Starting A Book Quotes

I make personal appearances around the country. I'm starting a book tour now, and I may be coming to Toronto with the Learning Annex, which I'm doing all through the United States, so that may come up just before Christmas. ~ Burt Ward

Writing is very good for household tasks. Because you'd rather fix a dripping tap or paint an old wall - you'd rather do almost anything than sit and write. I have to reach a point of obsession in order to write, and so I find starting a book incredibly difficult. ~ Damon Galgut

I have a bad habit of starting a book and reading just far enough to make sure I want to read it and look forward to reading and then putting it to one side while I break the ice on a couple more. In that way, when I feel dull and depressed which is too often, I know I have something to read late at night when I do most of it and not that horrid blank feeling of not having anybody to talk to or listen to. ~ Raymond Chandler

Starting a book is like boarding a train to go on holiday. ~ Antonio Iturbe

I live intimately with my characters before starting a book. I cut out pictures of them for my wall. I do time lines for each major character and a time line for the entire novel: What is going on in the world as my characters struggle with their problems? ~ Walter Dean Myers

I have an idea and a first line
and that suggests the rest of it. I have little concept of what I'm going to say, or where it's going. I have some idea of how long it's going to be
but not what will happen or what the themes will be. That's the intrigue of doing it
it's a process of discovery. You get to discover what you're going to say and what it's going to mean. ~ T.C. Boyle

[On Jason Mashak's book SALTY AS A LIP, as reviewed in The Prague Post:] Mashak amalgamates various national, historical and religious traditions into a myth-mash that illuminates many sects' fanatical compartmentalizing, and the fact that so many religions and philosophies share similar goals, if not roots. ~ Stephan Delbos

It would seem that for my master a book is not a thing to be read, but a device to bring on slumber: a typographical sleeping-pill, a paginated security blanket. ~ Soseki Natsume

TEN THINGS THAT PEOPLE WHO DIDN'T READ THE FIRST BOOK REALLY OUGHT TO KNOW.

I. One day, your father and mother were hugging, and they began to have special feelings. Warm feelings that tingled in their private places. It is likely they weren't wearing any clothes. At any rate, they began to rub against each other like two sticks trying to start a fire, and nine months later, you were born. If this is news to you, please put this book down now. There may well be big bad wolves and evil witches and fairies in the pages that follow, but I promise you, this isn't a children's story. ~ Elliott James

I always encourage authors (especially new authors) to be as generous as we are blessed. For one thing, it is a way to help people. For another, it is a seed one is planting for the life of the book. Someone gave it to someone who gave it to someone else. ~ Andy Andrews

I look at my parents
the way mothers look at their toddlers.
I take every chance
to witness them undisturbed.
To study every detail
as if sitting for an important exam.
I take note of their hands,
the curves of their ears, the way they
envelop a room and greet others.
The way their souls shine through
when they speak of something they love,
like a candid photograph
unveiling beauty and truth.
Even though I am present
in the same space as them,
I am distanced
because of the intensity of my love.
Every heartbeat reminds me
of the ephemeral nature of our bodies
and the blessedness of these moments
until my father looks up from his book
and catches me smiling.
And like a child he is bewildered for a moment
and smiles back. ~ Kamand Kojouri

Editing requires you to be always open, always responding. It is very important, for example, not to allow yourself to want the writer to write a certain kind of book. Sometimes that's hard. ~ Robert Gottlieb

I'm not saying we had a playroom, but I'm not shocked by [the sex in the book]. It's essential to tell the story. I can't believe films that don't invoke a sexual side of it. So it works for me. ~ Jamie Dornan

Language is a theme in the whole book, no? I mean it ends with the title poem about words are all we have. I guess midrash makes sense. How does it change in the course of the sequence? Well, God is into No and into Stasis/Nouns. Adam and Eve, in order to be in this world (and get this world going) must choose verbs. Which is to gain sex but also to choose death and all else that goes with change. To choose becoming over being. ~ Gregory Orr

If I have something I want to say that is too difficult for adults to swallow, then I write it in a book for children. Children still haven't closed themselves off with fear of the unknown, fear of revolution, or the scramble for security. They are still familiar with the inborn vocabulary of myth ~ Madeleine L'Engle

