Quotes about books
page 56

“Paradoxically, we are in a golden age of books, documentaries, and films that... expose the abuses, crimes and authoritarian essence of corporate commercialism. ...[N]ever ...have they had less impact for change.”

Ralph Nader (1934) American consumer rights activist and corporate critic

Breaking Through Power (2016)

Age, Change

“The various branches of geometry are all interrelated closely and quite often unexpectedly. This shows up in many places in the book. Even so... it was necessary to make each chapter...self-contained... We hope that... we have rendered each chapter taken by itself... understandable and interesting. We want to take the reader on a leisurely walk... in the big garden that is geometry, so that each may pick for himself a bouquet to his liking.”

David Hilbert Geometry and the Imagination

Preface
Geometry and the Imagination (1952)

Understanding, Hope, Self-confidence, Making love

“I get to whisper to them, "I love you, I see you, I know. I know you're scared, and it's OK to be scared, and if you can't be scared out there you can be scared in here. Within the pages of this book, you can be who you wholly are."”

Jason Reynolds (1983) author of young adult novels

And perhaps that might be empowering enough to at least add a bit of significance to their lives.

As quoted in [Goncalves, Delia, 'I get to whisper to them, I love you', Jason Reynolds on writing for youth, growing up in DC and his mission, https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/local/dc-native-author-jason-reynolds-mission-writing-for-youth/65-ef42a5db-8423-4149-8f18-ae8e1f52d845, 10 March 2020, WUSA, February 3, 2020]

Love, Making love

“Cuba had become what Washington had always feared from the Third World—a good example. Parallel to the military and economic belligerence, the United States has long maintained a relentless propaganda offensive against Cuba. A number of examples of this occurring in other countries can be found in other chapters of this book. In addition to its vast overseas journalistic empire, the CIA has maintained anti-Castro news-article factories in the United States for decades.”

William Blum (1933–2018) American author and historian

Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, Chapter 30. Cuba 1959 to 1980s: The unforgivable revolution

World, Fear, Country

“I perceive... a dearth of voices speaking out against the modern anti-vaccination movement. Their false claims and public statements more often than not go unchallenged. I hope that this book might serve as a clarion call for other scientists and physicians to speak out on behalf of science.”

Peter Hotez Introduction

Introduction
Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel's Autism (2018)

Science, Falseness, Hope

“Review by Noam Chomsky: That the Obama phenomenon is of considerable significance in American social and political history should hardly be in doubt. But what exactly is it, and where might it lead? This lucid and penetrating book situates it firmly within the ‘corporate-dominated and militaristic U.S. elections system and political culture,’ explores in depth its substantive content and its limits, and draws valuable lessons about how these might be transcended in the unending struggle to achieve a more just and free society and a peaceful world. It is a very welcome contribution in complex and troubled times.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

"Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics", October 2008, ISBN: 978-1-59451-631-3. In "Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics" by Paul Street https://web.archive.org/web/20110522032935/http://www.paradigmpublishers.com/books/BookDetail.aspx?productID=186987, 2008. Quotes 2000s, 2007–09

Peace, Drawing, Time, History

“Second is the argument from meaning:
# According to Dr. Rosenberg, if naturalism is true then no sentence has any meaning. And he says that all the sentences in his own book are in fact meaningless.
# But, premise (1) has meaning. We all understood it.
# Therefore, naturalism is not true.”

William Lane Craig (1949) American Christian apologist and evangelist

Nature

“I cannot let this book go no matter how many times I read it...it is as adorable as Lord Krishna.”

Bangalore Nagarathnamma (1878–1952) Indian singer

Medium Article - A tale of two devadasis - 22 May 2019 https://medium.com/@theteluguarchive/a-tale-of-two-devadasis-603ee867a172 - Archive https://web.archive.org/web/20200415202020/https://medium.com/@theteluguarchive/a-tale-of-two-devadasis-603ee867a172 About Radhika Santawanam (Appeasing Radhika)

Reading, Time

“What can we say about metaphysical naturalism? Again, I want to make two points.
# My arguments for the existence of God show that metaphysical naturalism is not true. There is a personal, transcendent reality beyond the physical universe.
# Secondly, I think that metaphysical naturalism is so contrary to reason and experience as to be absurd.
In the following arguments, the first premise in every case is taken from [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Rosenberg Dr. Rosenberg]’s own book.”

William Lane Craig (1949) American Christian apologist and evangelist

God, Personality, Nature, Universe

“It has long been a fashion amongst you, which you have had the complaisance to adopt at the instigation of a corrupt press, to call every friend of reform, every friend of freedom, a Jacobin, and to accuse him of French principles. ... What are these principles?—That governments were made for the people, and not the people for governments.—That sovereigns reign legally only by virtue of the people's choice.—That birth without merit ought not to command merit without birth.--That all men ought to be equal in the eye of the law.—That no man ought to be taxed or punished by any law to which he has not given his assent by himself or by his representative.—That taxation and representation ought to go hand in hand.—That every man ought to be judged by his peers, or equals.—That the press ought to be free. ... Ten thousand times as much has been written on the subject in England as in all the rest of the world put together. Our books are full of these principles. ... There is not a single political principle which you denominate French, which has not been sanctioned by the struggles of ten generations of Englishmen, the names of many of whom you repeat with veneration, because, apparently, you forget the grounds of their fame. To Tooke, Burdett, Cartwright, and a whole host of patriots of England, Scotland and Ireland, imprisoned or banished, during the administration of Pitt, you can give the name of Jacobins, and accuse them of French principles. Yet, not one principle have they ever attempted to maintain that Hampden and Sydney did not seal with their blood.”

