Book Shaming Quotes

That's the problem with this never-ending centipede of lemmings, Beck. You know they're all pussies, each and every one of 'em. They buy these books to get scared because their lives are too easy. How pathetic is that? ~ Caroline Kepnes

Books, in all their variety, offer the human intellect the means whereby civilisation may be carried triumphantly forward. ~ Winston Churchill

Guts," never much of a word outside the hunting season, was a favorite noun in literary prose. People were said to have or to lack them, to perceive beauty and make moral distinctions in no other place. "Gut-busting" and "gut-wrenching" were accolades. "Nerve-shattering," "eye-popping," "bone-crunching" - the responsive critic was a crushed, impaled, electrocuted man. "Searing" was lukewarm. Anything merely spraining or tooth-extracting would have been only a minor masterpiece. "Literally," in every single case, meant figuratively; that is, not literally. This film will literally grab you by the throat. This book will literally knock you out of your chair…

Sometimes the assault mode took the form of peremptory orders. See it. Read it. Go at once…Many sentences carried with them their own congratulations, Suffice it to say…or, The only word for it is…Whether it really sufficed to say, or whether there was, in fact, another word, the sentence, bowing and applauding to itself, ignored…There existed also an economical device, the inverted-comma sneer - the "plot," or his "work," or even "brave." A word in quotation marks carried a somehow unarguable derision, like "so-called" or "alleged…"

"He has suffered enough" meant if we investigate this matter any further, it will turn out our friends are in it, too…

Murders, generally, were called brutal and senseless slayings, to distinguish them from all other murders; nouns thus became glued to adjective ~ Renata Adler

There's a little book I'm thinking of writing - "Swan Song" is what I shall call it. The song of the dying. And my book will be incense burnt at the deathbed of this society, damned with the damnation of its own impotence. ~ Maxim Gorky

It is essential that anyone reading this book know at the outset that the author is apolitical. I was convinced in 1927 that humanity's most fundamental survival problems could never be solved by politics. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

Books cannot always please, however good; Minds are not ever craving for their food. ~ George Crabbe

Our city is open to the world, and we have no periodical deportations in order to prevent people observing or finding out secret which might be of military advantage to the enemy. This is because we rely, not on secret weapons, but on our own real courage and loyalty. -146 ~ Thucydides

Not a single person has died of boredom reading this book. ~ Nicole Fende

Healing must always seek to give voice to suffering, and the greater the range of words and meanings we have at our disposal, the clearer the voice becomes.
Iona Heath in BMJ 2000;320:125 ( 8 January) Review of the book Illness and Culture in the Postmodern Age by David Morris
~ Iona Heath

He was tall and slim and had dark hair and young women found him fascinating.

This sort of thing happens often enough, even with boys as mortal as dirt. There's always one who learned how to brood early and often, and always girls who think they can heal him.

Eventually the girls learn better. Either the hurts are petty little things and they get tired of whining or the hurt's so deep and wide that they drown in it. The smart ones heave themselves back to shore and the slower ones wake up married with a husband who lies around and suffers in their direction. It's part of a dance as old as the jackalopes themselves. ~ Ursula Vernon

A book is meant not only to be read, but to haunt you, to importune you like a lover or a parent, to be in your teeth like a piece of gristle. ~ Anatole Broyard

I may discuss contemporary cinema, how to shop at a mall without losing energy, how to use the power of mind to increase career and academic success, the Zen of sports, reincarnation, karma, sex, the experience of "suchness" or a new book by Stephen King. ~ Frederick Lenz

She herself was a victim of that lust for books which rages in the breast like a demon, and which cannot be stilled save by the frequent and plentiful acquisition of books. This passion is more common, and more powerful, than most people suppose. Book lovers are thought by unbookish people to be gentle and unworldly, and perhaps a few of them are so. But there are others who will lie and scheme and steal to get books as wildly and unconscionably as the dope-taker in pursuit of his drug. They may not want the books to read immediately, or at all; they want them to possess, to range on their shelves, to have at command. ~ Robertson Davies

