Unreadable Book Quotes

Like any overt school of mysticism, a movement seeking to achieve a vicious goal has to invoke the higher mysteries of an incomprehensible authority. An unread and unreadable book serves this purpose. It does not count on men's intelligence, but on their weaknesses, pretensions and fears. It is not a tool of enlightenment, but of intellectual intimidation. It is not aimed at the reader's understanding, but at his inferiority complex.
An intelligent man will reject such a book with contemptuous indignation, refusing to waste his time on untangling what he perceives to be gibberish - which is part of the book's technique: the man able to refute its arguments will not (unless he has the endurance of an elephant and the patience of a martyr). A young man of average intelligence - particularly a student of philosophy or of political science - under a barrage of authoritative pronouncements acclaiming the book as "scholarly," "significant," "profound," will take the blame for his failure to understand. More often than not, he will assume that the book's theory has been scientifically proved and that he alone is unable to grasp it; anxious, above all, to hide his inability, he will profess agreement, and the less his understanding, the louder his agreement - while the rest of the class are going through the same mental process. Most of them will accept the book's doctrine, reluctantly and uneasily, and lose their intellectual integrity, condemning themselves to a chronic fog of ~ Ayn Rand

Great books are readable anyway. Dickens is readable. Jane Austen is readable. John Updike's readable. Hawthorne's readable. It's a meaningless term. You have to go the very extremes of literature, like Joyce's "Finnegan's Wake," before you get a literary work that literally unreadable. ~ Julian Barnes

The perfectly natural thing to do with an unreadable book is to give it away; and the publication, for more than a quarter of a century, of volumes which fulfilled this one purpose and no other is a pleasant proof, if proof were needed, of the business principles which underlay the enlightened activity of publishers. ~ Agnes Repplier

68. Say: "O People of the Book! ye have no ground to stand upon unless ye stand fast by the Law, the Gospel, and all the revelation that has come to you from your Lord." It is the revelation that cometh to thee from thy Lord, that increaseth in most of them their obstinate rebellion and blasphemy. But sorrow thou not over (these) people without Faith.[757] ~ Anonymous

I think it helps the writers to sell their books if they announce my attachment. But it doesn't mean that I'm going to make the movies in the next year or two or three. ~ James Franco

This book is the account of his redemptive journey - through innocence, bigotry, hard-line radicalism, and beyond - to a passionate advocacy of human rights and all that this can mean. ~ Maajid Nawaz

Haven't you noticed, too, on the part of nearly everyone you know, a growing rebellion against the present? And an increasing longing for the past? I have. Never before in all my long life have I heard so many people wish that they lived 'at the turn of the century,' or 'when life was simpler,' or 'worth living,' or 'when you could bring children into the world and count on the future,' or simply 'in the good old days.' People didn't talk that way when I was young! The present was a glorious time! But they talk that way now.

For the first time in man's history, man is desperate to escape the present. Our newsstands are jammed with escape literature, the very name of which is significant. Entire magazines are devoted to fantastic stories of escape - to other times, past and future, to other worlds and planets - escape to anywhere but here and now. Even our larger magazines, book publishers and Hollywood are beginning to meet the rising demand for this kind of escape. Yes, there is a craving in the world like a thirst, a terrible mass pressure that you can almost feel, of millions of minds struggling against the barriers of time. I am utterly convinced that this terrible mass pressure of millions of minds is already, slightly but definitely, affecting time itself. In the moments when this happens - when the almost universal longing to escape is greatest - my incidents occur. Man is disturbing the clock of time, and I am afraid it will break. When it does, I leave to ~ Jack Finney

He had to clap his hands to his mouth to stop himself from screaming. He whirled around. His heart was pounding far more furiously than when the book had screamed - for he had seen not only himself in the mirror, but a whole crowd of people standing right behind him. But the room was empty. Breathing very fast, he turned slowly back to the mirror. ~ J.K. Rowling

A true feeler always brings half the entertainment along with him. His own ideas are only call'd forth by what he reads, and the vibrations within, so entirely correspond with those excited, 'tis like reading himself and not the book. ~ Laurence Sterne

Don't sell yourself short. No one will value you. Set a fair price for you, your book, your services, whatever it is that you have to offer. Most of us set way too low a price. Put it a little higher than you would normally be inclined to do. The worst that can happen is someone will come along and steal it. ~ John Kremer

