Quotes about books
page 57

“What benefit will I get if I know one book from cover to cover? —Isn’t this filling my mind with the ideas of others and losing creativity?!”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Idea

“Anyone can easily read good books, but only wellprepared or mentally fit individuals will benefit.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Reading

“The book might be the same, but it is obvious that the minds and our understandings are not the same at all.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Understanding

“Whenever books seem so boring, it's a good time to turn to nature as the best teacher. This is the true path of spirituality or the discovery of reality.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Teachers, Time, Nature, Reality

“Critics generally come to be critics by reason not of their fitness for this but of their unfitness for anything else. Books should be tried by a judge and jury as though they were crimes, and counsel should be heard on both sides.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Criticism
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part VII - On the Making of Music, Pictures, and Books

“If you have any restrictions artificially imposed on your own free intelligence, I want this book to be the rubber stamp which reads: The above restriction is hereby removed. ...It is an act of faith.”

Garry Davis (1921–2013) American actor turned peace activist (1921-2013)

My Country is the World (1984)

Faith, Reading, Intelligence

“Science books go out of date. We throw the old one away when a newer one comes out, when we have new theories. But we don't throw away our old data; we merely interpret them differently. New theories try to account for old data (and new data) in new ways.”

Guy Consolmagno (1952) American Jesuit, Catholic Priest, research astronomer and planetary scientist at the Vatican Observatory.

[Consolmagno, Guy, Mueller, Paul, https://www.google.com/books?id=lf5vDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA16, 9780804136952, Would You Baptize an Extraterrestrial?: And Other Questions from the Astronomers' In-Box at the Vatican Observatory, 16, 2014, Image]

Way, Science

“No. I have run away from a lot of publicity. I have tried my best to come back to my desk again. I needed a peaceful corner of my own for my next work. But it took time. Now I am adjusting myself to these new circumstances. I will try to write my next book as soon as possible.”

Han Kang (1970) South Korean writer

On the issue of her publicity in "Korea's Kafka? Man Booker winner Han Kang on why she turns a woman into a plant" in Deutsche Welle (September 12, 2016) https://www.dw.com/en/koreas-kafka-man-booker-winner-han-kang-on-why-she-turns-a-woman-into-a-plant/a-19543017

Peace, Time

“Well, I don’t ever plan anything in my books. Since I don’t outline, I tend to just go wherever my imagination leads me and where I feel excited to write about. I tend to write scenes that I would want to read.”

Jenny Han (1980) American writer

As quoted in "To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before author Jenny Han on watching her book become a phenomenon" in Vox (4 June 2019) https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/6/4/18648808/to-all-the-boys-ive-loved-before-jenny-han-interview

Imagination, Reading, Feeling

“Here and there people sat at desks, carefully turning the pages of manuscripts, or unrolling scrolls and making notes. It comforted her. This is a place built to store books, by people who wanted to preserve books, and used by people who want to read those books. I am not alone.”

Genevieve Cogman (1972) novelist and game designer

Source: The Masked City (2015), Chapter 16 (p. 210)

People, Reading

“ALL religions have preserved the remembrance of a primitive book, written in hieroglyphs by the sages of the earliest epoch of the world. [...] The tradition in question rests altogether on the one dogma of Magic: the visible is for us the proportional measure of the invisible.”

Eliphas Levi (1810–1875) French writer

Miscellaneous Quotes On the Subjects of Magic and Magicians
Source: Friedrich Nietzsche, H.L. Mencken (Translator), The Anti-Christ, Chicago, Sharp Press, 1999, p. 144.</

World, Religion, Question

“We thank Almighty God, who said in his holy book: Ye who believe, take not the Jews and the Christians for your friends and protectors. They are but friends and protectors to each other. And he amongst you that turns to them is of them.”

Sulaiman Abu Ghaith (1965) One of Al-Qaeda's official spokesmen

Source: In full: Al-Qaeda statement http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/1590350.stm (10th October, 2001)

God

“Angels in the house always die in the books they preside over because early ascension into heaven is their reward—and because their goodness makes them boring.”

Maureen Corrigan (1955) American journalist and writer

Source: Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading (2005), Chapter 4 (p. 141)

Housing, Angels

“Books just don’t register with this crowd. They think I lack common sense; I think they lack a part of their souls.”