No one would want to read a book in which I explain the science of cloning because it would be very dull and it would also make no sense. ~ Rachel Cohn

When I was a kid, I loved having a book in my hand. I still do. I wasn't a fast reader, but I was a steady reader. I read all of The Bobbsey Twins, Nancy Drew, and Cherry Ames books. ~ Rhea Perlman

I also have an idea for a book on biodiversity, and why and how we should be conserving it. ~ Ken Thompson

Marvelous! Very exciting. I thoroughly enjoyed the story and I can't wait to read more.
(About the book Dominique Ick Lessont and the Dragon Knight) ~ Stephen Noce

My dad is a retired Shakespeare professor, my mother a retired classicist. Suffice to say I grew up in a house full of books, where reading was encouraged if not required. ~ Sarah Dessen

The fact that the commercial success of my books has allowed me to buy a house for myself and my daughter I think is a lovely thing. I don't think there is anything wrong with that. ~ Marianne Williamson

Except you can't judge a book by its cover. Whether or not this story has a happy ending depends, of course, on who is reading it. Whether you are a wolf or a girl. A girl or a monster or both. Not everyone in a story gets a happy ending. Not everyone who reads a story feels the same way about how it ends. And if you go back to the beginning and read it again, you may discover it isn't the same story you thought you'd read. Stories shift their shape. The two sisters are waiting for the moon to come up, which is not the same thing as waiting for the sun to go down. Not at all. ~ Kelly Link

It had pale golden sands and clear cloudless blue skies. Rich quantities of palm trees and exotic flowers in dramatic red and fuchsia pink and bright yellow colors enhanced the islands beauty. The gardens were decorated with white Balinese furniture and the Japanese rock gardens with mythical dragons, lions, dinosaurs, elephants, nymphs, and man beasts (half men and half beast) in concrete large statutes and red bridges over goldfish ponds. A large loch housed swans and pink flamingos. ~ Annette J. Dunlea

I do see why Nikki likes the novel, as it's written so well, but her liking it makes me worry now that Nikki doesn't really believe in silver linings. Because she says The Great Gatsby is the greatest novel ever written by an American, and yet it ends so sadly. One thing's for sure. Nikki is going to be very proud of me when I tell her I finally read her favorite book. Here's another surprise: I'm going to read all the novels on her American Literature class syllabus, just to make her proud. To let her know that I am really interested in what she loves. ~ Matthew Quick

Attention spans are changing. It's very noticeable. I am very aware that the kind of books I read in my childhood kids now won't be able to read. I was reading Kipling and PG Wodehouse and Shakespeare at the age of 11. The kind of description and detail I read I would not put in my books. I don't know how much you can fight that because you want children to read. So I pack in excitement and plot and illustrations and have a cliffhanger every chapter. Charles Dickens was doing cliffhangers way back when. But even with all the excitement you have to make children care about the characters. ~ Cressida Cowell

When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings on bodies that could have been your own, when the staves of history fall awry and the barrel of time bursts apart, some turn to prayer, some to poetry: words in the memory, a stained book carried close to the body, the notebook scribbled by hand
a center of gravity. ~ Adrienne Rich

To use a good book as a sedative is conspicuous waste. ~ Mortimer J. Adler

Children are notoriously literal readers, and I was no exception. Books, I believed, contained the entire truth about everything, and if you could just read every book or even a good chunk of the Truly Important Ones, you would know what you needed to know about real life. And you could be a part of it. Naturally, I got a lot of things wrong. ~ Pamela Paul

Making playlists can kill a whole afternoon for me. I like building very specific playlists for new writing projects. In a strange way, choosing certain songs is part of the process of plotting the book out. I pick songs that I think with resonate with characters, their personality quirks, relationship dynamics, action scenes, and so on. ~ Jonathan Maberry

Most people don't realize the many steps that a pop-up goes through. There are a variety of "Dummies" (the sketch phase of the book). Then finally the pencil "dummy", then the finished art which is like painting pieces of a jig saw puzzle. ~ Tomie DePaola

In my opinion what distinguishes the Bible from the other books is its sense of time. Its first concern is to establish a calendar. Then it traces a genealogy. It imposes rhythms, it orders, it operates, it does not abandon the earth where its destiny must be fulfilled and whose own destiny must be fulfilled by it. Its history will be that of men and not of idle gods. The whole spirit must become incarnate and explore the possible. ~ Adrienne Monnier

The notion, a debatable one, is that the man who knows the problems necessarily knows the answers.

