Top 100 Bad Book Quotes
#1. There is a heavy price to pay for writing a bad book.
Tony Burgess
#3. If you write a bad book, mobs do not show up with pitchforks and torches - and odds are you didn't write something bad.
Dan Alatorre
#5. There is no such thing as a bad book, I just like some books more than others ...
Chris Geiger
#6. It is right for you, young men, to enrich yourselves with the spoils of all pure literature; but he who would make a favorite of a bad book, simply because it contains a few beautiful passages, might as well caress the hand of an assassin because of the jewelry which sparkles on his fingers.
Joseph Parker
#7. I don't think there is such a thing as a bad book for children ... do not discourage children from reading because you feel they are reading the wrong thing. Fiction you do not like is the gateway drug to other books you may prefer.
Neil Gaiman
#9. Neither is a dictionary a bad book to read. There is no can't in it, no excess of explanation, and it is full of suggestion, the raw material of possible poems and histories.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#10. Architecture is a very dangerous job. If a writer makes a bad book, eh, people don't read it. But if you make bad architecture, you impose ugliness on a place for a hundred years.
Renzo Piano
#11. A bad book about the love of God remains a bad book.
Thomas Merton
#12. I love to read about anger. A "feel bad" book always makes me feel good. And no other novel in the history of literature is more depressing than Christina Stead's The Man Who Loved Children.
John Waters
#14. A bad book is as much of a labor to write as a good one; it comes as sincerely from the author's soul.
Aldous Huxley
#15. It's easier to write about those you hate - just as it's easier to criticize a bad play or a bad book.
Dorothy Parker
#16. One cannot review a bad book without showing off.
W. H. Auden
#18. A bad book with a good cover is nothing but a wooden house with a golden door.
Mehmet Murat Ildan
#19. Be kind and considerate with your criticism ... It's just as hard to write a bad book as it is to write a good book.
Malcolm Cowley
#20. A bad book is the worse that it cannot repent. It has not been the devil's policy to keep the masses of mankind in ignorance; but finding that they will read, he is doing all in his power to poison their books.
John Kenneth Galbraith
#21. Yeah, I picked up a book and I read. You can get something out of a book, even a bad book ... but a cunt, it's just sheer loss of time ...
Henry Miller
#22. You can put down a bad book; you can avoid listening to bad music; but you cannot miss the ugly tower block opposite your house.
Renzo Piano
#23. A great book is a homing device
For navigating paradise.
A good book somehow makes you care
About the comfort of a chair.
A bad book owes to many trees
A forest of apologies.
J. Patrick Lewis
#24. A novel with a bad middle is a bad book. A bad ending is something I've just gotten in the habit of forgiving.
Lev Grossman
#25. The only people who can be excused for letting a bad book loose on the world are the poor devils who have to write for a living.
Moliere
#26. A bad book and good marketing won't work, the same way a good book and bad marketing will also not work. There is no choice in the matter that if you need to write a good book, you also need to have good marketing for it.
Amish Tripathi
#27. I personally can't think of anything less sacrosanct than a bad book or even a mediocre book.
Helene Hanff
#28. There's no greater thief than a bad book.
Anonymous
#29. If a book really wants the patronage of a great name, it is a bad book; and if it be a good book, it wants it not.
Charles Caleb Colton
#30. There's no such thing as a good book or a bad book. There's a book that matters to a reader.
Maggie Stiefvater
#31. Nobody sits down and says, 'Well, I'm going to write a bad book.' They sit down to write a great book, but it doesn't always turn out like that. The writer may do his best and still write a so-so book, and other times, it just flows easily. But I don't know how you can control that.
Gilbert Morris
#32. A person who publishes a book willfully appears before the populace with his pants down. If it is a good book nothing can hurt him. If it is a bad book nothing can help him.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
#33. My main piece of advice would be don't worry about being published - just write a really good book, but also don't be afraid to write a bad book. Give yourself permission to fail, and don't be afraid.
David Levithan
#34. TV's not the problem, and I'm tired of it being posed as this antithesis to creativity and productivity. If TV's getting in your way of writing a book, then you don't want to write a book bad enough.
Andrea Seigel
#35. The control of your mind is most important, and it will be worth your while. You must think deeply. Clear your mind of all bad, unwanted thoughts
William O'Brien
#36. In the comic-book world, there tends to be an overblown sense of tradition. Bad habits die hard. There are ways I think the form could work more effectively if we lost the bad habits that were created before we were born.
Frank Miller
#37. There is no book so bad it does not contain something good.
Pliny
#38. You can't judge a book by its cover, though. People think I'm bad because I got tattoos or snort a little cocaine here and there. They think I'm a killer. But what if I wasn't a killer? Then what? Don't be tripping on me. I pay my damn taxes, OK? Chill.
Gunplay
#39. I'm really bad at describing my books. Journalists like to have things like "It's The Terminator Meets the Seven Dwarfs." And I can't do that with my books. If I could, I probably wouldn't write them.