Maureen Corrigan (1955) American journalist and writer

Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading (2005)
Source: Interlude, “Books, What a Jolly Company They Are” (p. 57)

Soul, Thinking, Sense, Parting

“I always keep four or five books on my bed table, and each night I read a little of each; I guess I can't concentrate on any one at a time. But I always finish them.”

Edward G. Robinson (1893–1973) Romanian American actor

Source: Op. cit., p. 278

Time, Reading, Night

“There were things to do, people to see, questions to ask. Books to read.”

Genevieve Cogman (1972) novelist and game designer

Source: The Burning Page (2016), Chapter 27 (p. 354)

Reading, Question, People

“I have spent most of my life preferring books to people. Just because I like a few specific people doesn’t change anything.”

Genevieve Cogman (1972) novelist and game designer

Source: The Burning Page (2016), Chapter 24 (p. 322)
Context: “I have spent most of my life preferring books to people,” Irene said sharply. “Just because I like a few specific people doesn’t change anything.”

People, Change, Life

“The first book I wrote was The Bride Price which was a romantic book, but my husband burnt the book when he saw it. I was the typical African woman, I’d done this privately, I wanted him to look at it, approve it and he said he wouldn’t read it.”

Buchi Emecheta (1944–2017) author

Source: On her tough marriage https://www.zikoko.com/life/oldies/9-thought-provoking-quotes-from-the-literary-icon-buchi-emecheta/.

Reading

“We will endeavour to produce a guide book to progress for those of us who accept this new challenge of adulthood... we will outline the picture of past and present trends of human development.”

Vera Stanley Alder (1898–1984) British artist

Source: Humanity Comes of Age, A study of Individual and World Fulfillment (1950), Introduction p. I - XII

Adulthood, Past

“With books or film I want to commemorate our youth and the sacrifices they made. No matter how bitter the time was, there is always something beautiful. I want to satisfy my nostalgia and hope [my work] is touching enough to move audiences who may not have the same experiences.”

Geling Yan (1958) Chinese writer and screenwriter

Source: "Turning Loss into Beauty: The Tragedies of Geling Yan" in The Wall Street Journal https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB930264290705115630 (25 June 1999)

Nostalgia, Youth, Time, Beauty

“I would love to write more children’s books. I think children can understand complex things so long as you explain them in words they can wrap themselves around.”

Padma Lakshmi (1970) Indian-born American author, actress, model, television host and executive producer

Source: "What I’ve Learned: Padma Lakshmi" in Esquire https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/a37862708/padma-lakshmi-what-ive-learned-interview-2021/ (2 November 2021)

Children, Understanding, Thinking, Love

“Marriage -The scope and plan of this work will allow of but the briefest possible consideration of this subject upon which volumes have been written, much to no purpose other than the multiplication of books.”

John Harvey Kellogg (1852–1943) American physician

Source: Plain Facts For Old and Young, p.124

Marriage

“A script is only the beginning of the process. But with books, what you write is exactly what people read. So as a writer, that's very satisfying.”

D.J. MacHale (1955) American television director and producer

Source: AME with D.J. MacHale https://www.reddit.com/r/AreYouAfraidOfTheDark/comments/l875no/ame_with_dj_machale/ (January 29, 2021)

Reading, People

“The thing is, kids love scary stories. They love dramatic stories. They love that kind of stuff. It’s one of the reasons why I write books now. I’m able to write the kind of stuff I like, whereas in TV I can’t do that anymore.”

D.J. MacHale (1955) American television director and producer

Source: Rejection, Scares, and Ryan Gosling: Looking Back at Nickelodeon’s “Are You Afraid of the Dark?” https://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2014/10/interview-are-you-afraid-of-the-dark-dj-machale (October 30, 2014)

Love

“I wish I had a book.”