William Cobbett (1763–1835) English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist

‘To the Merchants of England’, Political Register (29 April 1815), pp. 518–19
1810s

Time, Law, Freedom, Forgetting

“Once they had occupied academic bodies, once they had captured universities and thereby determined what will be taught, which books will be prescribed, what questions would be asked, what answers will be acceptable, these historians came to decide what history had actually been! As it suits their current convenience and politics to make out that Hinduism also has been intolerant, they will glide over what Ambedkar says about the catastrophic effect that Islamic invasions had on Buddhism, they will completely suppress what he said of the nature of these invasions and of Muslim rule in his Thoughts on Pakistan,3 but insist on reproducing his denunciations of ‘Brahmanism’, and his view that the Buddhist India established by the Mauryas was systematically invaded and finished by Brahmin rulers.
Thus, they suppress facts, they concoct others, they suppress what an author has said on one matter even as they insist that what he has said on another be taken as gospel truth. And when anyone attempts to point out what had in fact happened, they rise in chorus: a conspiracy to rewrite history, they shout, a plot to distort history, they scream. But they are the ones who have been distorting it in the first place – by suppressing the truth, by planting falsehoods.”

Arun Shourie (1941) Indian journalist and politician

Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud (1998)

History, Question, Nature, Universe

“The most extensive deletions are ordered in regard to the chapter on ‘Aurangzeb’s policy on religion’. Every allusion to what he actually did to the Hindus, to their temples, to the very leitmotif of his rule – to spread the sway of Islam – are directed to be excised from the book. He is to be presented as one who had an aversion – an ordinary sort of aversion, almost a secular one – to music and dancing, to the presence of prostitutes in the court, and that it is these things he banished... In a word, no forcible conversions, no massacres, no destruction of temples. Just that Hinduism had created an exploitative, casteist society. Islam was egalitarian. Hence the oppressed Hindus embraced Islam!
Muslim historians of those times are in raptures at the heap of kafirs who have been dispatched to hell. Muslim historians are forever lavishing praise on the ruler for the temples he has destroyed, for the hundreds of thousands he has got to see the light of Islam. Law books like The Hedaya prescribe exactly the options to which these little textbooks alluded. All whitewashed away.
Objective whitewash for objective history. And today if anyone seeks to restore truth to these textbooks, the shout, ‘Communal rewriting of history’.”

Arun Shourie (1941) Indian journalist and politician

Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud (1998)

Hell, Religion, Time, Law

“…Ever since my first novel, people have had quite a snippy vibe about YA, and it’s almost like: ‘Do you think one day you’ll write a real book?’…”

Juno Dawson (1981) British youth fiction author

On how young adult fiction is viewed in “Juno Dawson on the darker side of fashion in Meat Market and why 'people have a snippy vibe about Young Adult fiction'” https://inews.co.uk/culture/books/juno-dawson-meat-market-interview-new-book-release-635361 in i Newsletter (2019 Aug 3)

Thinking, People

“I feel like I'm 45. And I act like I'm 35. When I start to feel like I don't have the energy to do the job, whatever my age, I’ll walk away and write my book”

Anthony Fauci (1940) American immunologist and head of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases

Quoted in 'You don't want to go to war with a president' https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/03/anthony-fauci-trump-coronavirus-crisis-118961, 3 March 2020, Politico

Feeling, Age

“The main goal of this book is to reform thinking and writing about the barbarians in late antiquity by driving out the anachronistic terms "German" and "Germanic" and the baggage that goes with them.”

Walter Goffart (1934) American historian

Source: Quotaes, Barbarian Tides (2010), p. 6

Thinking

“My central concern in the present book is... to liberate barbarian history from the German nationalism that has suffused it ever since the sixteenth century and, in whatever disguises, continues to do so today.”

Walter Goffart (1934) American historian

Source: Quotaes, Barbarian Tides (2010), p. ix

History

“I never really see a book in the context of what went before because when I finish a book I try to press the delete button so that it’s wiped off the hard drive…”

Caryl Phillips (1958) Kittian-British writer

On pushing a book that he’s published out of his mind so that he may start a new one in “YORKSHIRE CALLING: AN INTERVIEW WITH CARYL PHILLIPS” https://www.publicbooks.org/yorkshire-calling-an-interviewwith-caryl-phillips/ in Public Books (2015 May 1)

“Booked it, packed it, fucked off.”

Peter Kay (1973) English writer, producer, actor and comedian

Live At The Top Of The Tower [2000]

“And the world said, Child, you will not be missed.
You are cheaper than a wrench, your back is a road;
Your death is a table in a book.
You had our wit, our heart was sealed to you:
Man is the judgment of the world.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

"Variations," lines 40-44
Blood for a Stranger (1942)

World, Death, Heart

“The evidence of the Avestan meters confirms to the hilt the conclusions compelled by the evidence of the Avestan names: namely, (...) that the Early and Middle Books of the Rigveda precede the period of composition of the Avesta.”

Shrikant Talageri (1958) Indian author

Talageri 2009:80
The Rigveda and the Avesta (2008)

“The measure of an author's power would be best found in the book which he should sit down to write the day after his library was burnt to the ground.”

Walter Raleigh (professor) (1861–1922) British academic

p. 28 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.$b325850;view=1up;seq=34 Six Essays on Johnson (1910)

“We’re all depressingly ‘lay’ outside our specialisms — my own knowledge, of recent biological advances, such as it is, comes largely from ‘popular’ books and journalism.”

Martin J. Rees (1942) cosmologist, astrophysicist, Astronomer Royal, Master of Trinity College, President of the Royal Society

as quoted by Jessica Bland in [16 January 2012, Martin Rees looks back to understand why 'scientific citizens' will be important in the future, In Verba, The Royal Society, http://blogs.royalsociety.org/in-verba/2012/01/16/martin-rees-looks-back-to-understand-why-‘scientific-citizens’-will-be-important-in-the-future/]

Knowledge

“No mathematician can give any meaning to language about matter, force, inertia, used in text-books of mechanics.”