This book has not been successful if it has not suggested some big-league problems, such as:

(1) Should our financial machinery be scrapped?
(2) Should it be further tinkered with, and if so, how much further?
(3) Is capitalism doomed?
(4) What active stock selling under five dollars looks hot just now for a quick turn to pay for the Buick the wife just bought?


There isn't an assistant instructor in economics in any faculty who can't answer these and similar questions rapidly and categorically, and if that is not enough there are a million laymen eager to do so. So I don't feel that my vote is much needed. ~ Fred Schwed Jr.

Her account is that she tried to get out of having to read it, but it was no use."
"And that's fair enough," sighed Craddock. "If anyone is really determined to lend you a book, you never can get out of it! ~ Agatha Christie

It was a book [George Packer written on our presence in Nigeria] that was killed by the response of other people. Which sounds quite cowardly, perhaps, but it was the first manifestation of what is currently a really big issue: how political correctness defines the limits of what you can do. In that sense, it was super-exciting and maybe the most magical project we did, but at the same time fraught with mixed feelings. ~ Rem Koolhaas

And through meditation comes wisdom - not through studying books, not through scriptures. Through scriptures one can become knowledgeable but no wise. and knowledgeable people are sad, they are bound to be sad because all their knowledge is borrowed. There can be no song in it. ~ Rajneesh

When I consider what some books have done for the world, and what they are doing, how they keep up our hope, awaken new courage and faith, soothe pain, give an ideal life those whose hours are cold and hard, bind together distant ages and foreign lands, create new worlds of beauty, bring down truth from heaven; I give eternal blessings for this gift, and thank God for books. ~ James Freeman Clarke

A faithful woman looks to the spring, a good book, perfume, earthquakes, and divine revelation for the experience others find in a lover. They deceive their husbands, so to speak, with the entire world, men excepted. ~ Jean Giraudoux

Behold the works of our philosophers; with all their pompous diction, how mean and contemptible they are by comparison with the Scriptures! Is it possible that a book at once so simple and sublime should be merely the work of man? ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

When I came back to Washington to be The Times' chief congressional correspondent in 1991, I was looking for a book subject, and Ted Kennedy stood out for two reasons. ~ Adam Clymer

The author may not interpret. But he must tell why and how he wrote his book. ~ Umberto Eco

With thought, patience, and discrimination, book passion becomes the signature of a person's character. ~ Nicholas A. Basbanes

Yes, yes; you've read thousands of books but you've never tried to read your own self; you rush into your temples, into your mosques, but you have never tried to enter your own heart; futile are all your battles with the devil for you have never tried to fight your own desires. ~ Bulleh Shah

I discovered Emerson's soporific qualities by falling asleep with my face in the book, drooling all over an essay called 'Self-Reliance' ... ~ Ransom Riggs

He smiled understandingly-much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced
or seemed to face
the whole eternal world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

Houses are like books: so many of them around you, yet you only look at a few and visit or reside in fewer still. ~ Milorad Pavic

How I envy writers who can work on aeroplanes or in hotel rooms. On the run I can produce an article or a book review, or even a film script, but for fiction I must have my own desk, my own wall with my own postcards pinned to it, and my own window not to look out of. ~ John Banville

[Roland] Barthes turned the thable on the author, saying no only the a book needs a reader to wake it into life, but that in so doing the reader becomes nothing less that the author, who reveals in the book's hermeneutic possibilities, releases them and so becomes its own creator. ~ Robert Rowland Smith