Skip The Rest Of The Book Quotes

Everything creepy and Southern isn't Faulknerian, just like everything annoying isn't Kafkaesque. ~ Scott Spencer

I've read somewhere in a book when something happens that is unbearable to you, sometimes, time stops. Like your inner clock just stops working, even if the world keeps spinning you will stand still for the rest of your life. ~ Katja Michael

(I)f France's righteous bloviating against war makes them your Dashboard Saint of International Integrity, it's either because you are sand-poundingly ignorant of how the world works or it's because you think France's self-interest is more important than America's. If the former applies to you, read a book. If it's the latter, maybe you should move there along with Alec Baldwin, Robert Altman, and the rest of the crowd who promised to leave a long time ago. But whatever you do, don't call France's position principled, because that just insults us both. ~ Jonah Goldberg

Once I am sure there's nothing going on
I step inside, letting the door thud shut.
Another church: matting, seats, and stone,
And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut
For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff
Up at the holy end; the small neat organ;
And a tense, musty, unignorable silence,
Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off
My cycle-clips in awkward reverence.

Move forward, run my hand around the font.
From where I stand, the roof looks almost new -
Cleaned, or restored? Someone would know: I don't.
Mounting the lectern, I peruse a few
Hectoring large-scale verses, and pronounce
'Here endeth' much more loudly than I'd meant.
The echoes snigger briefly. Back at the door
I sign the book, donate an Irish sixpence,
Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.

Yet stop I did: in fact I often do,
And always end much at a loss like this,
Wondering what to look for; wondering, too,
When churches will fall completely out of use
What we shall turn them into, if we shall keep
A few cathedrals chronically on show,
Their parchment, plate and pyx in locked cases,
And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep.
Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?

Or, after dark, will dubious women come
To make their children touch a particular stone;
Pick simples for a cancer; or on some
Advised night see walking a dea ~ Philip Larkin

Do you know the rest?"Doug asked me expectantly.
"What?The Achilles was a dysfuctional psychopath? Yeah I know that."
"Well, yeah, everyone knows that. I mean the really cool part. About Thetis and Peleus." I shook my head, and he continued, professor-like, "Thetis was a sea mymph, and Peleus was a mortal who loved her. Only, when he went to woo her, she was a real bitch about it."
"How so?"
"She was a shape-shifter."
I nearly dropped the book. "What?"
Doug nodded. "He approached her, and she turned into all sorts of shit to scare him off - wild animals, forces of natures, monsters, whatever."
"What ... what'd he do?"
"He held on. Grabbed her and wouldn't let go through all of those terrible transformations. No matter what she turned into, he just held on. ~ Richelle Mead

Because when, previously, they had wrenched a book out of his hands, he had stared into space so disconcertingly it made the rest of us feel like putting a bag over his head. Sometimes, if he didn't have a book, to occupy Joseph's eyes I would plant a cereal-box side panel in front of him, and his eyes would slide over and attach to the words, as if they could not do anything but roam and float in the air until words and numbers anchored them back into our world. ~ Aimee Bender

There was a grumpy librarian in the library. I could tell that he was the librarian because he seemed to be made of books. I told him that we needed information, and he got us some butterfly nets and sent us up to the top floor of the library.

I wondered why we were carrying nets. Valentine didn't know.

The book I wanted was pretty obvious. It was called A History of Everything.

Finding it was easy. Catching it, however, was not. The moment I reached for it, the whole shelfful of books took off into the air, fluttering like pigeons, and suddenly I knew what the butterfly nets were for.

