Graveyard Book Quotes

It was as if some people believed there was a divide between the books that you were permitted to enjoy and the books that were good for you, and I was expected to choose sides. We were all expected to choose sides. And I didn't believe it, and I still don't.
I was, and still am, on the side of books you love. ~ Neil Gaiman

I'm more or less happily writing Chapter Six of The Graveyard Book. I say more or less as I'm at that place where I hope that the book knows what it's doing because right now I don't have a clue - I'm writing one scene after another like a man walking through a valley in thick fog, just able to see the path a little way ahead, but with no idea where it's actually going to lead him. ~ Neil Gaiman

You're as plain as the nose on your face," said Mr. Pennyworth. "And your nose is remarkably obvious. As is the rest of your face, young man. As are you. For the sake of all that is holy, empty your mind. Now. You are an empty alleyway. You are a vacant doorway. You are nothing. Eyes will not see you. Minds will not hold you. Where you are is nothing and nobody. ~ Neil Gaiman

Bod was obedient but curious. ~ Neil Gaiman

Someone killed my Mother and my Father and my Sister?"
"Yes, someone did."
"A Man?"
"A Man."
"Which means," said Bod, "you're asking the wrong question."
Silas raised an eyebrow. "How so?"
"Well," said Bod. "If I go outside in the world, the question isn't who will keep me safe from him?"
"No?"
"No. It's who will keep him safe from me? ~ Neil Gaiman

We should do our best to satisfy your interests in stories and books and the world. There are libraries. ~ Neil Gaiman

Rattle his bones
over the stones
its only a pauper
who nobody owns ~ Neil Gaiman

Can I hug you?"
"Do you want to?"said Bod.
"Yes."
"Well then."He thought for a moment."I don't mind if you do."
"My hands won't go through you or anything?You're really there?"
"You won't go through me,"he told her,and she threw her arms around him and squeezed him so tightly he could hardly breathe. ~ Neil Gaiman

Death is the final destination of every man. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

It is better to experience sorrow than happiness.Many life lessons are learnt in moments of sorrow. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

It's like the people who believe they'll be happy if they go and live somewhere else, but who learn it doesn't work that way. Wherever you go, you take yourself with you. If you see what I mean. ~ Neil Gaiman

Another reason Hawthorne set his story in the past (in lies) was 'cause he couldn't say directly all the wild things he wanted to say. He was living in a society to which ideas and writing still mattered. In 'The Custom House', the introduction to The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne makes sure he tells us the story of The Scarlet Letter occurred long ago and has nothing to do with anyone who's now living. After all, Hawthorne had to protect himself so he could keep writing. Right now I can speak as directly as I want 'cause no one gives a shit about writing and ideas, all anyone cares about is money. Even if one person in Boise, Idaho, gave half-a-shit, the only book Mr Idaho can get his hands on is a book the publishers, or rather the advertisers ('cause all businessmen are now advertisers) have decided will net half-a-million in movie and/or TV rights. A book that can be advertised. Define culture that way. ~ Kathy Acker

Whedon: Studios will tell you: A woman cannot headline an action movie. After The Hunger Games they might stop telling you that a little bit. Whatever you think of the movie, it's done a great service. And after The Avengers, I think it's changing.
Johansson: A lot of the female superhero movies just suck really badly.
Whedon: The suck factor is not small.
Johansson: They are really not well made, and already you're fighting against the tide. There are a couple [female-driven action movies] that have worked-ish, don't you think?
Hemsworth: Angelina Jolie tends to do it pretty well, as the dominant female.
Jackson: They got to get The Pro to the screen!
Whedon: [Groaning] See, that is the problem. Sam is the problem!
Jackson: I love that book!
Whedon: [Reluctantly] The Pro is hilarious.
Jackson: The Pro's hilarious. [To the group] You ever see or hear of it?
Johansson: No, what's The Pro?
Jackson: It's [a comic book] about a hooker who gets super powers!
Johansson: [Pauses] That is exactly the problem right there.
Whedon: That's why I wasn't going to bring up The Pro!