All of a sudden I wanted to know how the book ended. ~ Kody Keplinger

For, as it is written in the book of the Prophets: 'And the angel that spoke in me, said to me ... ' He does not say, 'Spoke to me' but 'Spoke in me' ... ~ Saint Augustine

I think for anybody reading the book they're going to get an idea in their heads of all those characters, and I think that once that gets fixed, it's quite hard to shake. ~ Hugh Dancy

Who is your favorite character in the series? Or ... if that's too hard, why do you like each one and who drives you crazy?
Puck: Well, she likes me best, of course. I'm the handsome, charming one.
Ash: Yes, that's why she gave you your own book. Oh, wait.
Puck: No one asked you, ice-boy. ~ Julie Kagawa

In the book, hummin bins made castles, and towers up to the sky. They tamed the animals and took care of them. And hummin bins helped each other. They were always good.
"When I was done, Ma asked, 'Delly, what are hummin bins?' 'They're like people, but better,' I said. Then I told her, 'When I grow up, I'm going to live with the hummin bins,' and she smiled.
"But Galveston grabbed the book, 'Let me see that,' she said, and started laughing. 'This says human beings. There's no such things as hummin bins.'
"'Ma, is it true?' I asked, and she nodded. 'How come you didn't tell me?' I cried.
"'I liked the hummin bins better, too,' she said." ...
"RB's right, Ferris Boyd. You are a hummin bin." Her eyeballs were wet, like they were swimming.
It was quiet, then, till RB's soft cloud voice said, "You're a hummin bin, too, Delly. ~ Katherine Hannigan

Yes. To write a novel is to risk my sanity. The deeper I get into the suffering and conflict of the characters, into the very situations and thoughts and feelings that make the novel worthwhile, the worse I feel, and the more likely I am to be severely depressed when the book is finished. There is no avoiding this: it is the result of attempting to tell all you know, to reach for the stars, to write what matters. ~ Anne Rice

I married a man who was jealous about everything. If I got enthusiastic about a book, about a flower, about a place, about a human being - jealous. 'Don't do it! Stop.' It was depressing, and I couldn't take it. ~ Betty Parsons

I hate books, for they only teach people to talk about what they don't understand. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I have yet to meet an English teacher who assigned a book to damage a kid. ~ Pat Conroy

It is utterly naive, futile, uninformed - to think that our species is exceptional. So designated to master the beasts of the Earth, as in the Book of Genesis! ~ Joyce Carol Oates

When you read a comic book, there's a space between what's happening on the panel and what you have to literally see in your mind. That's not true of movies, where you see everything. ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

Life is a blank book. Write about what you want to see happen and then step back – and experience what you've written. ~ Art Hochberg

I've always wrestled with the difference between plot and structure, and after re-reading a lot of writing books I realized I wasn't alone. ~ Jeff VanderMeer

I have never written a book that didn't teach me far more than it taught my reader. ~ Isaac Asimov

The church was stuffed with mourners, of course. No one from work - I tried to keep my life and my magazine separate - but otherwise everybody Andrew and I knew was there. It was disorientating, like having the entire contents of one's address book dressed in black and exported into pews in non alphabetical order. ~ Chris Cleave

How much this book of life changes, he thought. And we are not the ones to write the pages. ~ Naomi Benaron

So much of what we do in life stays unexplained ~ Jane Borodale

The times do not call for grassroots political activism, as if the next election might be enough to reverse a massive cultural earthquake. They do not call for working just a little bit harder: a few more speeches, another letter to the editor, another fundraiser, the next vote, the next committee meeting. These noble efforts aren't even rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic; they are tending the seaweed on its watery grave.
The times call for a new generation of book hunters. Like the book hunters of the Middle Ages, the new book hunters take it as their mission to uncover and salvage the best of what came before: to cherish it; hold it up for praise and emulation; study it; above all, to love it and pass it on. ~ Paul D. Miller

Jane, who is much better at reading guide books than I am (I always read them on the way back to see what I missed, it's often quite a shock), discovered something wonderful in the book she was reading. Did I know, she asked, that Brisbane was originally founded as a penal colony for convicts who committed new offences after they had arrived in Australia ? I spent a good half hour enjoying this single piece of information. It was wonderful. There we British sat, poor grey sodden creatures, huddling under our grey northern sky that seeped like a rancid dish cloth, busy sending those we wished to punish most severely to sit in bright sunlight on the coast of the Tasman Sea at the southern tip of the Great Barrier Reef and maybe do some surfing too. No wonder the Australians have a particular kind of smile that they reserve exclusively for use on the British. ~ Douglas Adams

