Top 100 Books That Quotes
#1. The ideal reader of my novels is a lapsed Catholic and failed musician, short-sighted, colour-blind, auditorily biased, who has read the books that I have read.
Anthony Burgess
#2. Have you been reading those books that clueless illiterate Duja in charge of the lending library lets you borrow?' 'No, Ma.' 'Then what put you in mind of devils possessing nuns to take over the church?
Renita D'Silva
#3. 'Lord of the Flies' is one of my favorite books. That was a big influence on me as a teenager; I still read it every couple of years.
Suzanne Collins
#4. In this age of censorship, I mourn the loss of books that will never be written, I mourn the voices that will be silenced-writers' voices, teachers' voices, students' voices-and all because of fear.
Judy Blume
#5. The most reward experience is having another writer come up to you and say that they started writing because they read my books. That is how writing as a profession continues: readers becomes writers who inspire new readers.
Michael Scott
#6. I love book books, real books, books with spines and heart, dust jackets, books that smell of books. Take the frame from a painting and you have a painting, not art. Take the pages from a book and print them on a screen and you have the ghost of a book. Not a book.
Chloe Thurlow
#7. Sure, I've always been into the Big Bang theory of passion, but as something thoretical, something that happens in books that you can close and put back on a shelf, something that I might secretly want bad but can't imagine ever happening to me.
Jandy Nelson
#8. It is perhaps sad books that best console us when we are sad, and to lonely service stations that we should drive when there is no one for us to hold or love.
Alain De Botton
#9. [As a child] I was very interested in books that detailed injustice and how people who are underdogs were mistreated throughout history.
Ralph Nader
#10. Don't just read books that are best-sellers or books that you agree with, challenge your own thinking as you're reading.
Rowena Crosbie
#11. It is, however, not to the museum, or the lecture-room, or the drawing- school, but to the library, that we must go for the completion of our humanity. It is books that bear from age to age the intellectual wealth of the world.
Robert Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Earl Of Lytton
#12. Old books that we have known but not possessed cross our path and invite themselves over. New books try to seduce us daily with tempting titles and tantalizing covers.
Alberto Manguel
#13. It may be that the books that were best liked in your lifetime are not the ones that are best liked 100 years later.
Salman Rushdie
#14. I've always been a fan of books that create an interesting blend of fact and fiction - whether it's Norman Mailer, or 'The Short Timers,' or 'In Cold Blood.' I'm a fan of that genre.
Mark Boal
#15. People place so much value on thought, but feeling is as essential. I want to read books that make me laugh and cry and fear and hope and punch the air in triumph. I want a book to hug me or grab me by the scruff of my neck. I don't even mind if it punches me in the gut. Because we are here to feel.
Matt Haig
#16. Books that represent the last word on a topic are important. Books that represent one of the first words are even more important.
Jesper Roine
#17. I've tried to make a book that's accessible to the ordinary, intelligent reader. Very often books that cover this kind of subject are written by academics, for academics. But I am not an academic.
Brian Crozier
#18. The best way to get kids reading more is to give them books that they'll gobble up - and that will make them ask for another.
James Patterson
#19. There comes a time in every man's life when his thoughts lightly turn to setting his library on fire. To burn away the jungle to let him find the books that most matter to him.
Steven Hardesty
#20. Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody can read.
[As quoted in Literary Censorship in England (in Current Opinion, Vol. 55, No. 5, November 1913)]
George Bernard Shaw
#21. When I was a kid, I read books that made me laugh but also made me shiver in terror. I wanted to make books that made other people feel the same way.
Bruce Coville
#22. Books have formed the soul of me. I know that spiritual formation is of God, but I also know - mainly because I learned it from books - that there are other kinds of formation, too, everyday gifts, and that God uses the things of this earth to teach us and shape us, and to help us find truth
Karen Swallow Prior
#23. Sometimes, I can myself be frustrated by books that seem to me to be insufficiently realistic about the world's potential for just being totally a randomly bad place.
William Gibson
#24. I also wonder why is it that so many of the movies and books that are detective stories are also the most aesthetically interesting? From Hollywood noirs to horror movies like The Shining [1980].
