Quotes about booking
page 41

Wendy Doniger photo

“There was an Indian edition of most of my books, but it didn't make much of a splash.”

Wendy Doniger (1940) American Indologist

On the impact of her books in India. But her publication of The Hindus: An Alternative History, a sweeping history of Hinduism from its origins in 2500 B.C. to the present, though a success, it has been controversial (this aspect has been covered in another quote above).
Q&A with Wendy Doniger, the Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor and author of The Hindus

Maimónides photo
David C. McClelland photo
Augustine Birrell photo

“Great is bookishness and the charm of books.”

Augustine Birrell (1850–1933) British politician

"Bookworms"
In the Name of the Bodleian, and Other Essays

Cedric Bixler-Zavala photo
Marshall McLuhan photo

“Gutenberg made all history available as classified data: the transportable book brought the world of the dead into the space of the gentlemen's library; the telegraph brought the entire world of the living to the workman's breakfast table.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1960s, Counterblast (1969), p. 15

Bill Engvall photo
Geert Wilders photo

“I've had enough of the Quran in The Netherlands: ban that fascist book.”

Geert Wilders (1963) Dutch politician

Geert Wilders, De Volkskrant (8 August 2007)
2010s, Marked for Death (2012)

Winston S. Churchill photo
Arthur Guirdham photo
Han-shan photo
Gottfried Leibniz photo

“I am convinced that the unwritten knowledge scattered among men of different callings surpasses in quantity and in importance anything we find in books, and that the greater part of our wealth has yet to be recorded.”

Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716) German mathematician and philosopher

Pour ce qui est des connaissances non-écrites qui se trouvent dispersées parmi les hommes de différents professions, je suis persuadé qu’ils passent de beaucoup tant à l'égard de la multitude que de l'importance, tout ce qui se trouve marqué dans les livres, et que la meilleure partie de notre trésor n'est pas encore enregistrée.
Discours touchant la méthode de la certitude et de l'art d'inventer pour finir les disputes et pour faire en peu de temps de grands progrès (1688–1690)

Jared Diamond photo
Géza Révész photo
George Long photo
Gyles Brandreth photo
Jean Ingelow photo
Garrison Keillor photo
Edwin Percy Whipple photo
Donald Barthelme photo
David Fincher photo
Leo Tolstoy photo
Leo Tolstoy photo
Gottfried Leibniz photo
Mitt Romney photo

“The one by L. Ron Hubbard…I'm not in favor of his religion by any means, but he wrote a book called Battlefield Earth that was a very fun science fiction book.”

Mitt Romney (1947) American businessman and politician

Fox News interview, , quoted in [2007-04-30, Romney Favors Hubbard Novel, Jim Rutenberg, The Caucus, The New York Times, http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/04/30/romney-favors-hubbard-novel/]
asked his favorite novel
2007 campaign for Republican nomination for United States President

Peter Greenaway photo

“The book to end all books. The final book. After this, there is no more writing, no more publishing.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

From the thirteenth book, "The Book of the Dead"
The Pillow Book

Winston S. Churchill photo

“I accumulated in those years so fine a surplus in the Book of Observance that I have been drawing confidently upon it ever since.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Source: My Early Life: A Roving Commission (1930), Chapter 9 (Education At Bangalore).

Halldór Laxness photo
Immanuel Kant photo
Eugene Fama photo

“Firms that have a high BE/ME (a low stock price relative to book value) tend to have low earnings on assets. Conversely, low BE/ME (a high stock price relative to book value) is associated with persistently high earnings.”

Eugene Fama (1939) American economist and Nobel laureate in Economics

Source: Common risk factors in the returns on stocks and bonds, 1993, p. 8

Malcolm McDowell photo

“I do recall one particular night shoot… We were called to the set at four o'clock in the afternoon. As usual, nothing was ready. They'd built a set of Tiberius's grotto, on three acres, and were assembling all of the extras and background. The producers worriedly asked if I would go into Peter's trailer (he was playing Tiberius) and go through the lines with him, which we did few times.
And then he told me the most remarkable story – whether it is true or not I have no idea – about his grave-robbing Etruscan tombs. He said the best way to find Etruscan jewellery and artefacts was to find the drains in the tombs, and very gingerly sift through them with your fingers because, as the bodies decompose, all of the artifacts deposit themselves into the channels. The thought of Peter O'Toole on his hands and knees in an Etruscan catacomb makes for a lovely image.
We spent hours and hours in this trailer. He was smoking … it certainly wasn't tobacco. By the time we got onto the set, 12 hours had passed. We couldn't believe our eyes: the set was covered with people engaging in every sexual perversion in the book. We were totally bemused.
Peter would start off his speech, "Rome was but a city…" then pause, look around, and say to me: "Are they doing the Irish jig over there?"”