Charles De Lint
#40. Oprah's got good politics, she's got a good heart, and she'll have us all up Jazzercising at six in the morning. This cannot be a bad thing, and reading a book while we're Jazzercising. So America would be better off if Oprah were president.
Michael Moore
#41. I once read a book by a former alcoholic where she described giving oral sex to two different men, men she'd just met in a restaurant on a busy London high street. I read it and thought, I'm not that bad. This is where the bar is set.
Paula Hawkins
#42. I'll see you tomorrow night."
Be ready," he said. "I'll have something special planned."
"I thought you didn't make plans."
"You're an exception to my rules, Monica Campbell.
Terri L. Austin
#43. If the book's bad enough, they'll publish it, and if it's bad bad enough, the daily reviewers will love it, and it'll sell.
James Purdy
#44. Life, as the signs in the liquor stores say, is too short to drink bad wine. And summer is too short to read bad books.
David Frum
#45. God doesn't promise us escape from suffering or pain. Rather, He promises to miraculously use even bad situations for your ultimate good.
Jim George
#46. Nullus est liber tam malus ut non aliqua parte prosit - There is no book so bad that it is not profitable on some part.
Pliny The Younger
#47. I like the book my bloody life because it tell what gange related do and what makeks them feel bad
Sanchez Raymundo
#48. We found a book called Alexander, about a boy who confesses all his misdeeds to his father by blaming them on an imaginary red-and-green striped horse. Alexander was a pretty bad horse today. Whatever we can't hold, we hang onto a hook that will hold it.
Leslie Jamison
#49. I am not, sir, a bad person, though in truth I am not lacking in reasons for being one.
[Sp., Yo, senor, no soy malo, aunque no me faltarian motivos para serlo.]
Camilo Jose Cela
#50. Some good, some so-so, and lots plain bad: that's how a book of poems is made, my Friend.
Martial
#51. Chapters - Life has many different chapters for us. One bad chapter doesn't mean the end of the book.
Edenia Archuleta
#52. Deliver me from writers who say the way they live doesn't matter. I'm not sure a bad person can write a good book. If art doesn't make us better, then what on earth is it for.
Alice Walker
#53. History is written by the winners. The books say the Indians were bad guys and the whites just needed a little land. It's like, Excuse me, let me take your car. I'm discovering it. I'm putting my flag on your windshield.
Mario Van Peebles
#54. The existence of good bad literature - the fact that one can be amused or excited or even moved by a book that one's intellect simply refuses to take seriously - is a reminder that art is not the same thing as cerebration.
George Orwell
#55. As to the book called the bible, it is blasphemy to call it the Word of God. It is a book of lies and contradictions and a history of bad times and bad men.
Thomas Paine
#56. Children simply don't make the distinction; a book is either good or bad. And some of the books they think are good are very, very bad indeed.
Mark Haddon
#57. You should not do an autobiography if you want to tell the truth. There are a lot of things I know about people. If I can't say something good about a person, I don't want to say anything. And since I don't want to say anything bad, I won't write a book.
Abraham A. Ribicoff
#58. I never think about a movie when I'm writing a book, because I think only two things could happen and both of them are bad. You write a lousy novel and a lousy film.
Don Winslow
#59. This is a book about lost faith and blaming God when He allows bad things to happen to good people. But, it is also about the wounds we carry around with us when we fail to make a diiference when a difference was needed, whether real or perceived. But there is hope for us all! We are NOT alone!
Norman Whaler
#60. There are plenty of bad editors who try to impose their own vision on a book. ( ... )
A good novel editor is invisible.
Terri Windling
#61. In order to pronounce a book bad it is not enough to discover that it elicits no good response from ourselves, for that might be our fault.
C.S. Lewis
#62. I love getting attention, just like a child loves it, and it's never worn off. So when people say, oh the book signings go on, why would I shoo away someone who's giving me attention? What part of standing in line for 10 hours to say how much they love you is bad to you?
David Sedaris
#63. I have such bad insomnia and sometimes with insomnia, you can sort of relax and read a book, but anyone who has insomnia knows that other times, it generates incredible anxiety.
Jai Uttal
#64. Everything good or bad in my life had started and ended within the limits of that town. It was over now, though, and a new chapter was beginning. Nothing would ever be the same as it had been before. I just hoped this chapter wouldn't be the final one in the book.
Rose Wynters
#65. Sometimes even when the book is over I don't know who's good and who's bad. It's really more interesting, I think, to write about gray characters than it is to write about black and white.
Harlan Coben
#66. My ambition was to embrace those general qualities that Ernest Hemingway, a former newspaperman, once said should be present in all good books: 'the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was.'
Pete Hamill
#67. Only bad books have good endings.
If a book is any good, it's ending is always bad - because you don't want the book to end.
Pseudonymous Bosch
#68. Thomas Mann used to write education novels and now you can write an education memoir, and there are all these memoirs coming out now about people's relationships with books. Like anything else, these can be good or bad. The genre doesn't make it good or bad, it's the execution.