Christopher Bollen
#25. I think the response I get to one 'New Yorker' cover outweighs five books that I publish.
Adrian Tomine
#26. I read as if time were running out, because technically it is. As I grow older I find I'm increasingly impatient with mediocre entertainments; I want books that will take my breath away and realign my vision - Barbara Kingsolver
Pat Williams
#27. Keep only those books that will make you happy just to see them on your shelves, the ones that you really love. That includes this book, too. If you don't feel any joy when you hold it in your hand, I would rather you discard it.
Marie Kondo
#28. Books that are books are all that you want, and there are but a half dozen in any thousand.
Henry David Thoreau
#29. Titles are important; I have them before I have books that belong to them. I have last chapters in my mind before I see first chapters, too. I usually begin with endings, with a sense of aftermath, of dust settling, of epilogue.
John Irving
#30. The kind of stuff I usually read is a bit more on the literary side, like books that I think are influential in the sense that they're doing pulpy subject matter in a refined way. Like 'The Road' by Cormac McCarthy; I loved that book.
Isaac Marion
#31. I love books, and I love to read, and I had ideas for books that I thought would be neat to read.
Tony DiTerlizzi
#32. I write the books that I'm compelled to and I definitely learn things about the world when I write them, and I hope that other people get something out of them, enjoy them, see the world differently when they're done.
Colson Whitehead
#33. I write books that seem more suitable for children, and that's OK with me. They are a better audience and tougher critics. Kids tell you what they think, not what they think they should think.
Maurice Sendak
#34. One of those rare books that demands you either defend the way you live or change it. Because
Michael Pollan
#35. There is a value to books - unhackable, paper books - that measures far beyond mere ink and paper.
Richard Due
#36. I like books that don't give you an easy ride. I like the feeling of discomfort. The sense of being implicated.
Zadie Smith
#37. Since I was trying so hard to make books lead my life, I didn't want to read them and then just put them back on the shelf and say, "good book," as if I was patting a good dog. I wanted books to change me, and I wanted to write books that would change others.
Jack Gantos
#38. I want to serve chess through games, books that are works of art. I would like to bring the game closer to many people all over the world.
Garry Kasparov
#39. If your faith is so shaky that it can be undermined by books that challenge it, then something is rotten at the core.
Rysa Walker
#40. This is because white people need to show off the books that they have read. Just as hunters will mount the heads of their kills, white people need to let people know that they have made their way through hundreds or even thousands of books.
Christian Lander
#41. CUSTOMER (to her friend): What's this literary criticism section? Is it for books that complain about other books?
Jen Campbell
#42. I loved all books that I could read, and I never knew if I was ready for one until I tried to read it, so I tried to read everything.
Neil Gaiman
#44. Every child is different. I think it's important that we don't have maybe just one or two books that we're recommending to all children - but rather we cater the books to fit each individual child.
Rick Riordan
#45. These days, there are many people around the world who listen to the songs that made me infamous and read the books that made me respectable.
Kinky Friedman
#46. One of the books that has guided me in the last ten years of my life to help me to be that leader is the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh's Being Peace. He's a Vietnamese monk. He was nominated for a Peace Prize by Dr. Martin Luther King.
Sandra Cisneros
#47. There are two books that impressed me when I was very young. One was 'The Adventures of Augie March' - the idea of having something so generous, and so adventurous and improvisatory. The other was 'The U.S.A. Trilogy,' by John Dos Passos.
E.L. Doctorow
#48. My attempt has been really to, beyond making a record of contemporary life, which is what you inevitably do, is trying to make beautiful books - books that are in some way beautiful, that are models of how to use the language, models of honest feeling, models of care.
John Updike
#49. I read books when I was a kid, lots of books. Books always seemed like magic to me. They took you to the most amazing places. When I got older, I realized I couldn't find books that took me to all the places I wanted to go. To go to those places, I had to write some books myself.
Pat Murphy
#50. A lot of the books that I grew up reading were pretty brutal, like the 'Redwall' books.
Ned Vizzini
#52. You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.