I waved the net about and eventually I caught A History of Everything. As soon as I'd got it, all the rest of the books flapped back to their shelf, all except one, a little red-covered book, which fluttered over my head happily. ~ Neil Gaiman

I find research fascinating and always conduct some before I begin writing, and then fill in the rest as needed. I read stacks of books and also had the opportunity to travel to England to do more research. ~ Julie Klassen

I chanced on a wonderful book by Marius von Senden, called Space and Sight. . . . For the newly sighted, vision is pure sensation unencumbered by meaning: "The girl went through the experience that we all go through and forget, the moment we are born. She saw, but it did not mean anything but a lot of different kinds of brightness." . . . In general the newly sighted see the world as a dazzle of color-patches. They are pleased by the sensation of color, and learn quickly to name the colors, but the rest of seeing is tormentingly difficult. . . . The mental effort involved . . . proves overwhelming for many patients. It oppresses them to realize, if they ever do at all, the tremendous size of the world, which they had previously conceived of as something touchingly manageable. . . . A disheartening number of them refuse to use their new vision, continuing to go over objects with their tongues, and lapsing into apathy and despair. . . . On the other hand, many newly sighted people speak well of the world, and teach us how dull is our own vision. ~ Annie Dillard

I read library books as fast as I could go, rushing them home in the basket of my bicycle. From the minute I reached our house, I started to read. Every book I seized on, from "Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue at Camp Rest-a-While" to "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea," stood for the devouring wish to read being instantly granted. I knew this was bliss, knew it at the time. Taste isn't nearly so important; it comes in its own time. ~ Eudora Welty

For most of us the rules of English grammar are at best a dimly remembered thing. But even for those who make the rules, grammatical correctitude sometimes proves easier to urge than to achieve. Among the errors cited in this book are a number committed by some of the leading authorities of this century. If men such as Fowler and Bernstein and Quirk and Howard cannot always get their English right, is it reasonable to expect the rest of us to? ~ Bill Bryson

Those who live in retirement, whose lives have fallen amid the seclusion of schools or of other walled-in and guarded dwellings, are liable to be suddenly and for a long while dropped out of the memory of their friends, the denizens of a freer world. Unaccountably, perhaps, and close upon some space of unusually frequent intercourse - some congeries of rather exciting little circumstances, whose natural sequel would rather seem to be the quickening than the suspension of communication - there falls a stilly pause, a wordless silence, a long blank of oblivion. Unbroken always is this blank; alike entire and unexplained. The letter, the message once frequent, are cut off; the visit, formerly periodical, ceases to occur; the book, paper, or other token that indicated remembrance, comes no more.

Always there are excellent reasons for these lapses, if the hermit but knew them. Though he is stagnant in his cell, his connections without are whirling in the very vortex of life. That void interval which passes for him so slowly that the very clocks seem at a stand, and the wingless hours plod by in the likeness of tired tramps prone to rest at milestones - that same interval, perhaps, teems with events, and pants with hurry for his friends.

The hermit - if he be a sensible hermit - will swallow his own thoughts, and lock up his own emotions during these weeks of inward winter. He will know that Destiny designed him to imitate, on occasion, the dormouse, and he wi ~ Charlotte Bronte

I'm afraid that you're looking for your next chapter, and I'm looking for the whole rest of the book. ~ Kate Stayman-London

The corporate myth is over. If you've spent years climbing the corporate ladder,
have you ever stopped to notice the view? What view, you ask? The rear end of the
person in front of you. That's what you get to look forward to. If that's the way you
want to view the rest of your life, then this book probably isn't for you. But if you
are sick and tired of looking at someone else's behind, then read on. ~ Robert T. Kiyosaki

I start reading every Elizabeth Wurtzel essay with optimism, like maybe finally she put her talent to writing about something than herself, and by the end of paragraph three that optimism has fled. So maybe you know Wurtzel has written an essay for New York Magazine? Probably you know, because for whatever reason, Wurtzel provokes a deep need in people to talk about how much they hate Wurtzel. So the comments are hundreds deep, Twitter is ablaze, and here I am, writing this blog post.

And actually, she reminds me of Mary MacLane. She was a 19-year-old girl who wrote a memoir called I Await the Devil's Coming in 1901 and it was an instant success. I wrote the introduction to the upcoming reissue, and there I talk about what a deeply interesting book it was. Not only "for its time," but also it's just kind of visceral and nasty and snarling, yet elegantly written.

