Inspired By Books Quotes

When I come home and look back through my Book of Books I see a personal narrative I didn't recognize at the time. I went from escaping into books to extracting things from them, from being inspired by books to trying to do things that inspired me - many of which I first encountered in stories. I went from wishing I were like a character in books to being a character in my books. I went from reading books to wrestling with them to writing them, all the while still learning from what I read. ~ Pamela Paul

I went from escaping into books to extracting things from them, from being inspired by books to trying to do things that inspired me - many of which I first encountered in stories. I went from wishing I were like a character in books to being a character in my books. I went from reading books to wrestling with them to writing them, all the while still learning from what I read. The ~ Pamela Paul

"Librarians and teachers saved me and my mind. Huck showed me it wasn't only me, but Tom is who I wished I was."
- April (does feral sometimes) Gavey ~ April (does Feral Sometimes) Gavey

I'm a bit of a book worm, so a lot of the songs I write are inspired by books. ~ Brooke Fraser

I read everything I could find: books and online. Sometimes bigger revelations came to me through finer details or something that you wouldn't pick up just by surface reading. ~ Abbie Cornish

Considering myself called of my God to instruct the ignorant, comfort the sorrowful, confirm the weak, and rebuke the proud; by tongue and lively voice in these corrupt days rather than to compose books for the age to come, seeing that so much is written, and yet so little well observed, I decree to contain myself within the bounds of that vocation whereunto I found myself especially called. ~ John Knox

I was filled with angst in college, that I struggled with the question of my future, the meaning of my life - spoiled sheltered rich girl collides with great books and is devastated by her own banality. ~ Elizabeth Kostova

A book is indeed dead until a reader brings it into life by reading it. ~ Aman Jassal

Doctors came to see her singly and in consultation, talked much in French, German, and Latin, blamed one another, and prescribed a great variety of medicines for all the diseases known to them, but the simple idea never occurred to any of them that they could not know the disease that Natasha was suffering from, as no disease suffered by a by a live man can be known, for every living person has his own peculiarities and always has his own peculiar, personal, novel, complicated disease, unknown to medicine - not a disease of the lungs, liver, skin, heart, nerves, and so on mentioned in medical books, but a disease consisting of one of the innumerable combinations of the maladies of those organs. ~ Leo Tolstoy

I'm inspired by people who are their true selves and use that to do good. ~ Matthew J. Fox

Lewis made sure Shaney left with an armload of books, a whole series, to prove to Peta why she'd been there, but the whole time, stacking them up, it felt like an overcorrection, like trying to hide a body on the lawn by covering it with eight other bodies. ~ Stephen Graham Jones

B Y AND BY, WHEN WE GOT UP, WE TURNED OVER THE TRUCK THE GANG had stole off of the wreck, and found boots, and blankets, and clothes, and all sorts of other things, and a lot of books, and a spyglass, and three boxes of seegars. ~ Mark Twain

Requiems for the Departed contains seventeen short stories, inspired by Irish mythology, from some of the finest contemporary writers in the business. ~ Gerard Brennan

'Ice Cold' is the eighth in my 'Rizzoli and Isles' thriller series. It was inspired by a true occurrence in the 1960s, now known as the 'Dugway Incident,' in which 6,000 sheep mysteriously died overnight in a remote area of Utah. I thought, 'What if it happened instead to people? What if the inhabitants of an entire village vanished overnight?' ~ Tess Gerritsen

I'd be willing to bet no kid, no matter how disturbed, was inspired to go out and shoot up a classroom by boogeying around his living room to "Moves Like Jagger." There ~ Stephen King

We profit little by books we do not enjoy. ~ John Lubbock

A self-help story about a man who overcomes circumstance by reminiscing over his own life's lessons. Inspired, he sets out at night on the gritty streets of New York City to capture the beauty of life thru his passion for photography. ~ Amazon

My needs were simple I didn't bother much with themes or felicitous phrases and skipped fine descriptions of weather, landscapes and interiors. I wanted characters I could believe in, and I wanted to be made curious about what was to happen to them. Generally, I preferred people to be falling in and out of love, but I didn't mind so much if they tried their hand at something else. It was vulgar to want it, but I liked someone to say 'Marry me' by the end. ~ Ian McEwan

The "olden times" are only such in reference to us. The past is rendered strange, mysterious, visionary, awful from this great gap in time that parts us from it, and the long perspective of waning years. Things gone by and almost forgotten, look dim and dull, uncouth and quaint, from our ignorance of them, and the mutability of customs. But in their day - they were fresh, unimpaired, in full vigour, familiar and glossy. ~ William Hazlitt

