Dzanc Books Quotes

Ciabattari is a master of transformation as she gives these stories of loss, woe, crisis and collapse the salutary and sometimes bracing pleasures of plain good fiction.
Kirkus Reviews ~ Jane Ciabattari

The Bible is a book of promises, and unlike the books of men, it doesn't change or get out of date. The message I have been proclaiming for many years is basically the same - and God does not lie! ~ Billy Graham

I have dwelt ever in realms apart from the visible world; spending my youth and adolescence in ancient and little-known books, and in roaming the fields and groves of the region near my ancestral home. I do not think that what I read in these books or saw in these fields and groves was exactly what other boys read and saw there; but of this I must say little, since detailed speech would but confirm those cruel slanders upon my intellect which I sometimes overhear from the whispers of the stealthy attendants around me. ~ H.P. Lovecraft

But a book can't hurt, can it? Except that books contain ideas, and ideas can be dangerous ~ Terry Pratchett

The secret ingredient in my books is, there has never been a villain. ~ Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

The people who run the circus kidnapped us from our parents. Since we got here, we have all been working in the circus.
We can't see any of our mummies or kiss them OR cuddle up to them. said Adrian.
His tears flowing in his big blue eyes that were the colour of the sky.
We didn't want to listen to our parents when they told us: 'Never, Ever!" talk to strangers.
We all disobeyed and spoke to strangers, and then the strangers stole us away from our parents. ~ Magda M. Olchawska

As if these daily humiliations and sacrifices mean something, are tallied by the ones who keep the books. Tomorrow we pick up where we left off. Sleep tight. Sleep deep. Sleep the sleep of the successful because somehow you made it through the day without anyone finding out that you are a complete fraud. ~ Colson Whitehead

For the rest of the afternoon, Miss Bloom smiled almost as bright as the big yellow sun shining through the front picture window. Her library was filled up with people who loved books. ~ Augusta Scattergood

I can't read all the books I want to read, I can't watch all the phenomena that interest me in the world. The work calls me, and sometimes I wonder whether this is an obsession and I should drop it, or it's a necessity I'm obliged to fulfill. ~ James Hillman

Our Voice is our most powerful tool against these evil people who prey on the innocent, we should never be silent and let them continue to harm people. By being silent we are telling them it is "Okay to continue". I firmly believe if you choose to stand with those who wish to keep the victim silent you are yourself guilty of a crime against humanity
- Misty Griffin ~ Misty Griffin

A bookcase is as good as a view, as much of a panorama as the sight of a city or a river. There are dawns and sunsets in books - storms and zephyrs. ~ Anatole Broyard

To put Negative Capability into practice, you must develop the habit of suspending the need to judge everything that crosses your path. You consider and even momentarily entertain viewpoints opposite to your own, seeing how they feel. You observe a person or event for a length of time, deliberately holding yourself back from forming an opinion. You seek out what is unfamiliar - for instance, reading books from unfamiliar writers in unrelated fields or from different schools of thought. You do anything to break up your normal train of thinking and your sense that you already know the truth. ~ Robert Greene

I may have given up my library but a man should never be without his books. They provide a good means of staying out of, ah, trouble. ~ Den Patrick

It is only by choice that our true nature is revealed. ~ J.D. Netto

Your mail could've waited." Daemon followed me into the kitchen. "What is it? Just books?"
Grabbing the OJ from the fridge, I sighed. People who didn't heart books didn't understand. ~ Jennifer L. Armentrout

He had a talismanic obsession with final pages. At school he would near a book's conclusion, whether it was pulp science fiction or The Return of the Native, with one hand firmly clamped over the ultimate paragraph, in case his eye lit on a single word which might rob the entire story of its point, spoil the answer to the riddle of why he was reading it. When he shared this with Genevieve, she admitted to him that she always started a book by reading its final page, that she still did, but she wasn't sure why. ~ Luke Kennard

To this day, my mom's unsinkable spirit is an inspiration to me. For nearly thirty years, she's worked at the Library of Congress. Everyone knows Sameha simply as 'Sami.' Along with 500 miles of shelved books, her closest friendships are cataloged in that library. They are as much the value of work to my mom as is the work itself. ~ Hoda Kotb

I want to see books taken out of historical time and placed into a different timeline, such as evolutionary or geological time, as a means of putting the human experience in context. ~ Douglas Coupland

Adam asked, "What is he doing, anyway?"
"Peeing."
"Trust Lynch to deface a place like this five minutes after getting here."
"Deface? Marking his territory."
"He must own more of Virginia than your father, then."
"I don't think he's ever used an indoor toilet, now that I think about it. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

I'd decided the campus was just a place to hide. There were some campus freaks who stayed on forever. The whole college scene was soft. They never told you what to expect out there in the real world. They just crammed you with theory and never told you how hard the pavements were. A college education could destroy an individual for life. Books could make you soft. When you put them down, and really went out there, then you needed to know what they never told you. ~ Charles Bukowski

I have hundreds of art books and the biographies of artists I love, such as Thomas Eakins and Edgar Degas. ~ Jamie Wyeth

As to the fragments of morality that are irregularly and thinly scattered in those books [the Bible], they make no part of this pretended thing, revealed religion. They are the natural dictates of conscience, and the bonds by which society is held together, and without which it cannot exist; and are nearly the same in all religions, and in all societies. The Testament teaches nothing new upon this subject, and where it attempts to exceed, it becomes mean and ridiculous. When it is said, as in the Testament, 'If a man smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other also,' it is assassinating the dignity of forbearance, and sinking man into a spaniel. ~ Thomas Paine