The Light in the Labyrinth is a beautifully written book, a gem. I savoured every word; words written with so much 'colour'. Even though I know the story of Queen Anne Boleyn, Dunn's perspective on her last days is missing in so many other books of the genre. Dunn gives grace to the history and an honest, and very compassionate look at Anne's last days. I cried in the end, shedding tears for the young Kate, Anne and her little Bess. I have not yet read a Tudor book that has moved me to tears, as this wonderful journey does. Dunn's dedication and research shines through in this unforgettable book, a book not just for young readers, but also for all." - Lara Salzano, avid Tudor reader. ~ Wendy J. Dunn

In my schoolboy reveries, we were always two fugitives riding on the spine of a book, eager to escape into worlds of fiction and secondhand dreams. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zafon

In order for my live performance to work, which is about generating a focused energy for about an hour and a half, it is necessary for me to listen and take in someone else's focused energy the day of or the day before the live show. That can transpire through a conversation, or inspiration can occur by looking through any type of visual book which sparks a narrative. That narrative then becomes today's seed and can then take root in music terms, where a sonic tree begins to grow. ~ Tori Amos

Here's a secret. Many novelists, if they are pressed and if they are being honest, will admit that the finished book is a rather rough translation of the book they'd intended to write. ~ Michael Cunningham

I am interested in the literature and religion of ancient Israel. I focus on biblical law in its ancient Near Eastern context and on the way that biblical law was later reinterpreted in the Dead Sea Scrolls and other Second Temple literature. I have also explored the relation of the Bible to later western intellectual history. In my latest book, A More Perfect Torah: At the Intersection of Philology and Hermeneutics in Deuteronomy and the Temple Scroll, I explore the relationship between biblical composition history and its reception history at Qumran and in rabbinic literature.

At the University of Minnesota, I have department affiliations with the Center for Jewish Studies and the Program in Religious Studies and am also an affiliated faculty member of the Law School. ~ Bernard M. Levinson

In 1960 I published a book that attempted to direct attention to the possibility of a thermonuclear war, to ways of reducing the likelihood of such a war, and to methods for coping with the consequences should war occur despite our efforts to avoid it. ~ Herman Kahn

People who learn primarily from reading and principally communicate through writing generally possess a highly developed internal world, a more refined sense of self-control, and a greater sensitivity to honoring social boundaries. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Whenever people ask me, "How are your books doing?" or, "How is your book doing?" I just say, "It's okay." I mean, what am I supposed to say? I'm a writer; that means I write because I need to write, because that's how I breathe and that's how I bleed. I'm not an author; I'm a writer. Even when I don't want to write; I can't stop! So, how are my books doing? The hell I know! The moment after I publish one book, I'm writing another one! I don't know how my books are doing! I just know that I'm writing them! I'm a writer, I'm a writer. I'm not an author. ~ C. JoyBell C.

Those who don't give up physical books for a Kindle love their self-image as a book lover more than they love books. ~ Malav Karkar

Can we teach them that they are the placebo? In other words, can we convince them that instead of investing their belief in the known, like a sugar pill or a saline injection, they can place their belief in the unknown and make the unknown known? And really that's what this book is about: empowering you to realize that you have all the biological and neurological machinery to do exactly that. My goal is to demystify these concepts with the new science of the way things really are so that it is within the reach of more people to change their internal states in order to create positive changes in their health and in their external world. If that sounds too amazing to be true, then as I've said, toward the end of the book you'll see some of the research compiled from our workshops to show you exactly how it's possible. What ~ Joe Dispenza

Ah! Books don't come all that often, at least not my way. Andre Malraux's The Psychology of Art was one of them. It was published just after the war. It was too expensive to buy but I located a copy of this luminous book in the Manchester Art Gallery; and i had to make several journeys by motor-cycle, often through sleet and snow until I had finished it. From time to time I wanted to get up on the table to proclaim its truth to all around me, or slap my next-desk neighbour over the back and say, 'There you are; just get hold of that!' Once I nearly did but just in time I noticed he was reading a text on the structure of plastics. By now, of course, I know that some people can get as much aesthetic pleasure out of contemplating the formula for a long molecule as others do from beholding a mural by Piero della Francesca. Technologists have their Ah! Moments too! ~ Vernon Sproxton

Starting in a hollowed log of wood - some thousand miles up a river, with an infinitesimal prospect of returning! I ask myself 'Why?' and the only echo is 'damned fool!... the Devil drives. ~ Richard Francis Burton

Where I have seen good I shall speak of it with pleasure, and where I have seen the reverse, I shall try to be silent; for a book is meant to give pleasure, and pain that is inflicted in black and white lasts for ever. ~ Isabel Burton

