Sendker Books Quotes

Strange how things sometimes turn out. You grow up and experience things and read books and get to know people and places and arrive at an age that you used to believe in, and then in the end it seems that everything in life is a matter of luck, that your life and everyone's life is a small inside-out universe through which everything moves blindly and without purpose, a universe without a god, without rules, without purpose - chaos. And then something happens to shake that belief and you start to wonder whether you might have made a mistake, if there might in fact be something that gives meaning to the chaos, if there might be some secret thread that ties everything in your life together, a secret thread that ties your life to the lives of others. And you get scared. You get scared because while it might be truly frightening to live in chaos it's twice as frightening to know that you live not in chaos but in a world with laws and rules that you yourself will never learn, that you're incapable of learning - no matter how hard you try, you'll never find that thin secret thread, never grasp it, never find the thing that has both beginning and end. ~ Christos Ikonomou

And Marianne, who had the knack of finding her way in every house to the library, however it might be avoided by the family in general, soon procured herself a book. ~ Jane Austen

I will not allow books to prove any thing."
"But how shall we prove any thing?"
"We never shall. ~ Jane Austen

I've got a vendetta to destroy the Net, to make everyone go to the library. I love the organic thing of pen and paper, ink on canvas. I love going down to the library, the feel and smell of books. ~ Joseph Fiennes

I don't have any degrees. I went to Hunter College one year and New York University another year. It's just on the basis of my books that I've been hired at any of the places I've been. ~ Grace Paley

There's a lot of books that I've purchased simply because of the cover design. On the other hand, there's certain books that, even if I'm very curious about the content, I can't bring myself to buy if I really dislike the cover. ~ Adrian Tomine

The wooden shelves were tall and packed with worn covers of books read many times over. Pages were yellowed and paperbacks had arched spines like old sway-backed horses. It was an old folks' home for secondhand books, with that smell of old newsprint and slightly musty wood smell. ~ Nathan Fillion

Masters are great but books are better. He who has a library has a thousand teachers. Your Prophet said, "Seek lore, even if it be in China." Mine said, "God created us because He wanted to be known." Ignorant men think we are here to fight and make wars and to couple and have children. Nay, our job is to expand our knowledge. ~ Elif Shafak

The audience
the book's actual cast
quickly realized what had happened. The reason the movie dropped everything that made the novel real was because there was no way the parents who ran the studio would ever expose their children in the same black light the book did. The movie was begging for our sympathy whereas the book didn't give a shit. And attitudes about drugs and sex had shifted quickly from 1985 to 1987 (and a regime change at the studio didn't help) so the source material
surprisingly conservative despite its surface immorality
had to be reshaped. ~ Bret Easton Ellis

I had loved magic tricks from the time I was six or seven. I bought books on magic. I did magic acts for my parents and their friends. I was aiming for show business from early days, and magic was the poor man's way of getting in: you buy a trick for $2, and you've got an act. ~ Steve Martin

some could name things in their environment, others could count or say the alphabet, still others could recite whole books, word for word, from memory. However, they rarely used their speech to communicate with others. The ~ Sally Ozonoff

The year she died Victor did serious time among the books. He schooled himself from the boxes. He liked to read. He liked crashing down there in the basement with the smell of concrete and earth, liked reading his mother's old books, liked the idea that he had inherited more than his dark skin and dark hair from the woman who disappeared. ~ Sunil Yapa

For every book you buy, you should buy the time to read it. ~ Karl Lagerfeld

Carrying a small notebook with you always, in your pocket or purse, along with a reliable ballpoint pen will enable you to jot down spot observations and quick character sketches before the first sharp impressions fade away. You'll need all kinds of story actors, because even picture books can include a wide range of ages, relationships, occupations, and nationalities. Learn to observe and analyze swiftly, wherever you are. ~ Lee Wyndham

Your fine church has not contented itself with cutting off from the Scripture entire books, chapters, sentences and words, but what it has not dared to cut off altogether it has corrupted and violated by its translations. In order that the sectaries of this age may altogether pervert this first and most holy rule of our faith, they have not been satisfied with shortening it or with getting rid of so many beautiful parts, but they have turned and turned it about, each one as he chose, and instead of adjusting their ideas by this rule they have adopted it to the square of their own greater or less sufficiency. ~ Francis De Sales

Strive to preserve your health; and in this you will better succeed in proportion as you keep clear of the physicians, for their drugs are a kind of alchemy concerning which there are no fewer books than there are medicines. ~ Leonardo Da Vinci

And it's kind of my own fault too, in the sense that I've used my own life as a literary device so much. I think people feel very comfortable reviewing the idea of me, as opposed to what I've actually written. I find that most of the time, when people write about one of my books, they're really just writing about what they think I may or may not represent, as sort of this abstract entity. Is that unfair? Not really. If I put myself in this position where I'm going to kind of weave elements of memoir into almost everything, well, I suppose that's going to happen. ~ Chuck Klosterman