Malcolm McDowell (1943) English actor

I'd look over and there would be two dwarves and an amputee dancing around some girls splayed out on a giant dildo. This went on quite a few times.
As quoted in "Malcolm McDowell on Peter O'Toole: Caligula, catacombs and chicken gizzards" https://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2013/dec/17/malcolm-mcdowell-peter-otoole-caligula-graves, The Guardian (17 December, 2013)

Francis Escudero photo
Isa Genzken photo
H.L. Mencken photo
Saul D. Alinsky photo

“Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules. You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.”

Saul D. Alinsky (1909–1972) American community organizer and writer

Source: Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals (1971), p. 128

Albert Einstein photo
John Dos Passos photo
John Banville photo
Neal Stephenson photo
Charles Lamb photo

“I like you and your book, ingenious Hone!
In whose capacious all-embracing leaves
The very marrow of tradition 's shown;
And all that history, much that fiction weaves.”

Charles Lamb (1775–1834) English essayist

To the Editor of the Every-Day Book; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Brigham Young photo

“Some, in their curiosity, will say, "But you Mormons have another Bible! Do you believe in the Old and New Testaments?" I answer we do believe in the Old and New Testaments, and we have also another book, called the Book of Mormon. What are the doctrines of the Book of Mormon? The same as those of the Bible…"What good does it do you, Latter-day Saints?" It proves that the Bible is true. What do the infidel world say about the Bible? They say that the Bible is nothing better than last year's almanack; it is nothing but a fable and priestcraft, and it is good for nothing. The Book of Mormon, however, declares that the Bible is true, and it proves it; and the two prove each other true. The Old and New Testaments are the stick of Judah. You recollect that the tribe of Judah tarried in Jerusalem and the Lord blessed Judah, and the result was the writings of the Old and New Testaments. But where is the stick of Joseph? Can you tell where it is? Yes. It was the children of Joseph who came across the waters to this continent, and this land was filled with people, and the Book of Mormon or the stick of Joseph contains their writings, and they are in the hands of Ephraim. Where are the Ephraimites? They are mixed through all the nations of the earth. God is calling upon them to gather out, and He is uniting them, and they are giving the Gospel to the whole world. Is there any harm or any false doctrine in that? A great many say there is. If there is, it is all in the Bible.”

Brigham Young (1801–1877) Latter Day Saint movement leader

Journal of Discourses 13:174-175 (May 29, 1870)
1870s

Averroes photo
Dorothy Parker photo

“The management’s method of procedure is evidently to hire some well-known man to write the book, and then, as soon as it is written, to give it away to some deserving family, and go out and engage an assortment of specialty acts. p. 151”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

Dorothy Parker: Complete Broadway, 1918–1923 (2014) https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25758762M/Dorothy_Parker_Complete_Broadway_1918-1923, Chapter 3: 1920

Stewart Lee photo
Rick Warren photo
Howie Rose photo

“Ground ball to Gotay, throws on to first… Put it in the history books!…Tom Glavine has won his 300th game.”

Howie Rose (1954) American sports announcer

Calling the last out of Tom Glavine's historic victory.
2011, Undated

Jason Mewes photo
Tommy Robinson photo
Robert Maynard Hutchins photo
China Miéville photo

“I see echoes with lots of books in all my books, some deliberate, some unconscious until later, and as long as that is respectful I think that's great - writing on the shoulders of other writers is a privilege.”

China Miéville (1972) English writer

China Mieville: "My job is not to try to give readers what they want..." http://www.theguardian.com/childrens-books-site/2012/sep/20/china-mieville-interview, theguardian.com, Thursday 20 September, 2012.

James Branch Cabell photo
George Steiner photo

“The age of the book is almost gone.”

