Lewisohn Volume Quotes

Gunn would be an important figure-rewarding, delightful, accomplished, enduring-in the history of English-language poetry even were his life not as fascinating as it now seems; he would be an important figure in the history of gay writing and in the history of transatlantic literary relations even were his poetry not so good as it is. With his life as it was and his works as they are, he's an obvious candidate for a volume of retrospective and critical essays, and this one is first-rate. ~ Stephen Burt

The walls were lined with books from floor to ceiling. Stacks of books stood neatly arranged on every horizontal surface - tables, windowsills, even the top of an unplugged television. Since Sophie had been forbidden to explore the library at home, her only real experience with books had come at school and from the few children's books that lay on the bottom shelf of a cabinet in the nursery. She sensed immediately that this was something altogether different. It was a library, yes, but she knew these books had been read. They weren't arranged in long lines of matching bindings like the ones in Bayfield House, and almost every volume had slips of paper protruding from the top. she wondered if Uncle Bertram had marked all the best bits.

"Shall we have a story?" said her uncle, when he had hung up their coats.

"Yes, please," said Sophie.

"What would you like?" he asked.

"You pick."

And so he did. They settled onto the couch, Bertram with a cup of tea and Sophie with a mug of cocoa. He began to read and Sophie's world was transformed - this was not like the insubstantial children's stories her mother read to her at bedtime. This was ever so much more.

"The Wind in the Willows," read Uncle Bertram. "Chapter One, The River Bank. The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home." Sophie closed her eyes and fell into the story. ~ Charlie Lovett

Resilience, timing, adaptation - these are the three pillars upon which the emergent properties of interacting systems rest. When the systems are the economy and the environment, understanding of the relationships among these concepts is crucial. This volume does a better job of explaining how to manage both money and nature to ensure humanity's long-term future than any other work I know of. Read and reflect. ~ John L. Casti

The road to hell is paved with the pursuit of volume. Volume leads to marginal products, marginal customers, and greatly increased managerial complexity. ~ Richard Koch

As a young man, the seer became a rake. He drank and fought and made free with the village girls. He became a wagoner, carrying goods and passengers to other villages, an occupation that extended the range of his conquests. A good talker, sure of himself, he tried every girl he met. His method was direct: he grabbed and started undoing buttons. Naturally, he was frequently kicked and scratched and bitten, but the sheer volume of his efforts brought him notable success. He learned that even in the shyest and primmest of girls, the emptiness and loneliness of life in a Siberian village had bred a flickering appetite for romance and adventure. Gregory's talent was for stimulating those appetites and overcoming all hesitations by direct, good-natured aggression. ~ Robert K. Massie

You really expose yourself when you try and go to up the volume and up the size of your performance. ~ Alexander Siddig

When I close my eyes, I see my soul as a screen crisscrossed with flowing, intertwined lines; architectural straight lines of a volume uncertain of its limits, exposed on all sides; a fragile construction, by turns knocked down, invaded, uprooted, robbed of its foundations, mined by all those embraces in which it happily prostitutes itself. ~ Anne Garréta

If you have any doubts that we live in a society controlled by men, try reading down the index of contributors to a volume of quotations, looking for women's names. ~ Elaine Gill

Lettuce harvests in Salinas, melons in Brawley, grapes in Parlier, oranges in Ontario, cotton in Firebaugh -- and, finally, Santa Clara, the prune country. And because this place was pleasing to the eye, or because they were tired of their endless migration, Juan Rubio and his wife settled here to raise their children. And, remembering his country, Juan thought that his distant cousin, the great General Zapata, had been right when, in speaking of Juan, he once said to Villa, 'He will go far, that relative of mine.'

Now this man who had lived by the gun all his adult life would sit on his haunches under the prune trees, rubbing his sore knees, and think, Next year we will have enough money and we will return to our country. But deep within he knew he was one of the lost ones. And as the years passed him by and his children multiplied and grew, the chant increased in volume and rate until it became a staccato NEXT YEAR! NEXT YEAR!