William Kingdon Clifford (1845–1879) English mathematician and philosopher

"Energy and Force" (Mar 28, 1873)

“Books don’t have a nutritional value. Which is to say, we don’t just read "good" books because they’re good for us. We read to expand our horizons, to understand and connect with something outside ourselves, good and bad. We read to challenge ourselves…”

Mariko Tamaki (1975) Canadian writer and artist

On reading books that might be deemed inappropriate in “We Read To Challenge Ourselves: An Interview With Mariko Tamaki” https://comicsalliance.com/mariko-tamaki-pride-week-interview/ in Comics Alliance (2016 Jun 24)

Bad luck, Reading, Understanding

“I'm a very ordinary human being; I just happen to like reading books.”

Haruki Murakami book 1Q84

1Q84 (2009-2010)

Reading

“…I had a lot of different reasons for writing the book but at its core was the desire to write for black teenage girls growing up reading books they were absent from. That was my experience as a child. Children of Blood and Bone is a chance to address that. To say you are seen.”

Tomi Adeyemi (1993) American author

On her primary motivation to write Children of Blood and Bone in “Tomi Adeyemi: ‘We need a black girl fantasy book every month’” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/mar/10/tomi-adeyemi-interview-children-of-blood-and-bone-sarah-hughes in The Guardian (2018 Mar 10)

Chance, Reading, Girl, Children

“My birthplace is Jam, and my pen
Has drunk from (knowledge of) Sheikh-ul-Islam Ahmad Jam,
Hence in the books of poetry
My pen nam is Jami for these two reasons.”

Jami (1414–1492) Persian poet

Jami's Divan, p. 70-80
about himself

Knowledge

“The reader collaborates with the author in every book, or The reader is co-author in every book.”

Maurice Barrès (1862–1923) French novelist

Tout livre a pour collaborateur son lecteur Source: Biographical notice http://www.evene.fr/celebre/biographie/maurice-barres-499.php on Evene

“… the second time I ever saw you I learned what I had read in books but I had never actually believed: that love and suffering are the same thing and that the sum of love is what you have to pay for it and any time you get it cheap you have cheated yourself.”

William Faulkner (1897–1962) American writer

Harry Wilbourne to Charlotte Rittenmeyer, in (Ch. 3) "Wild Palms"; p. 48
The Wild Palms [If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem] (1939)

Time, Reading, Cheating, Suffering

“I have a line in the last book about how to draw an invisible man, and it says, “I’m trying to be transparent.” I don’t actually want to be invisible, which is the dilemma of people of color, but I would like to be transparent, so people can see what my issues are, good and bad. I just try to be transparent and very present, and then see what happens.”

Terrance Hayes (1971) American poet

On seeking transparency in “Terrance Hayes on Shakespeare, Ol’ Dirty Bastard and What Makes a Good MFA” https://lithub.com/terrance-hayes-on-shakespeare-ol-dirty-bastard-and-what-makes-a-good-mfa/ in Lit Hub (2018 May 9)

Drawing, Bad luck, People, Color

“In my Brain are studies & Chambers fill'd with books & pictures of old, which I wrote & painted in ages of Eternity before my mortal life;”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

The Letters Of William Blake https://archive.org/details/lettersofwilliam002199mbp (1956), p. 50 1790s

Painting, Study, Age, Life

“It's a forced disappearance...All those who have disappeared are related to the Causeway Bay bookshop and this bookshop was famous, not only for the sale, but also for the publication and circulation of a series of sensitive books.”

Albert Ho (1951) Hong Kong politician

Source: January 6, 2016 Briton confirmed missing as mystery deepens over Hong Kong booksellers https://edition.cnn.com/2016/01/05/asia/hong-kong-china-missing-booksellers/index.html

Relation ships

“I guess I should have written two books of my life, one for the adults and another for the kids.”

Babe Ruth (1895–1948) American baseball player

Speaking shortly before his death, as quoted in "Sports of the Times: Down Memory Lane with the Babe" by Arthur Daley, The New York Times ((August 18, 1948), p. 32

Life

“Many, perhaps most, who see the title of this book will at once traverse it, and will deny that there is anything valuable which can be rightly described as "Esoteric Christianity."”

Annie Besant (1847–1933) British socialist, theosophist, women's rights activist, writer and orator

There is a wide-spread, and withal a popular, idea that there is no such thing as an occult teaching in connection with Christianity, and that "The Mysteries," whether Lesser or Greater, were a purely Pagan institution. The very name of "The Mysteries of Jesus," so familiar in the ears of the Christians of the first centuries, would come with a shock of surprise on those of their modern successors, and, if spoken as denoting a special and definite institution in the Early Church, would cause a smile of incredulity.
Source: Esoteric Christianity: Or, The Lesser Mysteries (1914), Chapter I. The Hidden Side of Religions

“I did, not only because of that, but also because there was no value placed on education in my family. My mother just assumed I was smart, and I had glasses so I was called “four eyes,” and I was always reading a book, and so the outsider feeling came from the fact that I really loved school…”

Robert O'Hara American playwright and theatre director

Source: On feeling like an outsider both at his school and in his home life in “Artist Interview with Robert O'Hara” https://www.playwrightshorizons.org/shows/trailers/artist-interview-robert-ohara/ in Playwrights Horizon

School, Family, Reading, Education

“We've got it all there in the books if we take the trouble to find out about it.”

John Wyndham book The Day of the Triffids

The Day of the Triffids (1951), ch 12 - p.204

“I would like to dedicate this book to the hundreds of women and men who died in the porn industry from AIDS, suicide, homicide and drug related deaths. Your voices will be heard now.”

Shelley Lubben (1968–2019) author, singer, motivational speaker, and former pornographic actress

Truth Behind the Fantasy of Porn: The Greatest Illusion on Earth (2010), Dedication

Relation ships, Suicide, Death, Women

“Let us not admit discourses by Epicureans or Pyrrhonists – though indeed the gods have already in their wisdom destroyed their works, so that most of their books are no longer available. Nevertheless, there is no reason why I should not, by way of example, mention these works too, to show what sort of discourses priests must especially avoid; and if such discourses, then much more must they avoid such thoughts.”