I kept thinking about MacLane, after the introduction got handed in and things went off to press. But this time, it wasn't her writing that interested me, it was the way she never wrote anything very interesting ever again. She got stunted, somehow, winning all of that acclaim for being a young, sour thing. And I wondered if it was the fame that stunted her, because she spent the rest of her career spitting out copies of the memoir that made her famous. And it worked, until it didn't. ~ Jenna Crispin

I turn back to see that he is holding out the book, offering it to me. My eyes make contact with the book at first and then travel up his very muscular, very athletic arm, coming to rest on the utterly beautiful tattoo that is wrapped around it. I can't see the head of the angel, but the detail of its wings as they sheathe his bicep and the sword it holds within its grasp are simply stunning. ~ A.J. Walters

It was immediately clear that the book had been undisturbed for a very long time, perhaps even since it had been laid to rest. The librarian fetched a checked duster, and wiped away the dust, a black, thick, tenacious Victorian dust, a dust composed of smoke and fog particles accumulated before the Clean Air acts. ~ A.S. Byatt

And, finally, about silence - An idle or unnecessary word is the
same thing as excessive speech; hence, Augustine says in the first
book of his
Retractions,
"I cannot call it excessive speech when what
is said is needed, no matter how many words are used."
12
Solomon
tells us, "In excessive speech sin shall not be wanting, but he that
refraineth his lips is most wise."
13
Where
sin shall not be wanting,
we
must especially beware and guard against the condition all the more
when it is so dangerous and difficult to avoid. This is what Saint
Benedict did, saying, "Monks should study silence at all times."
14
Studying silence
is something more than simply
keeping silent,
for
study is the pointed application of the mind to accomplish a given
task. We do many things in negligence or even against our will, but
we cannot
study
a thing without acting with purpose and will
The apostle James, however, tells us how difficult it is to curb the
tongue, but also how beneficial it will be. "We all offend in many
things," he says,
but if any man offend not in word, then he is a perfect
man. . . . For every nature of beasts and birds and serpents
and the rest is tamed, and hath been tamed, by the nature of
man, but the tongue no man can tame. . . . The tongue is
indeed a small part of the body . . . but see how small a fire
Pierre Abelard

How I long to feel the weight of a book in my hand. How I long to turn a page, and pass through the print as you'd pass through a door, into that world of wise and lofty spirits, of strange animals, of noble deeds and faraway cities. If only I could crawl into a book and stay there for the rest of my life. ~ Catherine Jinks

He couldn't have known it, but among the original run of The History of Love, at least one copy was destined to change a life.

This particular book was one of the last of the two thousand to be printed, and sat for longer than the rest in a warehouse in the outskirts of Santiago, absorbing the humidity. From there it was finally sent to a bookstore in Buenos Aires. The careless owner hardly noticed it, and for some years it languished on the shelves, acquiring a pattern of mildew across the cover. It was a slim volume, and its position on the shelf wasn't exactly prime: crowded on the left by an overweight biography of a minor actress, and on the right by the once-bestselling novel of an author that everyone had since forgotten, it hardly left its spine visible to even the most rigorous browser. When the store changed owners it fell victim to a massive clearance, and was trucked off to another warehouse, foul, dingy, crawling with daddy longlegs, where it remained in the dark and damp before finally being sent to a small secondhand bookstore not far from the home of the writer Jorge Luis Borges.