And the chains were incrementally heavier on his heart. ~ José Antonio Villareal

He must be always on his guard and devote every minute and module of life to the decoding of the undulation of things. The very air he exhales is indexed and filed away. If only the interest he provokes were limited to his immediate surroundings, but, alas, it is not! With distance, the torrents of wild scandal increase in volume and volubility. The silhouettes of his blood corpuscles, magnified a million times, flit over vast plains; and still farther away, great mountains of unbearable solidity and height sum up, in terms of granite and groaning firs, the ultimate truth of his being. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

Andrea told me after that film that there was too much Matt Haig in Matt Haig. She was kind of joking but kind of on to something. So for me, anything that lessens that extreme sense of selfe, that makes me feel me but at a lower volume, is very welcome. ( ... ) Travel has been one of those things. ~ Matt Haig

Some volumes against Deism fell into my hands ... they produced an effect precisely the reverse to what was intended by the writers; for the arguments of the Deists, which were cited in order to be refuted, appeared to me much more forcibly than the refutation itself; in a word, I soon became a thorough Deist. ~ Benjamin Franklin

Then read from the treasured volume the poem of thy choice, and lend to the rhyme of the poet the beauty of thy voice. ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I have many books that I want to write; I'd like to think that I'll be around for another 20 years or so and write another dozen novels, probably some sort of imaginative literature ... Never again another seven-volume saga. ~ George R R Martin

Oh, do you have A Tale of Two Cities?"
"That silly thing? Men going around getting their heads chopped off for love? Ridiculus." Will unpeeled himself from the door and made his way toward Tessa where she stood by the bookshelves. He gestured expansively at the vast number of volumes all around him. "No, here you'll find all sorts of advice about how to chop off someone else's head if you need to; much more useful. ~ Cassandra Clare

Visibility limits your imagination of the ocean only as far as you can see, ten metres, fifteen at a stretch. But it's only in the utter black that you can feel the true scale, the volume and weight of that gaping unknowable drift between continents. ~ Lauren Beukes

Volume depends precisely on the writer's having been able to sit in a room every day, year after year, alone. ~ Susan Sontag

Invariably, I will be referred to Gleason Archer's massive Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties, a heavy volume that seeks to provide the reader with sound explanations for every conceivable puzzle found within the Bible - from whether God approved of Rahab's lie, to where Cain got his wife. (Note to well-meaning apologists: it's not always the best idea to present a skeptic with a five-hundred-page book listing hundreds of apparent contradictions in Scripture when the skeptic didn't even know that half of them existed before you recommended it.) ~ Rachel Held Evans

At incredible velocity and accelerating exponentially, the concentrated volume of quintessence escaped, transforming as it did so into a state known as phantom energy and following the artificial line of egress that had been provided. ~ Alan Dean Foster

Most men are followers, and implicitly rely upon the judgment of others. They mistake solemnity for wisdom, and regard a grave countenance as the title page and Preface to a most learned volume. So they are easily imposed upon by forms, strange garments, and solemn ceremonies. And when the teaching of parents, the customs of neighbors, and the general tongue approve and justify a belief or creed, no matter how absurd, it is hard even for the strongest to hold the citadel of his soul. In each country, in defence of each religion, the same arguments would be urged. ~ Robert Green Ingersoll

I've never raped or killed anybody, or hurt a kid. I've done all the more inept, high-volume stuff - like, "Whoops, sorry I came in your hair. Don't worry, I won't use your name when I tell this story on stage." ~ Henry Rollins

Listen to the beat.

Play the sound of his voice over and over again in your mind.

You try to turn down the volume but baby this speaker has no controls.

Just close your eyes.

Listen to the last notes of this solemn memory.

Live honey, can't forget, but you gotta live cause you gotta prove them all wrong about you, gotta show'um you won't be the one to slip between the earthquake lines forming in this dry dirt... ~ Elizabeth Heller

The Book of Books Within this ample volume lies The mystery of mysteries. Happiest they of human race To whom their God has given grace To read, to fear, to hope, to pray, To lift the latch, to force the way; But better had they ne'er been born That read to doubt or read to scorn. ~ Walter Scott

He brought down Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay and Jay Cantor's Krazy Kat, then grabbed an omnibus volume of Dick. "And this is the book that inspired the film we saw tonight." Tess stifled a laugh, but not the surge of affection behind it. Where some might have seen an almost woeful ignorance ~ Laura Lippman

Slim Volume [10w]
A slim volume of poetry appears plump if it's yours. ~ Beryl Dov

To be successful in the world of art you must, of course, have talent, although very small talents have gone very far in this age. Just as the microphone gave volume to voices that had none, so does the science of press-agentry magnify limited skills into highly saleable properties. ~ Marya Mannes

I rolled back onto the lawn and pressed my forehead to the ground again and made the noise that Father calls groaning. I make this noise when there is too much information coming into my head from the outside world. It is like when you are upset and you hold the radio against your ear and you tune it halfway between two stations so that all you get is white noise and then you turn the volume right up so that this is all can hear and then you know you are safe because you cannot hear anything else ~ Mark Haddon

In architecture volume can be seen to be either a portion of space contained and defined by wall, floor and ceiling or roof planes or a quantity of space displaced by the mass of the building. ~ Francis D.K. Ching