Julian (emperor) (331–363) Roman Emperor, philosopher and writer

Fragmentum Epistulae 288a-305d
General sources

Way, God, Wisdom

“[T]he artist sells the work of his brush and in this he is a merchant. The writer sells to any who will buy, let his ideas be what they will. The teacher sells his knowledge of books—often in too low a market—to those who would have this knowledge passed on to the young.
The doctor... too is a merchant. His stock-in-trade is his intimate knowledge of the physical man and his skill to prevent or remove disabilities. ...The lawyer sometimes knows the laws of the land and sometimes does not, but he sells his legal language, often accompanied by common sense, to the multitude who have not yet learned that a contentious nature may squander quite as successfully as the spendthrift. The statesman sells his knowledge of men and affairs, and the spoken or written exposition of his principles of Government; and he receives in return the satisfaction of doing what he can for his nation, and occasionally wins as well a niche in its temple of fame.
The man possessing many lands, he especially would be a merchant... and sell, but his is a merchandise which too often nowadays waits in vain for the buyer. The preacher, the lecturer, the actor, the estate agent, the farmer, the employé, all, all are merchants, all have something to dispose of at a profit to themselves, and the dignity of the business is decided by the manner in which they conduct the sale.”

Harry Gordon Selfridge (1858–1947) America born English businessman

The Romance of Commerce (1918), Concerning Commerce

Waiting, Law, Business, Learning

“Actually, the books were never a planned career path.”

Nedim Jahić (2001) Bosnian singer

books

“...the [Whig] party, which has thought proper to proscribe me on account of a book [the Reflections] which I published on the Idea, that the principles of a new, republican, frenchified Whiggism was gaining ground in this Country. ... The party with which I acted had, by the malevolent and unthinking been reproached, and by the wise and good always esteemd and confided in—as an aristocratick Party. Such I always understood it to be in the true Sense of the word. I understood it to be a Party, in its composition and in its principles, connected with the solid, permanent long possessed property of the Country; a party, which, by a Temper derived from that Species of Property, and affording a security to it, was attached to the antient tried usages of the Kingdom, a party therefore essentially constructed upon a Ground plot of stability and independence; a party therefore equally removed from servile court compliances, and from popular levity, presumption, and precipitation.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Letter to William Weddell (31 January 1792), quoted in P. J. Marshall and John A. Woods (eds.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VII: January 1792–August 1794 (1968), pp. 52-53
1790s

Confidence, Country, Self-confidence, Sense

“Were I to pray for a taste which should stand me in stead under every variety of circumstances, and be a source of happiness and cheerfulness to me during life, and a shield against its ills, however things might go amiss and the world frown upon me, it would be a taste for reading... Give a man this taste, and the means of gratifying it, and you can hardly fail of making him a happy man; unless, indeed, you put into his hands a most perverse selection of books. You place him in contact with the best society in every period of history,—with the wisest, the wittiest, the tenderest, the bravest, and the purest characters who have adorned humanity. You make him a denizen of all nations, a contemporary of all ages. The world has been created for him.”

John Herschel (1792–1871) English mathematician, astronomer, chemist and photographer

Address on the opening of the Eton Library (1833) as quoted in A History of Inventions, Discoveries and Origins (1846) by John Beckmann, Tr. William Johnston, Vol. 1, frontispiece. https://archive.org/details/historyofinventi01unse/page/n5/mode/2up

Reading, History, Happiness, Age

“Denying miracles, the Teacher pointed out the concealed powers of human nature which, when developed, can produce the so-called miracles.
The method of developing these powers is interpreted in Buddhist books and is known under the name of the science “Iddhi-Vidhanana,” which points out two forms of manifestation of these powers and two ways to attain them. One, the lower, is reached by way of various ascetic and other physical practices; the other higher one, embracing all possible manifestations, is attained by the power of inner development. The first method of developing these powers is not lasting and may be lost, whereas inner development can never be lost. Its mastery is attained by following the noble way indicated by Buddha. All these hidden powers gradually unfold in man, usually of themselves, in proportion to man’s mastery of the lower expressions of his nature in a whole series of previous lives.”

Helena Roerich (1879–1955) Russian philosopher

Source: Foundations of Buddhism (1930)

Nature, Teachers, Way, Science

“Pre-eighteenth century economics were governed, not by consumers, who determined what should be produced by what they were willing to buy in a competitive market, but by producers who enjoyed special privileges in return for the most stringent kind of state regulations. Mr. Walter Lippmann, in his book, The Good Society, points out that in the days of Louis XIV the manufacturers of France were told exactly what to produce and exactly how to produce it. Industry and agriculture were governed by codes more complicated than anything ever invented by the NRA or Mr. Wallace.”

Dorothy Thompson (1893–1961) American journalist and radio broadcaster

Dorothy Thompson’s Political Guide: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
Source: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
p. 66

“It is better the truth should come little by little. I have learned that, being a priest. Perhaps, in the old days, they ate knowledge too fast.
Nevertheless, we make a beginning. it is not for the metal alone we go to the Dead Places now — there are the books and the writings. They are hard to learn. And the magic tools are broken — but we can look at them and wonder. At least, we make a beginning. And, when I am chief priest we shall go beyond the great river. We shall go to the Place of the Gods — the place newyork — not one man but a company. We shall look for the images of the gods and find the god ASHING and the others — the gods Lincoln and Biltmore and Moses. But they were men who built the city, not gods or demons. They were men. I remember the dead man's face. They were men who were here before us. We must build again.”

