Top 100 First Book Quotes
#2. Crime fiction has always been what I wanted to read, so when I sat down to write my first book, it was naturally the way that I was going to go.
Mark Billingham
#3. It took me 40 years to write my first book. When I was a child, I was encouraged to go to school. I was not encouraged to follow the career of a writer because my parents thought that I was going to starve to death.
Paulo Coelho
#4. When I wrote my first book I was asked to write another. After one hundred, everyone asked me to stop and do something else. After two hundred, I lost all my friends and my girlfriend too.
Robin Sacredfire
#5. My favorite group growing up was 'The Hobbit.' It was the first book I actually finished. One of those adventure things that takes you to that land and it will forever hold a special place in my heart. I am not a huge book reader.
Luke Mitchell
#7. 'The Chicken Soup for the Soul' books are the result of over 20 years of teaching seminars and giving speeches. The first book contains all of the stories that I used in my seminars to illustrate the points that I wanted to make.
Jack Canfield
#8. When I was young I longed to write a great novel that should win me fame. Now that I am getting old my first book is written to amuse children
L. Frank Baum
#9. When you write your first book aged 25 or so, you have 25 years of experience, albeit much of it juvenile experience. The second book comes after an extra year sitting in bookshops. Pretty soon, you begin to run on empty.
Douglas Adams
#10. My husband wrote the story for my first book, but then he didn't want to do that anymore. So if I was going to go on being an illustrator, I had to start writing the stories, too.
Natalie Babbitt
#11. 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
#12. Fewer things leave a deeper mark on the reader than the first book that finds its way into his heart.
Carlos Ruiz Zafon
#14. Few things leave a deeper mark on a reader than the first book that finds it's way into his heart. Those first images, the echo of words we think we have left behind, accompany us throughout our lives and sculpt a palace in our memory ...
Carlos Ruiz Zafon
#15. Careless and not particularly biting, it was easier to shrug off than anything in the first book which depicted me as an inarticulate zombie confused by the irony of Randy Newman's I Love L.A.
Bret Easton Ellis
#16. My first book was an adult novel, 'Down Among the Gods,' published by Virago, and I've written poems as well, a slim volume of poetry.
Kate Thompson
#17. It wasn't until after college that I started writing. I had just applied randomly for jobs in the media and got one on a magazine called 'Pensions World.' So I was writing for a living there and that's when I started my first book.
Sophie Kinsella
#18. The rosary was said every evening. I always liked that sentence about the medieval Churches, that they were the Bibles of the poor. The Church was my first book and I would think it is still my most important book.
John McGahern
#19. In both 'Tigerman' and my first book, 'The Gone-Away World,' there are characters who never really get names. They're too fundamentally who they are to be bound by a name, so I couldn't give them one.
Nick Harkaway
#20. After working as a journalist I went to a writing program at Johns Hopkins. It was interesting because it was neither journalistic nor historical, but it emphasized writing style, and afterwards I was asked to write my first book.
Iris Chang
#22. If I hadn't been able to get my first book published, I am not sure what I would have done.
Sara Sheridan
#23. I hate sequels. They're never as good as the first book.
Connie Willis
#24. Anyone who was tempted to draw comparisons between my father's 'Dave Robicheaux' series and my first book quickly gave up.
Alafair Burke
#25. My first book was called 'Buried Dreams,' about a serial-killer, which was probably about ten years ahead of the serial-killer curve. It was a national bestseller, but it was three years of living in the sewer of this guy's mind.
Tim Cahill
#26. Sometimes I can better describe a person by another person's reaction. In a story in my first book, I couldn't think of a way to sufficiently describe the charisma of a certain boy, so the narrator says, "I knew girls who saved his gum."
Amy Hempel
#27. Your first book already defines you, while you are really far from being defined. And this definition is something you may then carry with you for the rest of your life, trying to confirm it or extend or correct or deny it; but you can never eliminate it.
Italo Calvino
#28. So, how to stay inside the world of entertainment without actually getting another job? I felt the only logical answer was to become a novelist. So I wrote the first book - driven by some very real feelings of desperation - and it worked.