We're not going to make it, I said.
The words caught in my throat, choking me. What was it Leslie had said to me when we were discussing Shannon's and Antoinetta's disappearance? 'You're beginning to sound like one of the characters in your books, Adam.' She'd been right. If this were a novel my heroes would have arrived just in the nick of time and saved the day. But real life didn't work like that. Real life had no happy endings. Despite our best efforts, despite my love for Tara [his wife] and my determination to protect her, and after everything we'd been through at the LeHorn house, fate conspired against us. We were still nine or ten miles from home, and night was almost upon us. By the time we got there it would already be too late. I fought back tears. I had the urge just to lie down in the middle of the road and let the next car run over me. ~ Brian Keene

I decided to write Leadership BS because I was irritated by the hypocrisy in the leadership literature and the fact that many of the people writing leadership books exhibited behavior that was precisely the opposite of what they advocated and also what they claimed they did. Stories did not seem to be a good foundation on which to build a science of leadership. ~ Jeffrey Pfeffer

I lived in New York City back in the 1980s, which is when the Bordertown series was created. New York was a different place then -- dirtier, edgier, more dangerous, but also in some ways more exciting. The downtown music scene was exploding -- punk and folk music were everywhere -- and it wasn't as expensive to live there then, so a lot of young artists, musicians, writers, etc. etc. were all living and doing crazy things in scruffy neighborhoods like the East Village.

I was a Fantasy Editor for a publishing company back then -- but in those days, "fantasy" to most people meant "imaginary world" books, like Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. A number of the younger writers in the field, however, wanted to create a branch of fantasy that was rooted in contemporary, urban North America, rather than medieval or pastoral Europe. I'd already been working with some of these folks (Charles de Lint, Emma Bull, etc.), who were writing novels that would become the foundations for the current Urban Fantasy field. At the time, these kinds of stories were considered so strange and different, it was actually hard to get them into print.

When I was asked by a publishing company to create a shared-world anthology for Young Adult readers, I wanted to create an Urban Fantasy setting that was something like a magical version of New York...but I didn't want it to actually be New York. I want it to be any city and every city -- a place that anyone from anywhere could go to or rela ~ Terri Windling

Magic happens when the wand of language strikes a stone and makes it melt, touches a spindle and turns it into gold, or taps a trunk and makes it fly. By drawing on a syntax of enchantment that conjures fluidity, ethereality, flimsiness, and transparency, writers turn solidity into resplendent airy lightness to produce miracles of linguistic transubstantiation.

What is the effect of that beauty? How do readers respond to words that create that beauty? In a world that has discredited that particular attribute and banished it from high art, beauty has nonetheless held on to its enlivening power in children's books. It draws readers in, then draws them to understand the fictional worlds it lights up. ~ Maria Tatar

The way you start writing is by writing. Over and over again I have proven this to myself but I always forget it the next time. I always believe that I will never write again. The first time I finished a book a painter was visiting me. Her name is Ginny Stanford and her wonderful paintings have been the covers for nine of my books.
'I'll never write again,' I told her ... 'That's it ... It's over. It was great while it lasted, but now it's done.'
That afternoon she made me a wonderful drawing of a ship sinking in the waves of the sea. 'I'll never write again,' it said on the bottom of the picture. 'September, 1981. ~ Ellen Gilchrist

The conclusion of intelligent design flows naturally from the data itself - not from sacred books or sectarian beliefs. Inferring that biochemical systems were designed by an intelligent agent is a humdrum process that requires no new principles of logic or science. It comes simply from the hard work that biochemistry has done over the past forty years, combined with consideration of the way in which we reach conclusions of design every day. ~ Michael J. Behe

For most people, having company for more than three of four days is a serious mistake, the equivalent to sawing a large hole in the roof and leaving all the doors and windows open in the middle of winter. Out of a desire to be helpful or the need to be kind, they let themselves in for prolonged spells of entertaining, forfeit their privacy and their easy understanding, knowing that the result will be an estrangement―however temporary―between husband and wife, and that nothing proportionate to this is to be gained by the giving up of beds, the endless succession of heavy meals, the afternoon drives. Either the human race is incurably hospitable or else people forget from one time to the next, as women forget the pains of labor, how weeks and months are lost that can never be recovered.
The guest also loses―even the so-called easy guest who makes her own bed, helps with the dishes and doesn't require entertaining. She sees things no outsider should see, overhears whispered conversations about herself from two rooms away, finds old letters in books, and is sooner or later the cause of and witness to scenes that because of her presence do not clear the air. When she has left, she expects to go on being a part of the family she has stayed with so happily and for so long; she expects to be remembered; instead of which, her letters, full of intimate references and family jokes, go unanswered. She sends beautiful presents to the children at a time when she really cannot afford a ~ William Maxwell