Stephen Vincent Benét book By the Waters of Babylon

Source: By the Waters of Babylon (1937)

God, Dead, Learning, Knowledge

“It hardly matters why a library is destroyed: every banning, curtailment, shredding, plunder or loot gives rise (at least as a ghostly presence) to a louder, clearer, more durable library of the banned, looted, plundered, shredded or curtailed. Those books may no longer be available for consultation, they may exist only in the vague memory of a reader or in the vaguer-still memory of tradition and legend, but they have acquired a kind of immortality.”

Alberto Manguel (1948) writer

A History of Reading (1996)
Source: The Library at Night, p. 123

Memory

“As a writer, I think I’m more an eye than an ear — the world comes mainly in for me at the eye. So I’m glad the visuals came through for you. As I’m writing my books, I really do see them almost literally — I experience scenes almost as an onlooker, watching from the outside.”

Donna Tartt (1963) American writer

Source: On how she uses visualization in her writings in “Interview with Donna Tartt” https://medium.com/@Powells/interview-with-donna-tartt-8d86a2438b41 in Medium (2015 Jul 13)

World, Thinking

“I don’t think it’s a good idea for a writer to psychoanalyze herself or try to explain why she writes what she writes—it’s a reductive way of looking at oneself and one’s work. Readers really participate in the writing of a book. As a writer I’m giving the reader signs to help create the story with me. The reader is bringing his or her own memories, intelligence, preconceptions, prejudices, likes, dislikes. So the characters in your copy of the book are going to look and sound different than in mine. I have my own ideas, but once the book is out there it’s not really mine anymore, and my own idea isn’t any more valid than yours. And then I begin the long process of disengaging.”

Donna Tartt (1963) American writer

On how writers should avoid analyzing their own work in “Donna Tartt on The Goldfinch, Inspiration, and the Perils of Literary Fame” https://www.townandcountrymag.com/leisure/arts-and-culture/a29022016/donna-tartt-goldfinch-interview/ in Town & Country (2019 Sep 12)

Intelligence, Help, Thinking, Memory

“I’m a bit of a lone wolf…I don’t give interviews or do publicity unless I have a book out—too distracting. My desk is where the real work happens.”

Donna Tartt (1963) American writer

On her philosophy regarding interviews and publicity in “Donna Tartt on The Goldfinch, Inspiration, and the Perils of Literary Fame” https://www.townandcountrymag.com/leisure/arts-and-culture/a29022016/donna-tartt-goldfinch-interview/ in Town & Country (2019 Sep 12)

Wolf

“Think of life as being this book, an unfinished book for sure. We're just seeing the last few pages of each chapter. If you look out on the eight million species that we share this planet with, think of them all being four billion years of evolution. They're all the product of that. Think of us all as young leaves on this ancient and gigantic tree of life, all of us connected by invisible branches not just to each other, but to our extinct relatives and our evolutionary ancestors. As a biologist, I'm still trying to learn, with others, how everyone's related to each other, who is related to whom. Perhaps it's better still to think of us as a little fish out of water. Yes, one that learned to walk and talk, but one that still has a lot of learning to do about who we are and where we came from.”

Prosanta Chakrabarty (1978) American ichthyologist

Source: Four billion years of evolution in six minutes https://www.ted.com/talks/prosanta_chakrabarty_four_billion_years_of_evolution_in_six_minutes (April 2018)

Tree, Learning, Water, Thinking

“Creativity is an interesting thing…You can sit back, have a glass of wine, watch some television…and get a terrific idea of what you want to do…The great thing about being at home is that as soon as you get an idea you can put a mike at the piano and record it. That way you don’t lose the vibes, and you don’t have to worry about finishing before the studio’s next booking arrives…”

Dan Hartman (1950–1994) American singer, songwriter, guitarist, keyboardist, record producer

Source: On how he intended the “The Schoolhouse” to work for the artist in “Hartman’s Little Schoolhouse Haven for Aspiring Musicians” https://books.google.com/books?id=_CMEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PT66&dq in Billboard (1981 Aug 15)

Home, Way, Idea, Wine

“Now a man need not be very conversant in the writings of Chymists to observe, in how Laxe, Indefinite, and almost Arbitrary Senses they employ the Terms of Salt, Sulphur and Mercury; of which I could never find that they were agreed upon any certain Definitions or setled Notions; not onely differing Authors, but not unfrequently one and the same, and perhaps in the same Book, employing them in very differing senses.”

Robert Boyle (1627–1691) English natural philosopher, chemist, physicist, and inventor

Source: Of the Imperfection of The Chymist's Doctrine of Qualities (1675)

Sense

“What a book a Devil’s chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering, low, and horridly cruel works of nature!”

Charles Darwin (1809–1882) British naturalist, author of "On the origin of species, by means of natural selection"

Letter to J.D. Hooker, 13 July 1856
Other letters, notebooks, journal articles, recollected statements

Nature

“A lot of the challenge with TV, as opposed to making movies, is that you have to leave room for the characters in the story to tell themselves. Sometimes you don’t know where a character is going to go and what’s going to happen to them until you’ve seen the actor take that part and make it their own. Then, like novelists say, the book starts to write itself, and the characters start to tell their own story. And then, we know where they’re going, as opposed to mapping it out, step by step. We have broad, general strokes, but you’ve got to leave space for these characters to live and breathe.”

Bruno Heller (1960) British screenwriter

Showrunner Bruno Heller Talks GOTHAM, Avoiding a "Villain of the Week" Format, How the Films Impacted Their Approach to the Show, and More https://collider.com/gotham-interview-bruno-heller/ (September 22, 2014)

Making love, Parting

“If I had known that the figures for Russian tank strength which you gave in your book were in fact the true ones, I would not—I believe—ever have started this war.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

1940s
Source: Said to General Heinz Guderian, 4 August 1941, as quoted Panzer Leader (1952) by Heinz Guderian

War

“You know, that's so much a part of life, being able to embrace the broken heart, not just cast it off as having no meaning or trying to get rid of it. I think in the book gives a very good journey through the way I handled things that were desperately frightening for me.”