Lee Child
#29. I'm totally obsessed with Dickens, and 'Great Expectations' was one of the first book's I read when I was still in school in Porthcawl.
Paul Rhys
#30. The first book I sat down to write was an historical romance. It was really bad and thankfully no one ever saw it.
Rachel Gibson
#31. Very early in my life I took the question of the relation of art to truth seriously: even now I stand in holy dread in the face of this discordance. My first book was devoted to it. The Birth of Tragedy believes in art on the background of another belief
Friedrich Nietzsche
#32. 'The Blade Itself' was my first book. Probably I should've tried a few short stories first, but for some reason I decided to begin with Everest.
Joe Abercrombie
#33. When a writer declares that his first book is his best, that is bad. I progress successively from book to book.
Mahmoud Darwish
#34. In my first book, 'A Return to Love', I wrote about things in the outer world that need to change - how we need to ameliorate deep poverty, heal the earth, end war.
Marianne Williamson
#35. Writing is the hardest thing I know, but it was the only thing I wanted to do. I wrote for 20 years and published nothing before my first book.
Kent Haruf
#36. I have written a few children's books. The first book that I wrote was for children. It was called 'The Package', and it was a mystery story in pictures. It had no words.
Laurie Anderson
#37. I published my first book in 1982 - a collection of Irish folklore called Irish Folk & Fairy Tales. It is still in print today. My first young adult book was published a couple of years later, and I've been writing in both genres ever since.
Michael Scott
#38. The first book I could call mine, my first book, was a picture book, 'The Magic Monkey' - it was adapted from an old Chinese legend by a thirteen-year-old prodigy named Plato Chan with the help of his sister.
Nick Flynn
#39. When I was 16, the first book I ever actually purchased with my own money, in fact, and had read on my own time was 'Hunt for Red October' by Tom Clancy.
Max Brooks
#40. King Arthur's Knights had been the first book Arthur had read late at night under the covers with a torch...it was he supposed, thinking back on it, the first book that had showed him what reading was really all about.
Charlie Lovett
#41. I wrote my first book without being to Ethiopia since I was two years old.
Dinaw Mengestu
#42. My first book is about twins who are attached: two people who are joined and can't escape each other.
Darin Strauss
#43. I remember the first book I bought, when I was about 11 ... Dad said, 'What have you got that for? What are libraries for?'
Kenneth Branagh
#44. I first started writing historical fiction in the late '70s and kept pictures of Kathleen Woodiwiss and Rosemary Rogers on my refrigerator until my first book was published by Avon in 1982. The biggest advantage of this genre for me is that it allows me to blend fact and fiction.
Virginia Henley
#45. Aim to write for an hour per day. I used to be a teacher, and an hour a day before school was all it took for me to write my first book. Don't get discouraged if a holiday or illness interrupts your writing habit. Just start it up again.
Caroline Lawrence
#46. I think that my first book - I was trying to write the kind of book I would have loved as a kid. So it's sort of, like, a book inspired by my childhood reading and the passion that I felt about reading when I was a kid.
Rebecca Stead
#48. I started to read my first book at about the age of six. I started to write a book simultaneously. Not to compete, just to augment. And that's how one starts. Or I started.
Gore Vidal
#49. The first book that they gave me was Jeannie, a young teenager. I went on with her maybe ten books.
Dan DeCarlo
#50. Conspiracies fascinate me. When I visited the Rozabal shrine in Srinagar before writing my first book, I remember thinking that the person enshrined there was no ordinary mortal. History is rife with mysteries, and that visit ignited a fire to unveil some of them.
Ashwin Sanghi
#51. I had just turned 28 and sold my first book, a travel guide for vegetarians, but I'd tell people about the day job that I didn't care about instead - I placed banner advertisements on the web for a search engine company.
James Bernard Frost
#52. God has, in fact, written two books, not just one. Of course, we are all familiar with the first book he wrote, namely Scripture. But he has written a second book called creation.
Francis Bacon
#53. As soon as I finished the first book, I wrote a second, which I hope to sell this year, and I have just about finished the third book in the series. Two more are already outlined. I'm in this for the long haul.