James Baldwin
#53. The books that influence the world are those that it has not read.
G.K. Chesterton
#54. I think that every reader on earth has a list of cherished books as unique as their fingerprints ... I think that, as you age, you tend to gravitate towards the classics, but those aren't the books that give you the same sort of hope for the world that a cherished book does.
Douglas Coupland
#55. Kids love to be silly, they love to laugh, so I think it was natural for my kids to like the sort of books that I write - and it's the only kinds of books I'm capable of writing.
Michael Ian Black
#56. Classics aren't books that are read for pleasure. Classics are books that are imposed on unwilling students, books that are subjected to analyses of "levels of significance" and other blatt, books that are dead.
Alexei Panshin
#57. I'm always nervous about going home, just as I am nervous about rereading books that have meant a lot to me.
Jeanette Winterson
#58. The new spirituality will bring about what I'm calling the 'end of better.' And that is in fact what is called for in the next of the series of books that I've been writing.
Neale Donald Walsch
#59. I tend to pull nuggets out of many books - rather than having a handful of books that serve as guiding lights.
Daniel H. Pink
#60. But it rained all the time, fog covered the fields, and by then he was reading Tolstoy. There were some books that reached through the noise of life to grab you by the collar and speak only of the truest things. A Confession was a book like that.
Jeffrey Eugenides
#61. 'Harry Potter' opened so many doors for young adult literature. It really did convince the publishing industry that writing for children was a viable enterprise. And it also convinced a lot of people that kids will read if we give them books that they care about and love.
Rick Riordan
#62. It's one of those books that even though you like it, it manages to get better each time, and you find yourself falling in love with it all over again.
Kim Holden
#63. My collection of rare books concerns only books that don't tell the truth.
Umberto Eco
#64. But cast away the thirst after books, that thou mayest not die murmuring, but cheerfully, truly, and from thy heart thankful to the gods.
Marcus Aurelius
#65. Then I found books that were written much later, as late as 15 years ago. It was very superficial material, but enough to tell me that the genesis of this story was worth exploring.
Charles Guggenheim
#66. Most people believe that the Creator of the universe wrote (or dictated) one of their books. Unfortunately, there are many books that pretend to divine authorship, and each makes incompatible claims about how we all must live.
Sam Harris
#67. It was books that made me feel that perhaps I was not completely alone. They could be honest with me, and I with them.
Cassandra Clare
#68. And books that were published in much larger numbers than Selfish, Little are hard to find. And publishers who wanted to publish my last few works have them stuck in limbo while new distribution ideas and legal issues and fears are blown away.
Peter Sotos
#69. I've come to the realization that I really only want to write books that maybe I can't write.
Markus Zusak
#70. What's interesting about books that take place in the future, even twenty years in the future, is that many of them are black or white: It's either a utopia or it's misery. The real truth is that there's going to be both things in any future, just like there is now.
Albert Brooks
#71. This is, in part, why there is less magic in the world today. Magic is secret and secrets are magic, after all, and years upon years of teaching and sharing magic and worse. Writing it down in fancy books that get all dusty with age has lessened it, removed its power bit by bit.
Erin Morgenstern
#72. I have read books that are so cliched and lazy, my eyes have bled. But I also have read books marketed under the chick-lit umbrella that are so honest, clever and gritty that I've wanted to give up writing and paint walls instead.
Jojo Moyes
#73. Memory is the friend of wit, but the treacherous ally of invention; there are many books that owe their success to two things; good memory of those who write them, and the bad memory of those who read them
Charles Caleb Colton
#74. Non-reading is not just the absence of reading. It is a genuine activity, one that consists of adopting a stance in relation to the immense tide of books that protects you from drowning. On that basis, it deserves to be defended and even taught.
Pierre Bayard
#75. People always ask what a book is about, as if it has to be about something. I don't want to write books that lend themselves to that sort of description. My books are more a kind of breaking-down.
Jonathan Safran Foer
#76. It is not, in fact, cookery books that we need half so much as cooks really trained to a knowledge of their duties.