George Steiner (1929–2020) American writer

Quoted in The Daily Mail (London, 1988-06-27).

Alain Badiou photo
Thomas Little Heath photo
George Washington Plunkitt photo
John Fante photo
William Brett, 1st Viscount Esher photo
George W. Bush photo
Douglas Hofstadter photo
Edward St. Aubyn photo
Kent Hovind photo
Martin Amis photo
Wilfred Owen photo

“This book is not about heroes. English poetry is not yet fit to speak of them.
Nor is it about deeds, or lands, nor anything about glory, honour, might, majesty, dominion, or power, except War.
Above all I am not concerned with Poetry.
'My subject is War, and the pity of War.
The Poetry is in the pity.
Yet these elegies are to this generation in no sense consolatory. They may be to the next. All a poet can do today is warn. That is why the true Poets must be truthful.”

Wilfred Owen (1893–1918) English poet and soldier (1893-1918)

Draft for a preface http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ltg/projects/jtap/tutorials/intro/owen/preface.html to a collection of war poems he hoped to publish in 1919 (c. May 1918) and used in Poems of Wifred Owen (Memoir and notes).ed Edmund Blunden (1933).Chatto & Windus 1964.ASIN: B000GLY9CI

Paul Krugman photo
David Whitmer photo
Thomas Little Heath photo
Gore Vidal photo
Miguel de Unamuno photo

“Jane nodded, and she mentally thanked the several-greats-grandmother who had decided she’d rather risk royal displeasure than give up a book.”

Tina Connolly American writer

Source: Ironskin (2012), Chapter 9, “The Misses Ingel” (p. 149)

Andrei Sakharov photo
Ralph Waldo Emerson photo

“I had better never see a book than to be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system. The one thing in the world, of value, is the active soul.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

1830s, The American Scholar http://www.emersoncentral.com/amscholar.htm (1837)

Sam Harris photo
Thomas Little Heath photo
Scott Clifton photo

“I don’t get to just say what I want, as I work for a company and I have obligations, and so I can’t go around being disrespectful to everybody. However, with as much integrity and respect as possible, I would love any public opportunity to challenge conventional beliefs, especially ones religious in nature and especially ones that have affected my life. Someday it would be great to write a book on that kind of thing. I feel like I have something to say, and it’s not something everyone else is saying.”

Scott Clifton (1984) American television actor, musician, internet personality.

Responding to an interviewer's question, "Do you then see yourself being a motivational speaker, or a speaker who gets up and challenges ideology and religion?" in The Scott Clifton Interview – The Bold and the Beautiful, as quoted by Michael Fairman, hosted on Michaelfairmansoaps.com (20 September 2010)

René Descartes photo

“What I have given in the second book on the nature and properties of curved lines, and the method of examining them, is, it seems to me, as far beyond the treatment in the ordinary geometry, as the rhetoric of Cicero is beyond the a, b, c of children.”

René Descartes (1596–1650) French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist

Letter to Marin Mersenne (1637) as quoted by D. E. Smith & M. L. Latham Tr. The Geometry of René Descartes (1925)

John the Evangelist photo

“Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name.”

John the Evangelist (10–98) author of the Gospel of John; traditionally identified with John the Apostle of Jesus, John of Patmos (author o…

in John 20:30-31 as quoted in www.ewtn.com http://www.ewtn.com/ewtn/bible/search_bible.asp#ixzz2yvGxUYR6
Gospel of John

“You would not serve junk food at a banquet, and your book must be a banquet. Get your language from Swift, not from Shopsy's.”

Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist

Note on a thesis draft, where a graduate student who had used "hopefully" to mean "it is to be hoped"; published in Robertson Davies : Man of Myth (1994) edited by Judith Skelton Grant

Harold W. Percival photo
Edward Grey, 1st Viscount Grey of Fallodon photo
Neil Gaiman photo
Jean Henri Fabre photo
Norman Mailer photo
Larry Wall photo
Ronald Dworkin photo
Tom Clancy photo
Ann Coulter photo

“Liberals don't read books – they don't read anything … That's why they're liberals. They watch TV, absorb the propaganda, and vote on the basis of urges.”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

2002, Ann Coulter : Left Is 'out to Destroy the Country' (2002)

Ambrose Bierce photo
Aron Ra photo
Mao Zedong photo