William Gibson Blue Ant trilogy

There were a few expensively bound and weirdly neutered bookazines here, but he knew from glancing through them that these were bland advertisements for being wealthy, wealthy and deeply, witheringly unimaginative.
Reading, his therapist had suggested, had likely been his first drug.
Source: Blue Ant trilogy, Zero History (2010), Chapter 18, "140" (Milgrim in London)

“If speaking is still difficult to negotiate, then writing has created a free space for most women -much freer than speech. The book is bound, circulated, read. It retains its autonomy much more than a woman is allowed in the oral situation”

Yvonne Vera (1964–2005) Zimbabwean writer

Opening Spaces: An Anthology of Contemporary African Women's Writing, August 11, 2008 https://www.amazon.com/Opening-Spaces-Anthology-Contemporary-African/dp/0435910108

Reading, Women

“I think to some degree, all politics is personal. It would be naïve of me to say I wrote a book just about immigrants and there's nothing political about it. As has been pointed out to me in the past, it's political to have the last name that I have. There's nothing that's not political…”

Cristina Henríquez (1977) American writer

Source: On the indirect relationship between literature and politics in “Cristina Henriquez Talks 'The Book of Unknown Americans,' POC vs. MFA, and Compassion” https://www.bustle.com/articles/27838-cristina-henriquez-talks-the-book-of-unknown-americans-poc-vs-mfa-and-compassion in Bustle (2014 Jun 13)

Personality, Past, Thinking

“The purpose of this book is exactly expressed in its title, “The Key to Theosophy,” and needs but few words of explanation. It is not a complete or exhaustive text-book of Theosophy, but only a key to unlock the door that leads to the deeper study.”

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky book The Key to Theosophy

Source: The Key to Theosophy (1889)

Study

“Nobody had a clue what had happened, so the pundits were out in force, explaining how the riot was caused by whatever sociopolitical factor their latest book was pushing. It was certainly a searing indictment of some aspect of modern society—if only we knew what.”

Ben Aaronovitch book Rivers of London

Source: Rivers of London (2011; American edition title: Midnight Riot), Chapter 12, “The Last Resort” (p. 268)

“I can be pretty much an open book but, like everyone, I have my little secrets and moments I keep to myself and for my family. The key for me is to always add value. It could be a jollof rice hack or sharing an experience; whatever it is, I hope it helps my audience somehow.”

Sisi Yemmie (1984) Nigerian Youtuber

Source: https://guardian.ng/life/spotlight/sisi-yemmie-the-inspirational-vlogger/ Sisi yemmie speaking at an interview.

Secret, Family, Hope, Help

“For those whose minds are made up, this book offers a window into the way the "other side" sees... of why you have not been able to persuade opponents... insights into what they believe and... why.”

Laurence Tribe (1941) American lawyer and law school professor

Abortion: The Clash of Absolutes (1990), Approaching Abortion Anew

Way

“This book must... touch... deep and difficult questions about birth and death... life and its inception... sexuality and gender, about distribution of power.”

Laurence Tribe (1941) American lawyer and law school professor

Source: Abortion: The Clash of Absolutes (1990), Approaching Abortion Anew

Question, Death, Life, Birth

“This is... a book about morality. By offering several perspectives... some rooted in philosophy, some... in science and technology, we may come to see new ways to understand...”

Laurence Tribe (1941) American lawyer and law school professor

Abortion: The Clash of Absolutes (1990), Approaching Abortion Anew

Understanding, Way, Science

“I probably seem quite at ease now saying I’m mixed race, I’m black, I’m Zambian, but for a while that was quite torturous, quite angsty. As a young woman I wasn’t very tender or nice to myself…Now I’m older, I’m much more able to be tender and kind to the younger me that I see in the book.”

Namwali Serpell (1980) Zambian feminist academic and writer

Source: On coming to terms with her mixed race identity in “Namwali Serpell: 'As a young woman I wasn’t very nice to myself'” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/apr/30/namwali-serpell-the-old-drift-interview in The Guardian (2019 Apr 30)

“The third of the twelve truths in this book is that you must accept that fear is good.”

Jay Samit (1961) American businessman

Future Proofing You (2021)

Truth, Fear

“Let your house
be spacious more than splendid, and be books
And busts your most conspicuous furniture.”

Alfred Austin (1835–1913) British writer and poet

Source: Savonarola (1881), Lorenzo de' Medici in Act I, sc. i; p. 6.

Housing

“Let's face it, if there were 10 people like me in the world, we wouldn't have time to read each other's books.”