Carly Simon (1943) American singer-songwriter, musician and author

On her song “Coming Around Again” in “Carly Simon: 'I'm Constantly Reemerging In My Life'” https://www.npr.org/2015/11/21/456498644/carly-simon-im-constantly-reemerging-in-my-life in NPR (2015 Nov 21)

Heart, Thinking, Way, Life

“For the truly creative mind in any field is no more than this — a human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive. To him a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death. Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create — to create — to create — so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of beauty and meaning his very breath is cut off from him. He must create. He must pour out creation. By some strange unknown pressing inward urgency he is not really alive unless he is creating.”

Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American writer

"The Creative Mind at Work," William Vaughn Moody Foundation Lecture at the University of Chicago (1935), as quoted in Pearl S. Buck: A Biography, Volume 2 - Her Philosophy as Expressed in Her Letters (1971) by Theodore F. Harris, p. 217.

God, Beauty, Music, Joy

“The Bible as a whole is not written systematically, however, but is a collection of books of history, historical metaphor, biography, law and poetry, all leading into one another without an apparent plan. The Books of the Prophets include both historical narrative and an anthology of Divine revelations. Those of Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings tell the history of the Jewish people from Joshua’s conquest of the Holy Land to the destruction of the first temple by Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon in 586 B.C. These Hebrew prophets were the conscience of the people; for in the face of powerful priests and raving multitudes they spoke up with one chief purpose in mind—to teach man “to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God.””

Geoffrey Hodson (1886–1983) New Zealand occultist

(Micah 6: 8). Isaiah writes with dignity and power, condemning social systems which forget the needs of the poor. Amos, a “herdman and a gatherer of sycamore fruit” (Amos, 7: 14), declared God’s judgment upon the nations and upon Israel, also foretelling Israel’s restoration. Jeremiah dedicated himself to God, but was despised and persecuted by the people. He called for peace when nations prepared for war, and demanded an inward religion of sincerity at a time when priests were enforcing their orthodox codes.
The Hidden Wisdom In The Holy Bible (1963), Volume II

God, History, Law, People

“Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings.”

Heinrich Heine Almansor

Dort wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man auch am Ende Menschen.
Almansor: A Tragedy (1823), as translated in True Religion (2003) by Graham Ward, p. 142
Variant translations:
Wherever books are burned, men in the end will also burn.
Where they burn books, at the end they also burn people.
Where they burn books, they will also burn people.
It is there, where they burn books, that eventually they burn people.
Where they burn books, so too will they in the end burn human beings.
Where they burn books, they also burn people.
Them that begin by burning books, end by burning men.

“...the great Book of Genesis—a marvellous cup filled with the “wine” of the esoteric knowledge of the Sanctuaries of ancient days. Temples of the Ageless Wisdom exist to-day, even if less easily discoverable, and in them are to be found the selfsame teachings, laws, successions, Initiations and radiations of the light of Truth. World changes are not reflected in the Mysteries, which are repositories and conveyors of eternal and unchanging Ideas. A sack of corn containing a silver cup awaits every Benjamin who finds himself called by a Hierophant (Joseph) from the “famine-stricken” outer world to the “storehouse” from which an elder brother (a Master) Who has already attained will, in prodigal abundance, supply a gift of the golden grain of eternal verities.”

Geoffrey Hodson (1886–1983) New Zealand occultist

The Hidden Wisdom In The Holy Bible (1963), Volume III

Law, Success, Light, Knowledge

“The less I know, the better I feel about a person or book.”

Larry King (1933) American television and radio host

On why he did not read a book before interviewing its author. The Radio 'King': From Midnight to Dawn https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1350&dat=19810104&id=7DBPAAAAIBAJ&pg=3792,4986335, Toledo Blade, Jan. 4, 1981.

Personality, Feeling

“Somebody once said that a wedding is a funeral where you can smell your own flowers. Well, that's a harsh judgement in my book. I prefer to see it as a sexual relationship that is recognised by the police.”

John Cooper Clarke (1951) English performance poet

Series 1 - Twisted Romance (2 Nov 2016)
BBC Radio 4 - Dr John Cooper Clarke at the BBC (Nov 2016)

Flowers, Wedding

“I live in the noise of the disks writing silently, the infinite book of my life.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: Vivo nel rumore dei dischi scrivendo in silenzio, l'infinito libro della mia vita.
Source: prevale.net

Life

“Do I still need to tell you that I am not guided by selfish motives? No gentlemen, although Belgium is small, it is happy and content with its fate. I have no ambition other than to serve it. In this century, our civilized society imparts unprecedented values to barbarian communities in other parts of the world.
Leopold II, King of the Belgians in a speech at the Brussels Geographic Conference on September 12, 1876. Quoted from the book "Zaïre, Ketens van Koper (translated: Zaire, Chains of Copper)" Chapter 2: From Leopold II to Bwana Kitoko, page 16. Leuven, Kritak Fonds, 1978. ISBN 9063030185”

Leopold II of Belgium (1835–1909) King of the Belgians

Selfishness, Fate, Happiness, Communication

“Few men, whatever their creed, would now seek their geology in the books of their religion, or, on the other hand, would fancy that the laboratory or the microscope could help them to penetrate the mysteries which hang over the nature and the destiny of the soul of man. ... We live in a small, bright oasis of knowledge, surrounded on all sides by a vast, unexplored region of impenetrable mystery.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) British politician

Speech to the British Association (6 August 1894), quoted in The Times (9 August 1894), p. 6
1890s

Soul, Religion, Help, Nature

“The best parts of this book grow out of poems and song lyrics.”