Eliza Acton
#77. Fiction is able to encompass books that are bleak and which dwell on the manifold and terrible problems of our times. But I don't think that all books need to have that particular focus.
Alexander McCall Smith
#78. Schools and parents can team up to find books that kids will really get excited about - that will make them say, 'That was a great experience. Now I know why people get excited about reading.'
James Patterson
#79. Out of the blending of human and animal stories comes the theme that I hope is inherent in all my books: that man is an inescapable part of all nature, that its welfare is his welfare, that to survive, he cannot continue acting and regarding himself as a spectator looking on from somewhere outside.
Fred Bodsworth
#80. Any book has behind it all the other books that have been written.
Anthony Burgess
#81. It is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with superior minds. In the best books, great men talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their souls into ours.
William Ellery Channing
#82. Whenever I've been stuck on a project, it's always brought me solace to the return to books that moved me in the past. It's a nice way to get outside my own head; and it brings me back to one of the most important reasons I write at all: to bring some pleasure to readers, to make them think or feel.
Leslie Jamison
#83. This is the worst! Worse than that time I finished all the books that had been published so far in a series a full year before the final book came out.
Rachel Hollis
#84. These are books that want to be read out loud. These are books kids share with each other, and I think that's important.
Brian P. Cleary
#85. Alejandro Colucci has designed covers for my books that stand out, that catch the eye, and that make me, as a reader and consumer, want to know more about the books behind those covers.
James A. Moore
#86. There's an outline for each of the books that I adhere to pretty closely, but I'm not averse to taking it in a new direction, as long as I can get it back to where I need it to go.
Justin Cronin
#87. Get up and make notes on the books that you have, reflect on these notes and order more books, get up again, revise the hypothesis, and figure out a new plan of action. Repeat, making sure to leave no cracks open through which the gray fog of depression can penetrate. I
Barbara Ehrenreich
#88. - I really prefer books. No matter how bad a book is, it's unique, but people are all so ordinary.
- I think we really like books that make us hate ourselves.
William Gaddis
#89. I like shows or films or books that have messages but don't beat people over the head with them.
Anna Paquin
#90. It is one of the great charms of books that they have to end.
Frank Kermode
#91. I find it fascinating that a lot of business books that do well are from people who've never made any money in business.
Gary Vaynerchuk
#92. I suppose I felt doomed to be an artist early on because of the way I drew all over the books that I needed for school, from ancient history to math. I was more interested in drawing in the margins than actually doing the work.
Nancy Spero
#93. It was to these books that I turned for an answer to the question: What is the meaning of la ilaha illa Allah? Again I was disappointed. The books were about Islam, not about Allah. They covered every subject you could possibly imagine except for the one which really mattered.
Bediuzzaman Said Nursi
#94. Books that speak like God speak with too much authority to entertain us. Those that speak like good men hold us by their human charm; we grow by finding ourselves in them.
Thomas Merton
#95. For it was through books that she felt her life to be unjudged Look at all of the great mix-ups, messes, confinement, and double-dealings in Shakespeare, she thought.Identities disguised continually, in a combative dance of illusion and discovery.
Louise Erdrich
#96. I just stopped reading a lot of books. I mean, I read books that I have to read for school, but I don't actually pick up a book and read for fun. On my time off, I go to movies, hang out with friends, go shopping ... just little things.
Mark Indelicato
#97. I never tell students they cannot read a book they pick up, but I do guide them toward books that I think would be a good fit for them. I think of myself as a reading mentor-a reader who can help them find books they might like.
Donalyn Miller
#98. The first two books that I did by myself were long stories in verse. I knew I could do that because I'd written a lot in verse. But, verse stories are hard to sell, so my editor encouraged me to try writing in prose.
Natalie Babbitt
#99. My mum was a librarian, and she brought home a lot of interesting books, and we just read and read. I suppose I didn't really think I could be a writer myself until I was working in editing in my 20s and discovered that actually, the books that came in were not very much like published books.
Margo Lanagan
#100. I try to write books that are different from the books I've already written. I think one of the thing I really try to do is reinvent how a novel can be written.
James Frey