The owner took her time unpacking the books she'd bought cheaply and in bulk from the warehouse. One morning, going through the boxes, she discovered the mildewed copy of The History of Love. She'd never heard of it, but the title caught her eye. She put it aside, and during a slow hour in the shop she read the opening chapter, called 'The Age of Silence.'
Nicole Krauss

All you really need to do is let the comic book geeks know and the rest of the world will follow. ~ David Levithan

You'll see the "going big" theme running through everything I talk about in this section, as well as the rest of the book. You may be just ~ Kate White

Tyrion, Jon, Dany, Stannis and Melisandre, Davos Seaworth, and all the rest of the characters you love or love to hate will be along next year (I devoutly hope) in A Dance with Dragons, which will focus on events along the Wall and across the sea, just as the present book focused on King's Landing. - George R. R. Martin June 2005 ~ George R R Martin

I was going back and reading Marconi's last book again, and there's this part that
always gets me. He points out that the amount of the universe a human can experience is
statistically, like, zero percent. You've got this huge universe, trillions of trillions of miles of empty
space between galaxies, and all a human can perceive is a little tunnel a few feet wide and a few feet
long in front of our eyes. So he says we don't really live in the universe at all, we live inside our
brains. All we can see is like a blurry little pinhole in a blindfold, and the rest is filled in by our
imagination. So whatever we think of the world, whether you think the world is cruel or good or
cold or hot or wet or dry or big or small, that comes entirely from inside your head and nowhere
else. ~ David Wong

In learning general relativity, and then in teaching it to classes at Berkeley and MIT, I became dissatisfied with what seemed to be the usual approach to the subject. I found that in most textbooks geometric ideas were given a starring role, so that a student...would come away with an impression that this had something to do with the fact that space-time is a Riemannian [curved] manifold. Of course, this was Einstein's point of view, and his preeminent genius necessarily shapes our understanding of the theory he created. However, I believe that the geometrical approach has driven a wedge between general relativity and [Quantum Field Theory]. As long as it could be hoped, as Einstein did hope, that matter would eventually be understood in geometrical terms, it made sense to give Riemannian geometry a primary role in describing the theory of gravitation. But now the passage of time has taught us not to expect that the strong, weak, and electromagnetic interactions can be understood in geometrical terms, and too great an emphasis on geometry can only obscuret he deep connections between gravitation and the rest of physics...[My] book sets out the theory of gravitation according to what I think is its inner logic as a branch of physics, and not according to its historical development. It is certainly a historical fact that when Albert Einstein was working out general relativity, there was at hand a preexisting mathematical formalism, that of Riemannian geometry, that he could an ~ Steven Weinberg

[He] taught me that a book is never finished and that, with luck, it's the book that leaves us so we don't spend the rest of Eternity rewriting it. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zafon

The future of English fiction may rest with this Unknown Public - a reading public of three millions which lies right out of the pale of true literary civilization - which is now waiting to be taught the difference between a good book and a bad. ~ Wilkie Collins

Now Kate is a senior member of the royal family and on the brink of motherhood, it is time to look at the woman behind the name. She is the first person for 350 years without aristocratic blood to marry an heir to the throne, and if it wasn't for tragedy on both sides of her family, she would probably not be in the position she is today. However, circumstances before she was born and the support her parents gave her only got her so far - the rest has been up to her.
Although she was christened Catherine, she started to be called Kate at university and Kate is what William calls her. It became how she was referred to in the press, and therefore how she is known all around the world, and so that is how she will be referred to in this book. One day she will be Queen Catherine, but for now, she is known and loved as Kate. ~ Marcia Moody

The rest of the story from Acts 1:8 explains that Christ-followers have a mission while here on earth. They are to be Christ's witnesses all over this planet. It's as if Christ said, "Think you're missing the book smarts, the street smarts, the looks, the talent, or the speaking ability to accomplish this mission? Don't be concerned with those things, because you have my mountain-moving, life-transforming, death-defying power on your side." ~ Bill Hybels

Hackers, makers, programmers, engineers, nerds, techies - what we'll call "geeks" for the rest of the book (deal with it) - we're a creative lot who don't like to be told what to do. ~ Jeff Potter

A man who writes a book, thinks himself wiser or wittier than the rest of mankind; he supposes that he can instruct or amuse them, and the publick to whom he appeals, must, after all, be the judges of his pretensions. ~ Samuel Johnson