Sometimes there is no chemistry between writer and reader, so - give up. Not all books are meant to be read. ~ My Mother

It takes all sorts to make a world," some are soldiers from the cradle, some merchants, some orators; nothing but a love of books was the gift given to me by the fairies. ~ Andrew Lang

Prayer is always in danger of degenerating into a glorified gold rush. How to get things from God occupies most [books]. ~ Aiden Wilson Tozer

There are some beautiful books out there. But the ones that leave me cold are the ones where I feel - it's that postmodern thing - it's more experimentation with language than it is a deep compassionate falling into another human being's experience. ~ Andre Dubus III

The Great Library may have once been a boon, but what is it today? What does it give us? It suppresses! It stifles! You, sir, do you own a book? No, sir, not a blank, filled only with what they want you to read...a real book, an original work, in the hand of the writer? The library owns our memories, yet you cannot own your own books! Why? Why do they fear it? Why do they fear to allow you the choice? ~ Rachel Caine

I like BIG BOOKS
and I cannot lie! ~ Jose N Harris

I learned capacity for self-reflection very early, finding it through interior monologues that books are so good at and that visual media is so bad at because it's so boring - nothing's happening. In a book, you can be inside the narrator's head for 50 pages, and nothing needs to happen. Then you learn to be inside your own head without something needing to happen. It's a very good antidote to a crazy, restless, "what's next?" culture - that you can just be in your own head and nothing is happening except that this is a rich place. I love that. ~ Jeanette Winterson

The shriek cut thinly though the drizzling dimness, holding for a long moment. At last it broadened and dropped to the old. ~ Natalie Babbitt

All truth-seekers should study the genocide that was the Holocaust and ask themselves how on Earth this event was 'allowed' to occur, keeping in mind allowed is the correct term as there was no shortage of witnesses, including those all over Europe who stood by and did nothing to intervene. If those bystanders hadn't just stood by, perhaps the history books would tell a different story. ~ James Morcan

Be so good they can't ignore you."
Steve Martin ~ Brenda Sorrels

Businesses, like babies and books, need nurturing, time, energy, love, planning and, yes, money to develop, grow and prosper. ~ Rachael Bermingham

Well, right now I'm not dead. But when I am, it's like ... I don't know, I guess it's like being inside a book that nobody's reading. [ ... ] An old one. It's up on a library shelf, so you're safe and everything, but the book hasn't been checked out for a long, long time. All you can do is wait. Just hope somebody'll pick it up and start reading. ~ Tim O'Brien

What is my life for and what am I going to do with it? I don't know and I'm afraid. I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. ~ Sylvia Plath

Without a mission and a sense of whom you write for, you aren't worth reading. ~ Steve Lopez

General editors' preface The growth of translation studies as a separate discipline is a success story of the 1980s. The subject has developed in many parts of the world and is clearly destined to continue developing well into the twenty-first century. Translation studies brings together work in a wide variety of fields, including linguistics, literary study, history, anthropology, psychology, and economics. This series of books will reflect the breadth of work in translation studies and will enable readers to share in the exciting new developments that are taking place at the present time. ~ Lawrence Venuti

Listen well, as I speak of my upsurge;
For I'm a lover, without a lover

I am a flame, without a combustion
I am a novice, without a mentor

I am a healer, without a wounded
I am a winner, without a trophy

I'm a captain, without a devotee
And above all, I'm alone – not lonely ~ Zubair Ahsan

Kid's books should be just as good as any other books. No. They should be held to a *higher* standard than other literature for the same reason that we take extra care with children's food. ~ Patrick Rothfuss

I started by just sitting by the chessboard exploring things. I didn't even have books at first, and I just played by myself. I learnt a lot from that, and I feel that it is a big reason why I now have a good intuitive understanding of chess. ~ Magnus Carlsen

What about you? What do you do?" I needed to ask questions, draw him out. I needed to find out all the information I could. My voice sounded strong and smooth, but my hands were shaking. I put them in my lap so he couldn't see.
"I prey on innocent villagers and terrify their children," he said with a nasty smile. "And sometimes when I'm feeling really evil, I read books or paint. ~ Kate Avery Ellison

I do not consider myself less ignorant than most people. I have been and still am a seeker, but I have ceased to question stars and books. I have begun to listen to the teachings my blood whispers to me. My story is not a pleasant one; it is neither sweet nor harmonious, as invented stories are; it has the taste of nonsense and chaos, of madness and dreams
like the lives of all men who stop deceiving themselves. ~ Hermann Hesse

Some books seem to have been written, not to teach us anything, but to let us know that the author has known something. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

We love books because they are the greatest escape. That is because our own minds eye is the purest form of virtual reality. ~ M.R. Mathias

I got beat up by the comic-book kids when I was younger! They were cooler than me. Talk about levels of geekdom, I was a couple rungs below the kids who read comic books. Yeah. Not so cool, man. ~ James Badge Dale

And go we all must, with a healthy lust of books we trust. ~ Love The Stacks Bookstore

Sinking into fiction: the if-only of if-onlys. ~ David Arnold

It's funny, because I don't have a very addictive personality in any way except for things like stories or books or movies or TV. I just get, like, completely enamored and lost in that world, especially when one really hits the right way. Like, I just can't do anything else. ~ Mae Whitman

The reading of all good books is indeed like a conversation with the noblest men of past centuries who were the authors of them, nay a carefully studied conversation, in which they reveal to us none but the best of their thoughts. ~ Rene Descartes

Literature is the human activity that takes the fullest and most precise account of variousness, possibility, complexity, and difficulty. ~ Lionel Trilling