The mere thought that she was alone and surrounded by books gave her a near-sensuous thrill. As she looked around her room, dark escaper for the slash of light near her lamp, and saw the vague outlines of her books, she asked herself 'Have I not the whole world? ~ Andrew Wilson

A book, a true book, is the writer's confessional. For, whether he would have it so or not, he is betrayed, directly or indirectly, by his characters, into presenting publicly his innermost feelings. ~ Nelson Algren

Eighty-five percent of recorded species live in the terrestrial realm, and the majority of these, some 850,000, are arthropods (that is, insects, spiders, and crustaceans). Most of the arthropod species are insects, and almost half of these are beetles, a fact that is said to have inspired a famous epigram from the British biologist J.B.S. Haldane. On being asked, one day, by some clerical gentlemen what his study of the natural world had revealed to him about God. Haldane is said to have replied that it indicated that He had an inordinate fondness of beetles. ~ Richard E. Leakey

I always wanted to create a collection inspired by sports. I never played sports, maybe that's why it intrigues me. ~ Alexander Wang

On my website there's a quote from the writer Anthony Burgess: "The greatest gift is the passion for reading. It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites, it gives you knowledge of the world and experience of a wide kind."

I've always found that inspiring because the written word, as an art form, is unlike any other: movies, TV, music, they're shared experiences, but books aren't like that. The relationship between a writer and a reader is utterly unique to those two individuals. The world that forms in your head as you read a book will be slightly different to that experienced by every other reader. Anywhere. Ever. Reading is very personal, a communication from one mind to another, something which can't be exactly copied, or replicated, or directly shared.

If I read the work of, say, one of the great Victorian novelists, it's like a gift from the past, a momentary connection to another's thoughts. Their ideas are down on paper, to be picked up by me, over a century later. Writers can speak individually to readers across a year, or ten years, or a thousand.

That's why I love books. ~ Simon Cheshire

I'm not the creative one. I know that. If Rory Storm hadn't come along ... and then The Beatles ... I would have continued running around in teddyboy gangs. Today, well ... I'd probably be a laborer. I'm glad I'm not, of course. It'll be nice to be part of history ... some sort of history anyway. What I'd like to be is in school history books and be read by kids. ~ Ringo Starr

A sincere man who sits down at night and pens that which his soul believes to be right, that which his soul tells him will be good for humanity, is exercising a power over the world that is beneficial. We should hail that expression of greatness, of goodness, with thanksgiving. But the insincere man, the man who will sit down at night and distort facts, who will wilfully misrepresent truth, who is a traitor to the divine within him which is calling, nay longing for truth, what shall we say of that man? He is publishing falsehoods to the world, giving poison to young, innocent souls who are longing for truth. Oh, there is no condemnation too strong for the hypocrite, for the betrayer of Christ. We will not condemn him, but God will, in His justice; He must.

Too much time is taken up by our young people, and by our older ones, too, in reading useless pamphlets, useless books; "It is worse than useless," says Farrar, in that excellent little work on "Great Books:". . . .

Men in Israel, it is time that we take a stand against vile literature. It is poisonous to the soul. It is the duty of a parent to put the poison, that is in the house, on the highest shelf, away from that innocent little child who knows not the danger of it. It is the duty of the parent also to keep the boy's mind from becoming polluted with the vile trash that is sometimes scattered--nay, that is daily distributed among us. There is inconsistency in a man's kneeling down with his family i ~ David O. McKay

More than anyone else, the omnipresent Hamilton galvanized, inspired, and scandalized the newborn nation, serving as a flash point for pent-up conflicts of class, geography, race, religion, and ideology. His contemporaries often seemed defined by how they reacted to the political gauntlets that he threw down repeatedly with such defiant panache. ~ Ron Chernow

Early Menstruation renders the Uteri Hard & dry; so that they ought not to prompt the early appearance by obscene books, and frequent touchings. ~ Jill Lepore

I definitely have a spiritual outlook. I don't usually read self-help books, but I read a great book by a guy called Wayne Dyer, The Power of Intention, which I loved. I'm not a religious guy, in fact I'm probably agnostic but I thought what this writer had to say was really powerful. ~ Chris Pine

Every day I am inspired by what's possible. ~ Maynard Webb

To succeed, this movement will have to change our ideals in fundamental ways. It will have to kill off the traditional American dream, the idea of constant striving for a better future, symbolized by the middle-class goal of a rising income and the purchase of a little house with a yard - not to mention the freedom to move where you please, run your life, and govern your town with your neighbors when you get there. Greg Galluzzo, Obama's mentor and the man who created the grassroots crusade that inspired Building One America, dismisses the American dream as a sham. What really makes Americans move to the suburbs, says Galluzzo, is 'racism and greed. ~ Stanley Kurtz