Most men are satisfied if they read or hear read, and perchance have been convicted by the wisdom of one good book, the Bible, and for the rest of their lives vegetate and dissipate their faculties in what is called easy reading. ~ Henry David Thoreau

What I would really love to happen to me would be if I came upon an idea that would keep me busy until I die so I wouldn't have to go through the business of thinking up a new book. But I wouldn't mind writing a long book which is going to occupy me for the rest of my life. ~ Philip Roth

Ian, about Elizabeth Cameron. Her duenna said some things-"
That alarmingly pleasant yet distant smile returned to Ian's face. "I'll spare you further conversation, Duncan. It's over."
"The discussion or-"
"All of it."
"It didn't look over to me!" Duncan snapped, nudged to the edge by Ian's infuriating calm. "That scene I witnessed-"
"You witnessed the end."
He said that, Duncan noted, with the same deadly finality, the same amused calm with which he'd spoken of his grandfather. It was as if he'd resolved matters to his complete satisfaction in his own mind, and nothing and no one could ever invade the place where he put them to rest. Based on Ian's last reaction to the matter of Elizabeth Cameron, she was now relegated to the same category as the Duke of Stanhope. Frustrated, Duncan jerked the bottle of brandy off the table at Ian's elbow and splashed some into his glass. "There's something I've never told you," he said angrily.
"And that is?" Ian inquired.
"I hate it when you turn all pleasant and amused. I'd rather see you furious! At least then I know I still have a chance of reaching you."
To Duncan's boundless annoyance, Ian merely picked up his book and started reading again. ~ Judith McNaught

Death makes me realize how deeply I have internalized the agnosticism I preach in all my books. I consider dogmatic belief and dogmatic denial very childish forms of conceit in a world of infinitely whirling complexity. None of us can see enough from one corner of space-time to know "all" about the rest of space-time. ~ Robert Anton Wilson

Too many memories of her were crammed inside of me, and as soon as one of them found the slightest opening, the rest would force their way out in an endless stream, an unstoppable flood. ~ Haruki Murakami

You can't know a book until you come to the end of it, and then all the rest must be modified to fit that. ~ Maxwell Perkins

At whatever point one opens Gift from the Sea, to any chapter or page, the author's words offer a chance to breathe and to live more slowly. The book makes it possible to quiet down and rest in the present, no matter what the circumstances may be. Just to read it - a little of it or in its entirety - is to exist for a while in a different and more peaceful tempo. Even the sway and flow of language and cadence seem to me to make reference to the easy, inevitable movements of the sea. ~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh

BOOK THE FIRST Which treats of the Night of Sense. STANZA THE FIRST On a dark night, Kindled in love with yearnings - oh, happy chance! - I went forth without being observed, My house being now at rest. ~ San Juan De La Cruz

What were her abilities? She played the pianoforte passably well even though it didn't interest her. She loved to read and could spend the rest of her life in a library. She'd written a book, and her imagination was such that she could transport herself from the wilds of Scotland to anywhere. ~ Karen Ranney

It was a basic plot in any number of her books: girl strikes out, makes good, finds love, gets revenge. In that order. The making good and striking out part I liked. The rest would just be bonus. ~ Sarah Dessen

Ah, God, it were an easy Matter to choose a Calling had
one all Time to live in! I should be fifty Years a
Barrister, fifty a Physician, fifty a Clergyman, fifty a
Soldier! Aye, and fifty a Thief, and fifty a Judge! All
Roads are fine Roads, beloved Sister, none more than
another, so that with one Life to spend I am a Man
bare-bumm'd at Taylors with Cash for but one pair of
Breeches, or a Scholar at Brookstalls with Money for a
single Book: to choose ten were no Trouble; to choose one,
impossible! All Trades, all Crafts, all Professions are
wondrous, but none is finer than the rest together. I
cannot choose, sweet Anna: twixt Stools my Breech falleth
to the Ground! ~ John Barth