Donald Ervin Knuth (1938) American computer scientist

"All Questions Answered" by Donald Knuth, GoogleTechTalks, YouTube, May 29, 2011 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLBvCB2kr4Q,

Time, Reading, People, World

“When I first started writing, I was thinking of it as a book about mass incarceration, and mass incarceration is not a plot. It’s not a story. It’s not a character. I was at Harvard doing research on this subject, and I felt like I had a lot of information, but I had not yet found my story because I had to realize that I am a novelist. I’m not a sociologist. I’m not a documentarian. I’m not an ethnographer. And I found the story, actually, through eavesdropping…”

Tayari Jones (1970) American writer

Source: On how she chose the topic of mass incarceration for her novel An American Marriage in “If I Can’t Cry, Nobody Cries: An Interview with Tayari Jones” https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/02/08/cant-cry-nobody-cries-interview-tayari-jones/ in The Paris Review (2018 Feb 8)

Thinking

“There's nothing in the world that I'd like more
than to be left standing outside your door,
where perhaps I might be asked to come in.
There I could very easily demonstrate
of what now appears to be my fate,
you see I'm hooked on something
and it's not heroin.
Oh, I just can't get enough of you.
No, I can't get enough. What am I gonna do?
I've tried every trick in the book that's going,
now I've decided that they're not worth knowing,
my predicament is as simple as this:
I'm not satisfied, and the reason is
I just can't get enough of you.”

Gilbert O'Sullivan (1946) Irish singer-songwriter

"Can't Get Enough of You" (song) <br class="br">Song lyrics <br class="br">Source: Gilbert O'Sullivan, "Can't Get Enough of You" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S51SnVzay3Y (song on YouTube)

Fate, Appearance, World

“Changin' laws an' legislatures ain't, as fur as I can see,
Goin' to make this world much better, unless somehow we can
Find a way to make a better an' a finer sort o' man.
The trouble ain't with statutes or with systems—not at all;
It's with humans jus' like we [are] an' their petty ways an' small.
We could stop our writin' law-books an' our regulatin' rules
If a better sort of manhood was the product of our schools.
For the things that we air needin' isn't writin' from a pen
Or bigger guns to shoot with, but a bigger type of men.”

Edgar Guest (1881–1959) American writer

Source: All That Matters (1922), p.57 - The Need, from stanzas 1 (part) and 2.

Men, World, School, Law

“Nature shouldn’t be able to do this, Sunday thought. It shouldn’t be able to produce something that resembled the work of directed intelligence, something artful, when the only factors involved were unthinking physics and obscene, spendthrift quantities of time. Time to lay down the sediments, in deluge after deluge, entire epochs in the impossibly distant past when Mars had been both warm and wet, a world deluded into thinking it had a future. Time for cosmic happenstance to hurl a fist from the sky, punching down through these carefully superimposed layers, drilling through these carefully superimposed layers, drilling the geological chapters like a bullet through a book. And then yesterday more time—countless millions of years—for wind and dust to work their callous handiwork, scouring and abrading, wearing the exposed layers back at subtly different rates depending on hardness and chemistry, util these deliberate-looking right-angled steps and contours began to assume grand and imperial solidity, rising from the depths like the stairways of the gods.
Awe-inspiring, yesterday. Sometimes it was entirely right and proper to be awed. And recognising the physics in these formations, the hand of time and matter and the nuclear forces underpinning all things, did not lessen that feeling. What was she, ultimately, but the end product of physics and matter? And what was her art but the product of physics and matter working on itself?”

Alastair Reynolds book Blue Remembered Earth

Source: Blue Remembered Earth (2012), Chapter 17 (pp. 292-293)

Dependency, God, World, Art

“Okay, firstly, academic historians write academic history for academics. It's a myth that you can't be a historian without having a degree. Ian Fletcher, the globally acknowledged expert in the Peninsular War, doesn't have a degree. He always tells me that, “The books we write are the ones which academics read to get their degrees from.””

Rick D Phillips

Source: https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-become-historian-without-studying-history-in-University

Reading, History, War

“I don’t want to reinforce that defiling the Capitol was okay. I don’t want to do anything that would make this more likely in the future.
I hope they go to jail and get the book thrown at them because they deserve it.”