(From an Entertainment Weekly interview) ~ Joss Whedon

The written word is all that stands between memory and oblivion. Without books as our anchors, we are cast adrift, neither teaching nor learning. They are windows on the past, mirrors on the present, and prisms reflected all possible futures. Books are lighthouses erected on the dark sea of time. ~ Greg Weisman

[The writers of the holy books] did not even know the earth revolves around the sun. Why are we listening? ~ Lawrence M. Krauss

Sometimes a book is better than it ever had a right to be because of the history the reader brings to the reading and because of the methods educators use to bring a particular story alive. ~ Chris Crutcher

A recurrent theme of this book is that luck plays a large role in every story of success; ~ Daniel Kahneman

After a certain age our memories are so intertwined with one another that what we are thinking of, the book we are reading, scarcely matters any more. We have put something of ourselves everywhere, everything is fertile, everything is dangerous, and we can make discoveries no less precious than in Pascal's Pensées in an advertisement for soap. ~ Marcel Proust

Self-help books for women are part of a multibillion-dollar industry, sensitively attuned to our insecurities and our purses. ~ Harriet Lerner

You are far to precious to lower yourself to the label of unworthy. ~ Darkened Olympus

Those who decide to use leisure as a means of mental development, who love good music, good books, good pictures, good company, good conversation, are the happiest people in the world. ~ William Lyon Phelps

No serious book lover will ever die having read every book he has managed to collect. This is not a sign of dilatoriness but of eagerness, anticipation. ~ James V. Schall

When you find that a book is poor ... waste no more time upon it. ~ James Bryce

There are 3 or 4 important things in life: Books, Friends, Women ... and Messi ~ Antonio Lobo Antunes

Professor Cake, like all true readers, was an incurable book filch. ~ Jonathan Auxier

I believe in the magic of books. I believe that during certain periods in our lives we are drawn to particular books
whether it's strolling down the aisles of a bookshop with no idea whatsoever of what it is that we want to read and suddenly finding the most perfect, most wonderfully suitable book staring us right in the face. Unblinking. Or a chance meeting with a stranger or friend who recommends a book we would never ordinarily reach for. Books have the ability to find their own way into our lives. ~ Cecelia Ahern

I'm reading some book about a girl trapped in a love triangle between two supernatural beings, and wishing that that was my biggest problem. ~ Grounding Quinn ~ Steph Campbell

And that refuge was the most reliable place of all - between the pages of a book. ~ Susan Wiggs

You need to change yourself. The moment that you change yourself it is a gigantic step. And this is what I do. The book is much more important than the writer. ~ Paulo Coelho

I have different books for different times of the day, let alone different seasons of the year! ~ Colum McCann

Depth is not something the writer puts into a book; it's something the reader takes out of it. ~ Michael Carroll

She's shaped her image of the world around someone else's fantasy ... Because it's easier. It's so much easier to say, 'This is a story, and there are heroes and villains, and there's an ending, and when we get there the book will close and we'll all live happily ever after. ~ Mira Grant

I don't know what it's like to read this book. I only know what it was like to live the writing of it. I ~ Neil Gaiman

Few things linger longer or become more indwelling than that feeling of both completion and emptiness when a great book ends. That the book accompanies the reader forever from that day forward is part of literature's profligate generosity. ~ Pat Conroy

Try to look casual." I pulled the top book out and put it on the desk.
"Why?"
"Because what I'm doing is illegal without a warrant, and we have about twenty witnesses observing our every move."
Curran crossed his arms, making his biceps bulge, leaned against the desk, and fixed our audience with his stare. Everyone spontaneously decided to look anywhere else but at us. Right. Casual, my foot.
"See," he said. "No witnesses. ~ Ilona Andrews