Marco Roth
#69. Big house, 4 whips, hella tattoos
Smoke good and ya bro think I'm bad news
Bout to go nuts, nigga, Cashews
A bro ask me if I'm book I say I'm past due
Wiz Khalifa
#70. We do not so much want books for good people, as books which will make bad ones better.
Hannah More
#71. It is a good thing to read books, and need not be a bad thing to write them, but in any case, it is a pious thing to collect them.
Frederick Locker-Lampson
#72. Why read on? Why pick up their book from the far wall where it has been thrown away in disgust and pain, and read on? Why submit to such cruelty, such bad karma, such bad plotting? The reason is simple: these things happened.
Kim Stanley Robinson
#73. Every time I have a bad day, I'll just find a corner, bring out my book and then everything starts to feel better.
Wency June Z. Libot
#74. One battle doesn't make a campagin, but critics treat one book, good or bad, like a whole war.
Ernest Hemingway,
#76. I learned little save that most of the deeds, good and bad both, incurring opprobrium or plaudits or reward either, within the scope of man's abilities, had already been performed and were to be learned about only from books.
William Faulkner
#77. The response to my books from my East Coast friends has been wildly various, running the gamut from 'bad' to 'very bad.' (Is there another gamut?)
Edward Abbey
#78. Most bad books get that way because their authors are engaged in trying to justify themselves. If a vain author is an alcoholic, then the most sympathetically portrayed character in his book will be an alcoholic. This sort of thing is very boring for outsiders.
Stephen Vizinczey
#79. This book is like an engineering masterpiece, can't be bad ! No matter what it will always be the greatest of all.
Jeff Abbott
#80. When reading a book, one hopes it doesn't turn into a painful process. Predictable is bad enough. Laborious is acceptable if the labor produces fruit. But with painfully bad writing, all one can do is grab a hatchet, slice off its head, and bury it.
Chila Woychik
#81. Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas. The source of better ideas is wisdom. The surest path to wisdom is a liberal education.
Alfred Whitney Griswold
#83. Gypsy aren't only poor, but they are brutal and not so nice people. World has smashed them, that they start making revenge by behaving bad to dogs, like "Hey, I'm the boss". But nobody stand up and do something about that!
Deyth Banger
#84. Memorizing, guessing, looking at pictures, predicting, substituting, and skipping, are not reading; they are very bad habits.
Phyllis Schlafly
#85. Everything made sense in a book...Too bad her life wasn't fiction.
L.A. Kuehlke
#86. [On The Catcher in the Rye] "This Salinger, he's a short story guy. And he knows how to write about kids. This book though, it's too long. Gets kind of monotonous. And he should've cut out a lot about these jerks and all that crumby school. They depress me. - James Stern
The New York Times
#87. It's getting a little chilly in here! Why don't we sit by the fireplace and I'll tell you the story of how I single handedly killed the Medina boys!
Angel Ramon Medina
#88. I firmly believe that you can't get a good movie without risking a bad movie. A good adaptation of your book is worth it because it is such a wonderful experience to see your world translated onto the screen.
Cassandra Clare
#89. Even a bad man is better than a good book.
Maxim Gorky
#90. Be very careful. We suggest getting a book on HTML to avoid becoming a real legend in the hacker world. Putting up a web page before you know how to put up a web page is generally a very bad idea. The .gov sites are an exception.
Emmanuel Goldstein
#91. Life is like a book. Some of the pages you want to rip out and others you want to keep. I've been ripping out a lot of pages lately, getting rid of the ugly stuff. The stuff that's left behind isn't as bad as I thought it was.
R.K. Ryals
#92. If you ask my wife, the biggest fault is my inability around the house. She says the only thing handy about me is that I'm close by. And, I have a terrible memory. I'm bad at saying no. I often double-book. There are a lot of things.
Hugh Jackman
#93. No matter what our achievements might be, we think well of ourselves only in rare moments. We need people to bear witness against our inner judge, who keeps book on our shortcomings and transgressions. We need people to convince us that we are not as bad as we think we are.
Eric Hoffer
#94. It is illegal to yell "fire" in a crowded theater. If there is a fire, please yell something else instead, like "Flames!" or "Smoke maker!" or "Bad hot!
Demetri Martin
#95. Pause while reading a book only in case of two things:
1. To kiss
2. To sip coffee
Too bad both are a luxury.
Saleem Sharma
#96. [Pliny the Elder] used to say that no book was so bad but some good might be got out of it.
Pliny The Younger
#97. Finish the book. Finish the book, regardless of how bad it is. You can make it better in a rewrite.
Joe Hill
#98. Endeavor to have always in your hand a pious book, that with this shield you may defend yourself against bad thoughts.
St. Jerome
#99. You can't write a children's book that takes more than five or six minutes to read, because it will drive the parents batty. It has to be compact. Nobody thinks about the parents when they write these stupid books. I could write longer children's books, but it would actually be bad if I did.
Michael Ian Black
#100. I know a movie and a book are two different things and you are going do different media in different ways. No author can want a movie to be exactly like the book because then it will be a bad movie.
Katherine Paterson