Lindsey Graham (1955) United States Senator from South Carolina

Source: 30 January 2022 reported by TGP https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/01/hope-go-jail-get-book-thrown-deserve-lindsey-graham-susan-collins-buck-trump-vow-persecute-jan-6ers/

Future, Hope

“America the brave still fears what we don't know And God loves all his children it's somehow forgotten, but we paraphrase a book written 3, 500 hundred years ago.”

Macklemore (1983) American rapper from Washington

Source: Song Same Love

Fear, God, Children, Love

“If I have my breakfast, then I can think, and that includes spiritual things, or whatever it is I want to do, meditate or read a book or watch a movie, and so I respect the food because that comes first for me. I think the movie shows the power of the experience that we all have with food.”

Nicolas Cage (1964) American actor

"Interview: Nicolas Cage digs deep about ‘Pig,’ his favorite and most underrated of his own movies, and the role he’d love to play" in Awards Watch https://awardswatch.com/interview-nicolas-cage-digs-deep-about-pig-his-favorite-and-most-underrated-of-his-own-movies-and-the-role-hed-love-to-play/ (14 January 2022)

Reading, Food, Thinking

“When the Bible was the only book people knew, they naturally thought it embodied all that is true; but when their reading expanded, and with it the world, and a sense of other times, other voices, other possibilities and points of view, that authority could not last.”

A. C. Grayling (1949) English philosopher

Source: Life, Sex, and Ideas: The Good Life Without God (2002), Chapter 20, “Intellectuals” (p. 86)

People, World, Time, Reading

“There’s something about writing books that gives us the permission to discuss things that aren’t as easy to talk about in everyday life. To me, the whole point of writing books is to look at the unexamined, the unspeakable, and the unarticulated.”

Susan Cain (1968) self-help writer

Mineo, Liz (interviewer), "That feeling you get when listening to sad music? It's humanity", The Harvard Gazette, May 11, 2022.

Life

“Value all books in proportion as they are agreeable to Scripture. Those that are nearest to it are the best, and those that are farthest from it, and most contrary to it, are the worst.”

J.C. Ryle (1816–1900) Anglican bishop

Source: The Upper Room (1888), Ch. XIX: "Thoughts for Young Men"

“And Romeo had Juliette
And Juliette had her Romeo
I'll take Manhattan in a garbage bag
With Latin written on it that says
"it's hard to give a shit these days"
Manhattan's sinking like a rock
Into the filthy Hudson what a shock
They wrote a book about it
They said it was like ancient Rome”

Lou Reed (1942–2013) American musician

"Romeo Had Juliet" full lyrics online https://genius.com/Lou-reed-romeo-had-juliette-lyrics <br class="br">Lyrics

“The end to which good men's libraries finally come is a melancholy subject. Few things are so much loved by some, and despised and neglected by others, as books, and specially theological books.”

J.C. Ryle (1816–1900) Anglican bishop

"William Gurnall", p. 391
Light from Old Times (1890)

Love, Men

“For a child who found herself transported overnight to other side of the world, where she knew no one other than her parents, books were my salvation.”

Qian Julie Wang (1987) Chinese-American writer and civil rights lawyer

"An Interview With Qian Julie Wang" in Penguin Random House https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/articles/qian-julie-wang-interview/

World, Parent

“Take away the cross of Christ, and the Bible is a dark book.”

J.C. Ryle (1816–1900) Anglican bishop

"What Think You of the Cross?", p. 276
Startling Questions (1853)

Christ

“All of humanity knows me. My name is in encyclopedias, in registers and databases. Books have been written; films recorded. I’m happy, I’m satisfied.”

Vladimir Zhirinovsky (1946–2022) Russian politician and political activist

"Aging Rebel: Vladimir Zhirinovsky Is Enjoying Another Moment" in The Moscow Times https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2016/09/02/aging-rebel-vladimir-zhirinovsky-is-enjoying-another-moment-a55177 (2 September 2016)

Happiness

“The problem of locating photos often confirms the indifference to women’s presence in history, as reflected in the media, books, historical records, museums, university libraries.”

Elizabeth Martinez (1925) American community organizer, activist, author, and educator

Source: (es) El problema de localizar fotografías confirma la indiferencia ante la presencia de las mujeres en la historia, cosa que se refleja constantemente en los medios, libros, archivos históricos, museos y bibliotecas universitarias.

Photo, History, Universe, Indifference