CUSTOMER: Which was the first Harry Potter book?
BOOKSELLER: The Philosopher's Stone.
CUSTOMER: And the second?
BOOKSELLER: The Chamber of Secrets.
CUSTOMER: I'l take The Chamber of Secrets. I don't want The Philosopher's Stone.
BOOKSELLER: Have you already read that one?
CUSTOMER: No, but with series of books I always find they take a while to really get going. I don't want to waste my time with the useless introductory stuff at the beginning.
BOOKSELLER: The story in Harry Potter actually starts right away. Personally, I do recommend that you start with the first book – and it's very good.
CUSTOMER: Are you working on commission?
BOOKSELLER: No.
CUSTOMER: Right. How many books are there in total?
BOOKSELLER: Seven.
CUSTOMER: Exactly. I'm not going to waste my money on the first book when there are so many others to buy. I'l take the second one.
BOOKSELLER: . . . If you're sure.
(One week later, the customer returns)
BOOKSELLER: Hi, did you want to buy a copy of The Prisoner of Azkaban?
CUSTOMER: What's that?
BOOKSELLER: It's the book after The Chamber of Secrets.
CUSTOMER: Oh, no, definitely not. I found that book far too confusing. I ask you, how on earth are children supposed to understand it if I can't? I mean, who the heck is that Voldemort guy anyway? No. I'm not going to bother with the rest.
BOOKSELLER: . . . ~ Jen Campbell

The old man was peering intently at the shelves. 'I'll have to admit that he's a very competent scholar.'
Isn't he just a librarian?' Garion asked, 'somebody who looks after books?'
That's where all the rest of scholarship starts, Garion. All the books in the world won't help you if they're just piled up in a heap. ~ David Eddings

The challenges for the writer included deciding which secrets were most important, how many secrets revealed were too many, which characters should know which information when, and how the revelations would impact the rest of the family. All of those questions eventually lead back to one: What's at the heart of this book? Where does it want to focus, or toward what does it want to lead us? ~ Peter Turchi

I love so many books and authors that it's hard to name just a few, but I'm always particularly excited when new books by Alice Hoffman, John Crowley, Joanne Harris, Elizabeth Knox, and Patricia McKillip come out. (And, of course, books by Ellen [Kushner], and Holly [Black], and the rest of the Bordertown crew!) I'm impatiently looking forward to Susanna Clarke's next book too.
Aside from writing and reading, my favorite things to do are paint, walk in the countryside with my dog, and listen to music
especially when it's live and it's played by friends. Fortunately there's a lot of live music where I live. ~ Terri Windling

I read The Vegetarian and fell in love with it. A year later, I was invited to go and speak at the London Book Fair (which I'd never even heard of before), as they were gearing up for Korea being the market focus country in 2014. I met Max Porter there, Kang's editor at Portobello, sent him my sample, and the rest is history. ~ Deborah Smith

He had only three days off, which meant our honeymoon was only two days. We went to Lake Tahoe, and one of the highlights was a snowmobile tour in the mountains. In theory, we had to ride our separate vehicles very placidly, with no horsing around. But Chris-or maybe it was me-discovered that by maneuvering carefully, it was possible to splash up a lot of snow, and as we went up to the top we managed to cover each other with snow. It was the sort of simple joy you vow to repeat as often as you can, even as you realize the moment will be impossible to duplicate.
They were a great two days, though I wished there were more.


I happened to be reading a book around that time that theorized that humans live through many lives. I asked Chris what he thought about the concept. Did he think he had many past lives?
"Oh, I don't know," he said. "That's not in the Bible."
"No, it's not."
"I guess anything's possible," he told me after a little thought. "I don't think we have all the answers. But I do know this: if we get more than one life, I can't wait to spend the rest of them with you. ~ Taya Kyle

What will I write in this beautiful book?
She carried the book to class for the rest of the day, and that night she put it under her pillow, still blank. She liked it blank right now, liked to know that it was waiting, listening. Just like her friends. ~ Simone St. James