War never accomplishes anything. It's never going to look good in the history books. People are never going to look back and think, 'He started a lot of wars; what a great leader he was!' That's not the way it works. God knows how many more of these things we're going to need before it starts to sink in. ~ Alan Moore

Emma has been meaning to read more ever since she was twelve years old. I have seen a great many lists of her drawingup at various times of books that she meant to read regularly through - and very good lists they were - very well chosen, and very neatly arranged - sometimes alphabetically, and sometimes by some other rule. The list she drew up when only fourteen - I remember thinking it did her judgment so much credit, that I preserved it some time; and I dare say she may have made out a very good list now. But I have done with expecting any course of steady reading from Emma. She will never submit to any thing requiring industry and patience, and a subjection of the fancy to the understanding. ~ Jane Austen

Books took, in her young life, the place of companions and childish games. She read a great deal without guidance or discrimination, and gained all her ideas on life, all her faith, all her ideals and aims and aspirations from books. Books stood between her and reality, and hid from her those deep truths that can never be learnt from even the greatest literary production, but can only be understood after long years of untiring observation and experience. It was in books also that Irene found her ideal of the man she could love. Her hero was an exceedingly complicated character. ~ Aimee Dostoyevsky

There has always been, for me, this other world, this second world to fall back on
a more reliable world in so far as it does not hide that its premise is illusion. ~ Graham Swift

The most inspiring objects are books. I have about 5,000 volumes in my home library. It's an unending source of visuals and ideas. ~ Maira Kalman

'Pretty Little Liars' - my sister and I read the books, so we stuck to it for the first season, but it started to kind of drift off; so did we. ~ Gracie Gold

I get hundreds of emails daily and a lot of feedback from people that are reading or have read my books. When I'm writing, or in my daily life, I just think of the work. I love to tell a story, but I might work with a story to make it the best I can without thinking of how many people will read it or if it will influence anybody. ~ Isabel Allende

A man is known by the books he reads, by the company he keeps, by the praise he gives, by his dress, by his tastes, by his distastes, by the stories he tells, by his gait, by the notion of his eye, by the look of his house, of his chamber; for nothing on earth is solitary but every thing hath affinities infinite. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

I'm a complete democrat in terms of who buys my books. ~ Julian Barnes

What good is a book that does not even transport us beyond all books? ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

The face of the water, in time, became a wonderful book- a book that was a dead language to the uneducated passenger, but which told its mind to me without reserve, delivering its most cherished secrets as clearly as if it uttered them with a voice. And it was not a book to be read once and thrown aside, for it had a new story to tell every day. ~ Mark Twain

I've been sifting through the layers
of dusty books and faded papers.
They tell a story I used to know;
one that happened so long ago. ~ Kate Wolf

There are books that change our perspectives and books that change our personalities. ~ Carla H. Krueger

I began to read the Holy Scriptures upon my knees, laying aside all other books, and praying over, if possible, every line and word. This proved meat indeed and drink indeed to my soul. I daily received fresh life, light and power from above. ~ George Whitefield

The key to the Hercules Method is to focus your mind, body and spirit towards one goal. By bringing all three into alignment, the physical enthusiast can bring all of them under conscious control. Such control is the key to change. ~ Justin Jordan

The sessions with Mr. Dubois continued, but it was in the private parlor of Abigail Braddock that Sarah Biddle received the greatest knowledge, for in Mrs. Braddock's private parlor Sarah Biddle learned not only to read books, but also to love them. ~ Stephanie Grace Whitson

It is easy to see the glow but hard to recognize the awakening of silence. ~ Dejan Stojanovic

I think I would like to write screenplays, books, really anything. ~ Kara Hayward

I'd seen the older children in class look into books for invisible traces, as if they were driven by the same force and, sinking deeper into silence, they were able to draw from the dead paper something that seemed alive. ~ Muriel Barbery

The fear of death is presumably a survival instinct, Tin Win later thought. It must be an essential part of us, of every living creature. At the same time, we must transcend it to take our leave in peace. He found this an irresolvable contradiction. ~ Jan-Philipp Sendker

The appeal of travel books is also the sense that you are different, an outsider, almost like the Robinson Crusoe or Christopher Columbus notion of being the first person in a new place. ~ Paul Theroux

Books should to one of these fours ends conduce, for wisdom, piety, delight, or use. ~ John Denham

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

Any environment, any single life is in a continuous state of change. This is just more obvious when you pay attention to earthworms. Their work may seem unspectacular at first. They don't chirp or sing, they don't gallop or soar, they don't hunt or make tools or write books. But they do something just as powerful: they consume, they transform, they change the earth. ~ Amy Stewart