I cannot, therefore, prove that my view of the good life is right; I can only state my view, and hope that as many as possible will agree. My view is this: The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge. ~ Bertrand Russell

Take off my clothes and there becomes a man. Take off my skin and there becomes my bones. Break all my bones and there becomes my heart. Smash my heart and there becomes my soul. And that you cannot take. And what is my soul? ... It is everything that make a man. It is everything that makes this man. ~ Carew Papritz

Muhammad preached his farewell sermon to the Muslim community. He reminded them to deal justly with one another, to treat women kindly, and to abandon the blood feuds and vendettas inspired by the spirit of jahiliyyah. Muslim must never fight against Muslim. ~ Karen Armstrong

If you look through the shelves of science books, you'll find row after row of books written by men. This can be terribly off-putting for women. ~ Lisa Randall

You don't expect your readers to go, "Ah this book's not just a fine work of literary whatshisname, but also a get-rich-quick scheme," to be followed shortly by a go-to-prison-quick scheme, which I believe he did. Are ~ Neil Gaiman

When a child keeps asking you to tell him/her a story, what they instinctively really want to know
is their true purpose and mission in life. Sadly, this knowledge was never sought out by their parents, and explains why childrens books are a very hot and lucrative industry. Instead of telling your child the truth of our history and existence, you are conditioned by society to simply read your kid a fairytale. ~ Suzy Kassem

I'm such a magpie. I'll get halfway through one thing and pick up something else. I always have 5 or 6 books open and spine-up by my bed: it's like a row of tents. I don't finish nearly as many books as I should. ~ Steven Hall

When I did 'Racing Demon' by David Hare, I worked with Paul Giamatti, who had stacks of books in his dressing room. I was offstage a lot, so I would go read in his room. He was reading a four-part series on the Byzantine Empire by Alexander A. Vasiliev. I read two of those during the run of the play. ~ Denis O'Hare

They were so far-fetched, so ridiculous, that only someone with his kind of power would have a vested interest in shifting attention away from the commission. It was a method torn from the pages of the oldest propaganda books. Tell a lowercase lie, and people won't believe it. Tell a standard lie, and people will doubt it. But tell a lie in all caps, a lie of truly colossal proportions, and that people will have to believe. And although such a colossal lie, when told by a man of power and position, requires little in the way of actual proof, it is still vulnerable to a large enough burden of contrary evidence. ~ Ted Kosmatka

Saint John, in a moment of confusion, tells us not to love the world because "all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life,is not of the Father, but is of the world." This injunction is at best a paradox. Our humble and astonishing inheritance is the world and only the world, whose existence we constantly test (and prove) by telling ourselves stories about it. The suspicion that we and the world are made in the image of something wonderfully and chaotically coherent far beyond our grasp, of which we are also part; the hope that our exploded cosmos and we, its stardust, have an ineffable meaning and method; the delight in retelling the old metaphor of the world as a book we read and in which we too are read; the conceit that what we can know of reality is an imagination made of language - all this finds its material manifestation in that self-portrait we call a library. And our love for it, and our lust to see more of it, and our pride in its accomplishments as we wander through shelves full of books that promise more and more delights, are among our happiest, most moving proofs of possessing, in spite of all the miseries and sorrows of this life, a more intimate, consolatory, perhaps redeeming faith in a method behind the madness than any jealous deity could wish upon us. ~ Alberto Manguel

Everything becomes a blur when you travel beyond a certain speed. Distant objects may still be clear in outline, but the blurred foreground makes it impossible to attend to them. This landscape is unreal and the passengers in the express train turn to their books, their thoughts or their private fantasies.
The subjectivism of our age has a good deal to do with this imprisonment in a speeding vehicle, and the fact that we made this vehicle ourselves, with all the tireless care that children give to a contrivance of wood and wire, does not save us from the sense of being trapped without hope of escape.
A further effect of such vertiginous speed is a kind of anaesthesia, entirely natural when the operation of the senses by which we normally make contact with our environment is suspended. With no opportunity to assimilate what is going on, our powers of assimilation are inevitably weakened and certain numbness sets in; nothing is fully savoured and nothing is properly understood. Even fear (which exists to forewarn us of danger) is suspended. This would be so even if speed of change were the only factor involved, but the kind of environment in which a large part of humanity lives today --- the environment created by technology at the service of immediate, short-term needs – does much to intensify this effect. Outside of works of art which embody something beyond our physical needs, our own constructions bore us. Those who, when they have built something and admired the ~ Charles Le Gai Eaton