But mostly, when I look back, what I remember is not Mom rushing about; it's Mom sitting quietly in the center of the house, in the living room, under the swirling colors of a Paul Jenkins painting; there would be a fire in the fireplace and a throw over her lap, her hands sticking out to hold a book. And we all wanted to be there with her and Dad, reading quietly too. ~ Will Schwalbe

I remember wanting to write a book with someone, the someone being Kate [DiCamillo], and we decided to write about two friends. We had no idea how to begin this project - neither of us had ever collaborated with another writer - and I'm pretty sure that we began by giving our two friends a sock, just to see what they'd do with it. And it went from there. ~ Kate DiCamillo

A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. ~ Franz Kafka

You'll find magic everywhere, even in dark, dusty corners, if you stop searching with your limited human eyes and instead feel with your naked soul. ~ Melody Lee

The first time I opened one I felt indecent. I love the feel of a book. I love the touch and smell and sound of the pages. I love the handling. A book is a sensual thing. You sit curled in a chair with it or like me you take it to bed and it's, well, enveloping. Weird I am. I know. What the Hell? as Bobby Bowe says to everything. You either get it or you don't. When my father first took me to Ennis Library I went down among the shelves and felt company, not only the company of the writers, but the readers too, because they had lifted and opened and read these books. The books were worn in a way they can only get worn by hands and eyes and minds; these were the literal original Facebooks, the books where faces had been, and I just loved it, the whole strange sense of being aboard a readership. ~ Niall Williams

I love everything about books. I love the content, the way they look and even the lovely way they smell. I think a book collection says something about you as a person, and certainly my books are something I'd want to pass on for future generations. ~ Jo Brand

When I started this book last year, I had a small reception in mind. A few copies in my hand to share with close friends, maybe a small gathering... I never imagined that my book would have its own ISBN number and be available to the public. I never imagined seeing my name next to the words, "published author." I feel so thankful that this has worked out so well for me. God is good! ~ Kristyn Van Cleave

All men have heard of the Mormon Bible, but few except the "elect" have seen it, or, at least, taken the trouble to read it. I brought away a copy from Salt Lake. The book is a curiosity to me, it is such a pretentious affair, and yet so "slow," so sleepy; such an insipid mess of inspiration. It is chloroform in print. If Joseph Smith composed this book, the act was a miracle - keeping awake while he did it was, at any rate. ~ Mark Twain

Books are a guide in youth, and an entertainment for age. ~ Jeremy Collier

If your head is constantly stuck in a book, you're going to miss a lot. ~ Meg Cabot

it would be fairer to say I have traveled widely, without ever leaving my own native soil, I've traveled, one might say, through literature, each time I've opened a book the pages echoed with a noise like the dip of a paddle in midstream, and throughout my odyssey I never crossed a single border, and so never had to produce a passport, I'd just pick a destination at random, setting my prejudices firmly to one side, and be welcomed with open arms in places swarming with weird and wonderful characters ~ Alain Mabanckou

What about the hero of The House on the Strand? What did it mean when he dropped the telephone at the end of the book? I don't really know, but I rather think he was going to be paralysed for life. Don't you? ~ Daphne Du Maurier

Once he left the Haywood out for her with a page number on a scrap of paper, and she opened the book to recipes for "Distillation." Jess laughed at the page George had found for her. There, between instructions to make rose water and clove water, were instructions "to make jessamine water: Take eight ounces of the jessamine flowers, clean picked from their stalks, three quarts of spirit of wine, and two quarts of water: put the whole into an alembic, and draw off three quarts. Then take a pound of sugar dissolved in two quarts of water, and mix it with the distilled liquor." George left no comment on the recipe, but she read, and read it over, aware that he was thinking of her. ~ Allegra Goodman

Any writer who waits for inspiration to strike will never finish a book. Inspiration is all very well but it will never replace sheer dogged determination. ~ Barbara Michaels

As a former English major, I am a sitting duck for Gift Books, and in the past few years I've gotten Dickens, Thackeray, Smollet, Richardson, Emerson, Keats, Boswell and the Brontes, all of them Great, none of them ever read by me, all of them now on a shelf, looking at me and making me feel guilty. ~ Garrison Keillor