Book Reviewing Quotes

#1. I have argued about the future of fiction with jaded novelists, far-seeing postmodernists, technologists, television critics. The argument that future generations will not know the pleasures of the novel has been a staple of book reviewing since at least 1960.

Russell Smith

#2. What is in question is a kind of book reviewing which seems to be more and more popular: the loose putting down of opinions as though they were facts, and the treating of facts as though they were opinions.

Gore Vidal

#3. Book reviewing dates only to the eighteenth century, when, for the first time, there were so many books being printed that magazines - they were new, too - started printing essays about them.

Jill Lepore

#4. 'The Practical Heart' was published one week before the World Trade towers collapsed. Book reviewing and all else in our culture stopped dead-still for half a year. I went on the book tour anyway. But I felt like the apostle Paul going unto the catacombs where scared believers hid and prayed.

Allan Gurganus

#5. I'm never a fan of the sociopathic kind of reviewing, people who are sort of self-immolating and have social problems or whatever, and let it out in literary-criticism form. I just feel like book reviewing should be respectful and calm and not filled with bile.

Dave Eggers

#6. She passed her New York Reviews on to Troy without giving them a glance; she told him she thought there was something perverted about book reviews that were longer than the books they were reviewing.

Anne Tyler

#7. There is a time for everything - a time for being born and a time for coming of age. There is a time for death, too.

Barbara Bel Geddes

#8. I've started doing book reviews for Barnes & Noble! They saw that I did a lot of book reviews on the site, and they figured that it might not be a bad thing if they got me to do some for them as well. I gave them five categories I'd be interested in reviewing, from art to fiction to music.

David Bowie

#9. Let no one think that real gardening is a bucolic and meditative occupation. It is an insatiable passion, like everything else to which a man gives his heart.

Karel Capek

#10. The force of universalism is in you Basques, not in the Spanish state

Slavoj Zizek

#11. I love to read, but I'm not a reviewer. I'll leave the reviewing to someone else. Suffice it to say, if I'm reading your book, I'm loving it.

John Inman

#12. The others had taken Valek's return in stride, although Janco made a comment about Valek's lack of hair. 'You ever notice how couples start to look alike?' he asked.
In a deadpan, Valek replied, 'Yes. In fact I was just thinking how much you and Topaz resemble each other. It's uncanny.

Maria V. Snyder

#13. Fashion is the veriest goddess of semblance and of shade; to be happy is of far less consequence to her worshippers than to appear so; even pleasure itself they sacrifice to parade, and enjoyment to ostentation.

Charles Caleb Colton

#14. There's ALWAYS a book.

Cleolinda Jones

#15. One of the greatest creations of the human mind is the art of reviewing books without having read them.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

#16. I don't read for amusement, I read for enlightenment. I do a lot of reviewing, so I have a steady assignment of reading. I'm also a judge for the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards, which gives awards to literature and nonfiction.

Joyce Carol Oates

#17. Being right does not always bring satisfaction,

Neal Stephenson

#18. Had Dr. Seuss been a slightly insane pornographer, he might have written a book like this.--reviewing Nicholson Baker's House of Holes

Tom Bissell

#19. Reviewing books is all about coziness. It is all of it a kind of caucus race. Women review women, Jewish writers review and praise Jewish writers, blacks review blacks, etc.

Alexander Theroux

#20. I never read a book before reviewing it; it prejudices a man so.

Sydney Smith

#21. Geography has no bearing on it, nor have the interests of the community in which I work.

Yves Tanguy

#22. Our veterans deserve the very best, and that means ensuring that America's veterans receive high-quality services and cares when they come back home.

Elizabeth Warren

#23. Reviewing a book written by someone you're living with and sleeping with is, needless to say, wrong.

Jill Lepore

#24. I think it's wrong to compromise your values to fit in with the social climate in Washington, D.C. When it comes to spending, I'm not compromising. I don't care who, what, when or where, I'm not compromising.

Ken Buck

#25. They found out about him in July and stayed angry all through August. They tried to kill him in September. It was way too soon. They weren't ready. The attempt was a failure. It could have been a disaster, but it was actually a miracle. Because nobody noticed.

Lee Child

#26. There is interest in a crime-based reality show. With my novels, we are now editing the second book in a series about a defense lawyer whose name is Samantha Brinkman. And I am reviewing speaking engagement opportunities.

Marcia Clark

#27. What a pity when editors review a woman's book, that they so often fall into the error of reviewing the woman instead.

Fanny Fern

#28. I became a writer because I love to read, yet I never get to unless I'm reviewing a book or doing research.

Beth Gutcheon

#29. Sad to say, multi-tasking is beyond me. I read one book at a time all the way through. If I'm reviewing the book, I have to write the review before I start reading any other book. I especially hate it when the phone rings and interrupts my train of thought.

Michael Dirda

#30. The book is worth reading, in part because it is enjoyable to read of
other people's folly, not to mention their avarice and stupidity."
Roger Lowenstein, reviewing "Devil Take the Hindmost: a History
of Financial Speculation", WSJ 6-1-99

Roger Lowenstein