Richard Helms
#54. I sell my first book to Random House, a memoir of my years as a war photographer, for twice my NBC salary.
Deborah Copaken Kogan
#55. 'A Rogue by Any Other Name' is the first book in the 'Rules of Scoundrels' series, centered on a legendary pre-Victorian casino and her four scandalous aristocratic owners.
Sarah MacLean
#56. That was the - It was an exciting time because it was as though I was sort of tied up in a paper bag or in a gunny sack with a rope around the neck of it, and all of a sudden with the acceptance of that first book everything sort of spilled out!
Robert McCloskey
#57. Writers are frequently asked why they wrote their first book. A more interesting answer might come from asking them why they wrote their second one.
Len Deighton
#58. I started writing at the kitchen table after midnight. It took ten months to finish that first book; I sent it to a publisher and I got some kind of prize, so it was like a dream - I was surprised to find it happening.
Haruki Murakami
#59. When I sold my first book, 'A Conspiracy of Tall Men,' it was part of a two-book deal. It wasn't hugely lucrative, but it was enough money for me to quit the paralegal job I had in San Francisco.
Noah Hawley
#60. For readers, one of life's more electrifying discoveries is that they ARE readers--not just capable of doing it...but in love with it...The first book that does that is never forgotten, and each page seems to bring a fresh revelation, one that burns and exalts...
Stephen King
#61. Every author believes, when his first book is published, that those that acclaim it are his personal friends or impersonal peers, while its revilers can only be envious rogues and nonentities.
Vladimir Nabokov
#62. The truth is that since the first book, I have wanted to emulate Benjamin Franklin and put together a healthy, wealthy and wise trilogy and so healthy was 'The 4-Hour Body,' wealthy was 'The 4-Hour Workweek' and then wise is 'The 4-Hour Chef.'
Timothy Ferriss
#63. In the summer of '80, Silhouette bought my first book.
Nora Roberts
#64. I wrote my first book at eight, all of four pages. At 10, I did a 40-page story. At 12, I wrote two stage plays.
Caitlin Moran
#65. 'Out' was my real breakthrough, the novel that became a hit in Japan and sold a lot of books, so it was sort of an obvious choice for being the first book to be translated into English.
Natsuo Kirino
#66. Keep reading and writing, learn how to revise, and push through rejections. My second book, Monsoon Summer, was rejected over 20 times and finally came out 11 years after my first book! I'm glad I didn't give up. Neither should you.
Mitali Perkins
#67. Hoping to instill my love of learning in other children, I taught my first class at a local elementary school the year my first book, 'Flying Fingers,' debuted; since then, I have spoken at hundreds of schools, classrooms and conferences around the world.
Adora Svitak
#68. My novel, which I had started with such hope shortly after publishing my first book of stories, wouldn't budge past the 75-page mark. Nothing I wrote past page 75 made any kind of sense. Nothing. Which would have been fine if the first 75 pages hadn't been pretty damn cool.
Junot Diaz
#69. I've always written about social concerns. My first book was about Spanish Harlem.
Dan Wakefield
#70. First book There are seven of them, haikus mostly but rhyming ones, too. Not enough for a real book until I cut each page into a small square staple the squares together, write one poem on each page. Butterflies by Jacqueline Woodson on the front. The butterfly book complete now.
Jacqueline Woodson
#71. The only reason I didn't kill myself after I read the reviews of my first book was because we have two rivers in New York and I couldn't decide which one to jumo into.
Wilfrid Sheed
#72. I had always wanted to include images in a novel, and with my first book, 'Telex From Cuba,' I made an elaborate website that is basically all images.
Rachel Kushner
#73. A second book that makes you rethink the first book is the Holy Grail of a series.
Holly Black
#74. Early publication can be a dubious blessing: we all know writers who would give anything not to have published their first book, and go about trying to buy up all existing copies.
Joyce Carol Oates
#75. Your first book is the only one that matters. Perhaps a writer should write only that one. That is the one moment when you make the big leap; the opportunity to express yourself is offered that once, and you untie the knot within you then or never again.