Zhiyanzhai

Comment on the scene in which Baoyu meets Hsiao-hung for the second time in chapter 25, as reported and quoted in Enchantment and Disenchantment: Love and Illusion in Chinese Literature by Wai-yee Li (Princeton University Press, 1993), footnote on p. 168

Parting

“Persons whom I saw thirty years ago and with whom I was intimate now appear on the page, and this compels me to declare that The Story of the Stone is a book of the deepest feelings and the truest words. Unless, however, one has in fact experienced such events or been deluded by such feelings, reading it is like "chewing wax" absentmindedly, never understanding the miraculous wonders of what one has witnessed.”

Zhiyanzhai

Comment in the 1760 manuscript of Dream of the Red Chamber, as quoted by Anthony C. Yu in Rereading the Stone (Princeton University Press, 1997), p. 7

Reading, Understanding, Personality, Appearance

“Some books are lies frae end to end.”

Robert Burns (1759–1796) Scottish poet and lyricist

Death and Dr. Hornbook, st. 1 (1787)

“Generally a chef's book is like a calling card or a portfolio to display their personal work.”

Sally Schneider American journalist

Personality

“You can’t judge a book while it’s on fire.”

Ron English (1959) American artist

Ron English's Fauxlosophy (2016)

“A book is a loaded gun in the house next door.”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Part 1
Fahrenheit 451 (1953)

Housing

“Suppose then, that I do read this Bible honestly, fairly, and when I get through I am compelled to say, “The book is not true.””

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

If this is the honest result, then you are compelled to say, either that God has made no revelation to me, or that the revelation that it is not true, is the revelation made to me, and by which I am bound. If the book and my brain are both the work of the same Infinite God, whose fault is it that the book and the brain do not agree? Either God should have written a book to fit my brain, or should have made my brain to fit his book.
Some Reasons Why (1881)

Reading

“I have always detested Germany. I have never gone there. But I have read many German books on law. They are so far from our views that they have inspired in me a feeling of aversion.”

Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) American politician, 28th president of the United States (in office from 1913 to 1921)

Source: Manfred F. Boemeke: Woodrow Wilson’s Image of Germany. In: Manfred Boemeke u. a. (Hrsg.): The Treaty of Versailles. A Reassessment after 75 Years. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1998, S. 603–614, hier S. 603., https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodrow_Wilson#Haltung_zu_Deutschland

Law, Feeling, Reading

“I was always determined to find just the right book for that one child who maybe was a reluctant reader. I knew there was a book to turn him on to reading. I just had to find it. I do have a special place in my heart for kids who maybe have trouble reading or who just don't want to for various reasons. It's always my goal to write books that will somehow entice them to want to read.”

Debbie Dadey (1959) American children's writer

Children's author Debbie Dadey visiting downtown library to sign books, brainstorm. https://lancasteronline.com/features/entertainment/children-s-author-debbie-dadey-visiting-downtown-library-to-sign/article_bf6e4607-f0ba-5e73-a88f-64c9cb876bb2.html (July 29, 2013)

Reading, Heart

“Even in physics, there is no infallible procedure for generating reliable knowledge. The calm order and perfection of well-established theories, accredited by innumerable items of evidence from a thousand different hands, eyes and brains, is not characteristic of the front-line of research, where controversy, conjecture, contradiction and confusion are rife. The physics of undergraduate text-books is 90% true; the contents of the primary research journals of physics is 90% false. The scientific system is as much involved in distilling the former out of the latter as it is in creating and transferring more and more bits of data and items of 'information'.”

John Ziman (1925–2005) New Zealand physicist

John Ziman in "Reliable Knowledge: an Exploration of the Grounds for Belief in Science" (1978)

Knowledge, Perfection, Falseness

“To those who are longing for a higher life, who deeply feel the need of religious satisfactions, we suggest that there is a way in which the demands of the head and the heart may be reconciled. Religion is not necessarily allied with dogma, a new kind of faith is possible, based not upon legend and tradition, not upon the authority of any book, but upon the moral nature of man.”

Felix Adler (1851–1933) German American professor of political and social ethics, rationalist, and lecturer

Life and Destiny (1913)

Faith, Religion, Heart, Nature

“Do not treat me in this fashion. Don't leave me out. Have I not
Always spoken the truth in my books? And now
You treat me like a liar! I order you:
Burn me!”

Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) German poet, playwright, theatre director

A response to the Nazi book burnings, "The Burning of the Books"

Truth, Fashion

“I follow in this tradition because I believe literature matters, and in this book I insist that Asian American literature literally embodies the contradictions, conﬂicts, and potential future options of Asian American culture”

Viet Thanh Nguyen (1971) American author of fiction

Source: As quoted in “Race & Resistance Literature & Politics In Asian America" (2002) p.3

Future, Literature

“In a history book, you can't imagine, you can't speculate, you can't conjure new worlds because that would ruin the history book. .... And in a novel you can't have too much fact-dumping, too much history, it just doesn't work, too much footnoting, again that ruins the story. So I love the fact that I can do speculation and imagination in one and go wild in a novel and then do proper, scrupulous research in the other. I think they compliment each other.”

Kate Williams (historian) (1974) British historian

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/entertainment-arts-17945784
Meet the Author: Kate Williams
BBC
3 May 2012
2 May 2021

Thinking, Imagination, History, World

“Experts on romance say for a happy marriage there has to be more than a passionate love. For a lasting union, they insist, there must be a genuine liking for each other. Which, in my book, is a good definition for friendship.”

Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) American actress, model, and singer

Friendship, Marriage, Happiness, Passion

“The most technologically efficient machine that man has ever invented is the book.”

Northrop Frye (1912–1991) Canadian literary critic and literary theorist

“As a technology, the book is like a hammer. That is to say, it is perfect: a tool ideally suited to its task. Hammers can be tweaked and varied but will never go obsolete. Even when builders pound nails by the thousand with pneumatic nail guns, every household needs a hammer.”