I was really the first-line editor of the 'House of Night' series. I didn't write that much of the story, and I didn't know what was happening until my mom finished the book and sent it to me because I wanted to read it with fresh eyes as a general reader would. ~ Kristin Cast

Business cards, of course, are not proof of anything. Anyone can go to a print shop and have cards made that say anything they like. The king of Denmark can order business cards that say he sells golf balls. Your dentist can order business cards that say she is your grandmother. In order to escape from the castle of an enemy of mine, I once had cards printed that said I was an admiral in the French navy. Just because something is typed - whether it is typed on a business card or typed in a newspaper or book - this does not mean it is true. ~ Lemony Snicket

In books, as in life, there are no second chances. On second thought: it's the next work, still to be written, that offers the second chance. ~ Cynthia Ozick

Some infinites are longer than other infinites ~ The Fault In Our Stars John Green.

Writing is a form of herding. I herd words into little paragraph-like clusters. ~ Larry McMurtry

Of course, he showed me this one afternoon when he was skipping class. When trolls cut classes, you think they are losers. When the beautiful and/or reasonably erudite do the same thing to sit on the library steps and read poetry, you think they are on to something deep. You see only deep brown wavy hair and strong legs, well honed by years of Ultimate Frisbee. You see that book of T. S. Eliot poems held by the hand with the long, graceful fingers, and you never stop to think that it shouldn't take half a semester to read one book of poems ... that maybe he is not so much reading as getting really high every morning and sleeping it off on the library steps, forcing the people who actually go to class to step or trip over him. ~ Maureen Johnson

Taking a strange book seriously, Leviticus 18, 20 ~ Kevin DeYoung

Always with a book and content at home or at the store. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

Closing my eyes doesn't help. Fire burns brighter in the darkness. ~ Suzanne Collins

After me, the Revolution - or, rather the ideas which formed it - will resume their course. It will be like a book from which the marker is removed, and one starts to read again at the page where one left off. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

Going to college is an amazing opportunity to not only learn and be book-smart but also to kind of stretch your wings and expand yourself as a human and as an artist, whatever it is you're going for. ~ Lindsey Stirling

My taking pictures means I'm taking a series of pictures which become an essay and then get extended into a book. That's what's exciting, to take an idea and work it through to completion. ~ George A Tice

A writer is, after all, only half his book. The other half is the reader and from the reader the writer learns. ~ P.L. Travers

There is no Frigate like a book. ~ Emily Dickinson

Dream up a book on Monday, publish it on Friday. ~ Jill Novak

So what is it that you are doing - seeking security in your restlessness? The desire to be secure is one of the most curious things. And that security must be recognized by the world; I don't know whether you see this. I write a book and in the book I find my security. But that book must be recognized by the world, otherwise there is no security. So look what I've done - my security lies in the opinion of the world!...So it means I am deceiving myself constantly. ~ Krishnamurti

It could have been so beautiful.
The way our elbows always collide and not a single word was needed to make each other laugh. I laughed at your existence, I said, and you laughed even harder and that's how we spent our time.
It could have been so beautiful
the way the first hit felt good and something to deserve
because I've read every psychology book you can find on human behaviour and know for a fact that anger grows from caring
too much
and so it was a privilege to be in the war zone with someone like you.
How much you must have cared to hit that well
and that hard
and I remember saying thank you
and I'm sorry
at the same time
because what else is there to say. ~ Charlotte Eriksson

Even today I keep a Dream Journal. It's whatever's going on in my subconscious, or things from dreams or even interesting items that pop into my head. I have thousands of pages of notes which I hope someday will turn into stories, or movies ... Being on the road gives me breathing time and the opportunity to think about what to do next. In fact right before I came down for lunch today, I was writing down notes about my feelings. Things that I need to do to keep motivated. I need to be motivated if I am to going to devote fifteen months to writing another book. And I couldn't write a book just because it's a commercial idea. I need to have a compelling reason. ~ Clive Barker