Italo Calvino
#76. In college, I wrote newspaper articles and songs. Then, on my 21st birthday, I sold my first book. It was a nonfiction book about women pirates - 'Pirates in Petticoats.' After that, I was a book writer for good.
Jane Yolen
#77. It was more exciting to get that first book published, I think.
Robert McCloskey
#78. I did not want to write one of those sequels that famous first-book authors get into where everybody says, 'Oh yeah.'
Robert M. Pirsig
#79. I feel like the books were just written like a movie. You read it and you can just kind of see everything. Before I went in to read with the director, I read the first book and I loved it. I didn't realize how good the writing was. And then I went in and read with Gary Ross, and that was it.
Liam Hemsworth
#80. I wrote my first book at 20, but my whole focus from about the age of 12 was to be a writer.
John Boyne
#81. The reason I was successful in launching my first book with bloggers is this: I assumed that I should spend as much time on a blogger with a million-person readership as I would pitching an editor of a publication with a million person subscription-base.
Timothy Ferriss
#82. I got my first book deal when I was in college, but it was published in Germany, and I could never actually read it.
Michelle Moran
#83. With my first book, 'A Letter to a Young Brother,' I figured it would be my only book I was ever going to write. What happened with that is a lot of young men would reach out to me.
Hill Harper
#84. I remember the first time I held my book, my first book in my hands. I cannot tell you how it moved me.
Jan Karon
#85. I was lucky in getting my first book published; my first book was 'Bunnicula,' which I wrote with my late wife Debbie, for the fun of it.
James Howe
#86. After I published my first book, my sister, known as Kali Willows, began writing. She fell as in love with it as I did. She has a number of short stories.
Franny Armstrong
#87. So my first book I had no experience having written a book, but each book is a little snapshot of who you are at that moment, accrued all through time, so I accept that.
Chang-rae Lee
#88. I had already drafted the manuscript that would become my first book by the time I graduated from college, but I had no idea what to do with it.
Eula Biss
#89. My first book was called, 'Mountain, Get Out of My Way,' where I did an autobiographical sketch, if you will, looking back at myself and looking back at things in my life, and juxtaposing them against things that are happening in other people's lives and trying to be motivational.
Montel Williams
#90. I began writing seriously in my mid-20s and didn't publish my first book until I was 41.
Kent Haruf
#91. I finished my first book seventy-six years ago. I offered it to every publisher on the English-speaking earth I had ever heard of. Their refusals were unanimous: and it did not get into print until, fifty years later; publishers would publish anything that had my name on it.
George Bernard Shaw
#92. I've always liked getting away with just a little bit of what you're not supposed to. Like my first book, Billy's Booger, got me in trouble with the principal's office.
William Joyce
#93. That wasn't a bad price for a first book. My agent upped it as much as possible. I was 27 and had nothing behind me. I was working like a fool to earn a living and pay for my apartment.
Patricia Highsmith
#94. I read the first book about five times while I was preparing for the role. I really wanted to completely embody Lissa and, naturally the book gave me much deeper psychological and emotional insight into Lissa than the script.
Lucy Fry
#95. It's not unheard of, in the course of life, that if there's enough interest in it, we could consider going a second season or doing another chapter. I keep looking at it as books in a series, and this season is the first book.
Remi Aubuchon
#96. The first book I opened looked promising - Mummies and Their Secrets by Sir Lynn N. Bandage.
R.L. LaFevers
#97. India introduced Britain to vegetarianism - see Tristram Stuart's excellent first book on this - and it is possible, indeed all too easy, to be a vegetarian in India and eat extraordinarily good, varied food every day, with very few 'repeats.'
Neel Mukherjee
#98. My first book was the most successful debut novel in the U.K. ever and every one of my books has reached number one in the U.K. Clearly the British know brilliance when they see it.
Kathy Reichs
#99. The heartbreak of having written and published a first book is that the world then expected you to write a second.
Michelle Tea
#100. Therefore, in the course of the work I have followed this plan: I describe in the first book all the positions of the orbits together with the movements which I ascribe to the Earth, in order that this book might contain, as it were, the general scheme of the universe.
Nicolaus Copernicus
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