James Gleick (1954) American author, journalist, and biographer

Perfection

“Be true to yourself, help others, make each day your masterpiece, make friendship a fine art, drink deeply from good books - especially the Bible, build a shelter against a rainy day, give thanks for your blessings and pray for guidance every day.”

John Wooden (1910–2010) American basketball coach

Friendship, Drink, Help, Art

“You can only learn so much from books. You can only learn so much from education. Ultimately, it is the wisdom of God that will carry you through in the toughest situations of life.”

Ravi Zacharias (1946) Indian philosopher

Life, God, Learning, Education

“I suggest that scientific knowledge, though logically more articulate and far more complex, is of this sort. The books and teachers from whom it is acquired present concrete examples together with a multitude of theoretical generalizations. Both are essential carriers of knowledge, and it is therefore Pickwickian to seek a methodological criterion that supposes the scientist can specify in advance whether each imaginable instance fits or would falsify his theory.”

Thomas Kuhn (1922–1996) American historian, physicist and philosopher

"Logic of Discovery or Psychology of Research?", Criticism and the growth of knowledge edited by Imre Lakatos and Alan Musgrave (1970)

Imagination, Teachers, Knowledge

“I believe if you can have an open dialogue about anything, whether it's a book or a movie or TV show, it's this door that suddenly opens your mind to new ideas.”

Kelly Marie Tran (1989) American actress

As quoted in "Star Wars Breakout Kelly Marie Tran on The Last Jedi and Kylo Ren’s Shirtless Scene" in Vulture (20 December 2017) https://www.vulture.com/2017/12/kelly-marie-tran-on-the-last-jedi-and-shirtless-kylo-ren.html

Idea

“It (my book) is a picture of the many spiritual conflicts that have passed between God and my soul, before I could subject mine to the will of Jesus, my Master, in whose service I have now found perfect freedom.”

George Herbert (1593–1633) Welsh-born English poet, orator and Anglican priest

Maycock, A L, Nicholas Ferrar of Little Gidding. SPCK, London, 1938
Letter to Nicholas Ferrar (1632-33)

Soul, God, Freedom, Perfection

“I am not a visual person. I have spent so many bounded years in my childhood that I have grown used to having books as my window on reality.”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

In Joy Still Felt (1980), p. 217
General sources

Childhood, Personality, Reality

“My wealth is my shelf of books!”

Jack Vance Demon Princes

Source: Demon Princes (1964-1981), The Face (1979), Chapter 14 (p. 173)

Wealth

“What is important is not just what you do - "I am writing a book"”

Natalie Goldberg book Writing Down the Bones

but how you do it, how you approach it, and what you come to value.
[…] There are many realities. We should remember this when we get too caught in being concerned about the way the rest of the world lives or how we think they live.
Essay, "Every Monday". p.127
Writing Down the Bones (1986)

“Learning is not by going to school, books is not by reading; but knowing what you went their for and understanding what you've read in those books.”

Bhad Shazzy

School, Understanding, Reading, Learning

“Here you are invited into the direct experience of that timeless reality through the method of self-inquiry, which forms the essence of this book.”

Mooji (1954) Jamaican spiritual teacher

Greater than Sky, Vaster than Space, (2018), Part I

Reality

“A book is like a man — clever and dull, brave and cowardly, beautiful and ugly. For every flowering thought there will be a page like a wet and mangy mongrel, and for every looping flight a tap on the wing and a reminder that wax cannot hold the feathers firm too near the sun.”

John Steinbeck book Journal of a Novel

From a letter to Pascal Covici (1952)
Journal of a Novel (1969)

Flowers, Sun, Beauty

“I like a chapter to have design of tone, as well as of form. A chapter should be a perfect cell in the whole book and should be almost able to stand alone. If this is done then the breaks we call chapters are not arbitrary but rather articulations which allow the free movement of the story.”

John Steinbeck book Journal of a Novel

March 7, 1951
Journal of a Novel (1969)

Perfection

“Anything we fully do is an alone journey. […] You are alone when you write a book. Accept that and take in any love and support that is given to you, but don't have expectations of how it is supposed to be.”

Natalie Goldberg book Writing Down the Bones

Epilogue. p.179, 180
Writing Down the Bones (1986)

Support, Love

“Read a lot, listen well and deeply, and write a lot. […] If you read good books, when you write, good books will come out of you.”

Natalie Goldberg book Writing Down the Bones

Essay, "Listening". p.59
Writing Down the Bones (1986)

Reading

“The theme of displacement is very natural for me. It always comes up in my books because I have been a foreigner all my life and I don’t feel I belong anywhere. I’m an immigrant.”

Isabel Allende (1942) Chilean writer

On how her sense of self remains tied to her native country in “Isabel Allende: 'Few couples survive the death of one child, let alone three'” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/dec/02/isabel-allende-interview-marriage-breakup-the-japanese-lover in The Guardian (2015 Dec 2)

Nature, Life, Feeling

“I did not do it because I wanted to one day have a book deal…I did it because I loved it, and I enjoyed it, and I did not know where it was going to take me. I did it out of love of the art.”

Imbolo Mbue (1982) Cameroonian writer

On why she wrote Behold the Dreamers in “Imbolo Mbue on Empathy and the Price of the American Dream” https://lithub.com/imbolo-mbue-on-empathy-and-the-price-of-the-american-dream/ in Lit Hub (2017 Jun 1)

Art, Love

“Given the rigor and detailing that was needed to write the book—through the process the concepts I wrote about kept getting stronger.”

Divya S. Iyer (1984) Indian bureaucrat

Source: Quoted in The Better India https://www.thebetterindia.com/208078/kerala-ias-hero-upsc-tips-civil-service-exam-syllabus-india/

“The first challenge is that, you cannot expect everyone to get the same understanding of the book. Are we not all unique in life?”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Understanding, Life

Quotes about books page 56

Quotes about books
page 56