After I was caught returning at dawn from one such late-night escapade, my worried mother thoroughly interrogated me regarding every drug teenagers take, never suspecting that the most intoxicating thing I'd experienced, by far, was the volume of romantic poetry she'd handed me the previous week. Books became my closest confidants, finely ground lenses providing new views of the world. ~ Paul Kalanithi

Why books?"
Her brows rose. "I beg your pardon?"
"Why are they your vice?"
She set her plate down and wiped her hand on her skirts before reaching for the top volume on a stack of small, leather bound books nearby and extending it to him. "Go on."
He took it. "Now what?"
"Smell it." He tilted his head. She couldn't help but smile. "Do it."
He lifted it to his nose. Inhaled.
"Not like that," she said. "Really give it a smell."
He raised one brow but did as he was told.
"What do you smell?" Sophie asked.
"Leather and ink?"
She shook her head. "Happiness. That's what books smells like. Happiness. That's why I always wanted to have a book shop. What better life than to trade in happiness? ~ Sarah MacLean

I am a person who is trained to look other people in the eye. ~ Jack Nicholson

Well, tell me boy," she said, "what have you been reading?"
Craftily he picked his way across the waste land of printery,
naming as his favorites those books which he felt would win her
approval. As he had read everything, good and bad, that the town
library contained, he was able to make an impressive showing.
Sometimes she stopped him to question about a book--he rebuilt the
story richly with a blazing tenacity of detail that satisfied her
wholly. She was excited and eager--she saw at once how abundantly
she could feed this ravenous hunger for knowledge, experience,
wisdom. And he knew suddenly the joy of obedience: the wild
ignorant groping, the blind hunt, the desperate baffled desire was
now to be ruddered, guided, controlled. The way through the
passage to India, that he had never been able to find, would now be
charted for him. Before he went away she had given him a fat
volume of nine hundred pages, shot through with spirited engravings
of love and battle, of the period he loved best.
He was drowned deep at midnight in the destiny of the man who
killed the bear, the burner of windmills and the scourge of
banditry, in all the life of road and tavern in the Middle Ages, in
valiant and beautiful Gerard, the seed of genius, the father of
Erasmus. Eugene thought The Cloister and the Hearth the best story
he had ever read. ~ Thomas Wolfe

You don't see us, but we can see you. ~ Mervin Ignacio

Do you really keep a diary? I'd give anything to look at it. May I?
Oh, no. You see, it is simply a very young girl's record of her own thoughts and impressions, and consequently meant for publication. When it appears in volume form I hope you will order a copy. ~ Oscar Wilde

I was an early reader, and my grandmother, who as a child had been forbidden to read by a father who believed books to be frivolous time-wasters, delighted in putting her favorite volumes into her grandchildren's hands. ~ Alan Bradley

In the Food-Star parking lot, a young blond woman asks Ivy if she has been saved. "What are you talking about?" says Ivy. "Saved!" The young woman's smile brightens distinctly. "You know," she says, "have you found Jesus?" "There's no point in talking to me," says Ivy. When the young woman only blinks and ups her smile volume, Ivy says, "I don't believe in God." "Why not?" "Because I know that I am entirely insignificant, doomed to complete extinction, and I see no reason to pretend otherwise. ~ Jennifer Egan

In recent decades, Ireland in general and Dublin in particular, have been very fortunate in the quality of the historical attention they have received. During the extensive research required to write this book, I have been privileged to work with some of Ireland's most distinguished scholars, who have generously shared their knowledge with me and corrected my texts. Their kind contributions are mentioned in the Acknowledgements. Thanks to the scholarly work of the last quarter century, there has been a reevaluation of certain aspects of Ireland's history; and as a result, the story that follows may contain a number of surprises for many readers. I have provided a few additional notes in the Afterword at the end of this volume for those curious to know more. ~ Edward Rutherfurd

I'll make a soup out of sound, and I'll call it "Decibels." You can get a cup or a bowl, a small or a large, and they'll both have the same volume. ~ Jarod Kintz

Personally, I thought that one could thank the Lord at a lower volume and perhaps with less self-congratulation. ~ Piper Kerman

I look at the natural geological record as a history of the world imperfectly kept and written in a changing dialect; of this history we possess the last volume alone, relating only to two or three countries. Of this volume, only here and there a short chapter has been preserved; and of each page, only here and there a few lines. ~ Charles Darwin

I took the little radio from the kitchen and I went and sat in the spare room and I tuned it halfway between two stations so that all I could hear was white noise and I turned the volume up really loud and I held it against my ear and the sound filled my head and it hurt so that I couldn't feel any other sort of hurt, like the hurt in my chest ~ Mark Haddon