Billie turned back to Geroge. "He's an idiot."
He held up his hands. "You will find no argument here."
"The plight of the younger son," Andrew said with a sigh.
Billie rolled her eyes, tipping he read toward Andrew as she said to George, "Don't encourage him."
"To be ganged up upon," Andrew went on, "never respected..."
George crane his neck, trying to read the title of Billie's book. "What are you reading?"
"And," Andrew continued, "apparently ignored as well. ~ Julia Quinn

So maybe it's just a part of who we all are, and always were. My worry now, though, is that we are starting to nurture these neuroses of ours, and treating them like pets. That can't be a good thing. ~ Craig Finn

Room. "Glad to see you're awake," he said. "I was starting to think it was foolish to try and heal you without using blood - with wounds like that, anyway - but you proved me wrong." Will sat at a small table across from her. His silhouette was outlined by a roaring fire. The ~ H.M. Ward

Allan was next up, and the bidding was going strong as he got into the fun of the auction, flexing his muscles and smiling brightly.
"Way to go, SEAL!" Lori and Rose shouted.
"Take off your shirt!" Emma shouted.
Catherine whooped and whistled. Paul had to smile at Emma and Catherine.
Lori's face reddened a bit, probably because her own grandma had shouted out the recommendation.
Allan began unbuttoning his shirt slowly and the crowd went wild.
Paul laughed. He hadn't thought that a honey-do bachelor auction would be anything like this. Then again, Emma was a wolf and they could change the dynamics of a situation in a heartbeat. The ranch hands made a big deal of jerking their shirts out of their waistbands and then starting to unbutton them.
A woman shouted, "Just the shirts, gentlemen."
And that had everyone laughing. ~ Terry Spear

I have a number of writers I work with regularly. I write an outline for a book. The outlines are very specific about what each scene is supposed to accomplish. ~ James Patterson

Soap wasn't invented until the Romans, who also invented interesting sex. (Since my editor informs me that a gardening book is not a proper venue for discussions of interesting sex, I will go into this topic in more detail when I write my private memoirs, 'A Petunia Named Desire'). ~ Cassandra Danz

I think a successful adaptation rises or falls on the work presented. If people need to read the book to understand the play, I didn't complete the job. ~ Jeff Britting

When autumn shadows throw their patterns across the land, they are not the images of fragile, dying leaves, not the bared arms of lofty elms, not shadows of a fading summer; but swinging shapes as of books upon a strap, of round and square boxes held under an arm, of hurrying little people heading towards the nearest school. ~ Djuna Barnes

If you don't like the ending, you make up a new one. ~ Sarah Addison Allen

I was most confusedly in love ... Even though I resolved not to think of him, his face would keep appearing between me and a book I tried to read, or his voice would suddenly sound instead of the words I tried to write on a page ... I found love annoying and uncomfortable, like fetters, until I got used to it. ~ Nora Waln

It's my contention that each book creates its own structure and its own length. I've written three or four slim books. It may be that the next novel is a big one, but I don't know. ~ Don DeLillo

Can you imagine a world without books to read? ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Shakespeare 'never owned a book,' a writer for the New York Times gravely informed readers in one doubting article in 2002. The statement cannot actually be refuted, for we know nothing about his incidental possessions. But the writer might just as well have suggested that Shakespeare never owned a pair of shoes or pants. For all the evidence tells us, he spent his life naked from the waist down, as well as bookless, but it is probably that what is lacking is the evidence, not the apparel or the books. ~ Bill Bryson

The patron gets comfortable in bed and opens up the book
it opens tentatively
and the patron bends the open book backward until there is a satisfying crack and the book is a little more supple, a little easier to read. The book spine has just been broken, and a broken spine means a more submissive book. ~ Don Borchert

I did end up becoming a drawer, a sketcher and a painter because of comic books, but I didn't read them. Not at all. ~ Jesse L. Martin

For almost half a century, Fermilab has occupied center stage as physicists have sought to understand the fundamental structure of the universe. The lab deserves a good history, and I'm happy to say that in this book it has one. The authors present a compelling, nuanced, and richly detailed account of the place from its beginnings to the present. ~ James Trefil

What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though. ~ J.D. Salinger

I'm in a comic book now. That was cool. That's something that I'm still sorta reeling about, 'cause I read comics as a kid. Someone drew me, and actually did a pretty good job! ~ Rutina Wesley

I believe that we should only read those books that bite and sting us. If a book does not rouse us with a blow then why read it? ~ Franz Kafka

I'd rather be an unknown book in the library of time, than a bestseller in the store of mankind. ~ Stephan Attia

beauty tip for the world, go read a book ~ Antonia Perdu