stoppable, I think, and yet I, too, am also guilty of passivity. ~ Edan Lepucki

The way I've talked about my research process is that it was like magpies. I was just sort of moving through all these books and when something shiny would pop out I'd be like, Ooh, I love it! and I'd pluck it out. It's fun to figure out how to use those bits you really love - like I'd read about gold shoes with cork heels. Obviously, Margaret would have to wear those shoes. ~ Danielle Dutton

Words are sigils that can hide the coded language of your Soul. ~ Luis Marques

I was lucky in getting my first book published; my first book was 'Bunnicula,' which I wrote with my late wife Debbie, for the fun of it. ~ James Howe

Back in my younger years, I read an average of a book a day. That was when I was going to school full time and working a job after school 30 hours or more a week. ~ James A. Moore

Every kind of book I've written has been written in a different way. There has not been any set time for writing, any set way, I haven't re-invented the process every time but I almost have. ~ Irvine Welsh

Books are health food for your brain and dessert for your soul. Books are one of the few proven sources of mental exercise known to man. Reading is a workout for your mind. If your body needs thirty minutes of exercise a day, so does your thinker. ~ Pat Williams

Dream 2 Defy! Extreme is not a style but a way of life. ~ Jeff Hardy

The fox came to pay the birch tree a vist, bringing with him a book of poetry. He was wearing a dark blue suit fresh from the tailor's, and his light brown leather shoes squeaked slightly as he walked. ~ Kenji Miyazawa

Can we teach them that they are the placebo? In other words, can we convince them that instead of investing their belief in the known, like a sugar pill or a saline injection, they can place their belief in the unknown and make the unknown known? And really that's what this book is about: empowering you to realize that you have all the biological and neurological machinery to do exactly that. My goal is to demystify these concepts with the new science of the way things really are so that it is within the reach of more people to change their internal states in order to create positive changes in their health and in their external world. If that sounds too amazing to be true, then as I've said, toward the end of the book you'll see some of the research compiled from our workshops to show you exactly how it's possible. What ~ Joe Dispenza

The gains in education are never really lost. Books may be burned and cities sacked, but truth, like the yearning for freedom, lives in the hearts of humble men. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

Even though every piece of today feels small. I'll do today, glancing up and remembering a race is completed the same way this book is completed. Step by step. Word by word. Day by day. ~ Jennie Allen

Each of them is a book through which other books dream. (referring to Nodier's SMARRA and TRILBY) ~ John Clute

On a distant hilltop, twinkling like an early evening star, a white light was flashing.
Blouse lowered his telescope. 'They're repeating "CQ",' he said. 'And I believe those longer pauses are when they're aiming their tube in different directions. They're looking for their spies. "Seek You", see? Private Igor?'
'Thur?'
'You know how that tube works, don't you?'
'Oh, yeth, thur. You jutht light a flare in the box, and then it'th just point and click.'
'You're not going to answer it, are you, sir?' said Jackrum, horrified.
'I am indeed, sergeant,' said Blouse briskly. 'Private Carborundum, please assemble the tube. Manickle, please bring the lantern. I shall need to read the code book.'
'But that'll give away our position!' said Jackrum.
'No, sergeant, because although this term may be unfamiliar to you I intend to what we call "lie",' said Blouse. 'Igor, I'm sure you have some scissors, although I'd rather you didn't attempt to repeat the word.'
'I have thome of the appliantheth you mention, thur,' said Igorina stiffly. ~ Terry Pratchett

I am made of kindness, madness, and a little bit of reckless. ~ Nichomachus

Some say it is the elements of hope and wonder in children's books that make them special. But there are many dark young adult novels these days. Adults loved Harry Potter, though it was written for the young. In the end, it is probably up to the reader of any age to decide if this book is for him or her. ~ Katherine Paterson

The most profound personal growth does not happen while reading a book or meditating. It happens in the throes of conflict, when you are angry, afraid, frustrated. It happens when you are doing the same old thing and you suddenly realize that you have a choice. ~ Vironika Tugaleva

Lately I can't help wanting us
to be like other people.
For example, if I were a smoker,

you'd lift a match to the cigarette
just as I put it between my lips.
It's never been like that

between us: none of that
easy chemistry, no quick, half automatic
flares. Everything between us

had to be learned.
Saturday finds me brooding
behind my book, all my fantasies

of seduction run up
against the rocks.
Tell me again

why you don't like
sex in the afternoon?
No, don't tell me--

I'll never understand you
never understand us, America's strangest
loving couple: they never

drink a bottle of wine together
and rarely look at each other.
Into each other's eyes, I mean. ~ Deborah Garrison

The thing you don't realize, my dear girl, is that I have been forced by the economic realities to start taking publishing very seriously. For example, it has been brought to my attention that our ability to continue to pay the hordes of people employed by M&S (God knows how many mouths have to be fed) depends directly on the number of copies of your new book [Life Before Man] that we are able to sell between September and Christmas. In past I have been able to treat this whole thing as a fun game. I have never been troubled by the cavalier explanations about lost manuscripts and fuck-ups of various sorts. Now I have learned that this is a deadly serious game. I don't laugh at jokes about the Canadian postal service. I cry. (in a letter to author Margaret Atwood, dated February, 1979) ~ Jack McClelland

In my book I don't just demonstrate that free enterprise is the most efficient way of organizing an economy - which it is. I also show that it's an expression of American values, and, thus, that a fight for free enterprise is very much a fight for our culture. ~ Arthur C. Brooks

Sometimes you will need to leap from one end of this paradoxical spectrum to the other in a matter of minutes, and then back again. As I write this book, for instance, I approach each sentence as if the future of humanity depends upon my getting that sentence just right. I care, because I want it to be lovely. Therefore, anything less than a full commitment to that sentence is lazy and dishonorable. But as I edit my sentence - sometimes immediately after writing it - I have to be willing to throw it to the dogs and never look back. (Unless, of course, I decide that I need that sentence again after all, in which case I must dig up its bones, bring it back to life, and once again regard it as sacred.) It matters./It doesn't matter. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

I told you before that Johnson would be off the board, and he will be. We didn't take him at Tycho, and we'll take him somewhere else. He is my white whale, and I will hunt him to the end of time." Rosenfeld looked down at his bulb, his body hunching a degree in submission. Filip had felt his father's victory like it was his own. "Didn't finish reading that book, did you?" Rosenfeld asked mildly. ~ James S.A. Corey

My address book of dealers and private collectors, smugglers and fixers, agents, runners and the peculiar assortment of art hangers-on was longer than anyone else's in the field. ~ Thomas Hoving

The curious hocus-pocus of criticism I can't take seriously. It consists in squirreling up some odd phrases and then waiting for a book to come running by. ~ John Steinbeck

It is an incalculable added pleasure to any one's sum of happiness if he or she grows to know, even slightly and imperfectly, how to read and enjoy the wonder-book of nature. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Books have always been to me like a kind of embalmed mind. The dead may be scattered, and who can find them, but their voices live in the library. ~ Laurel Lea