Top 100 Great Book Quotes
#1. When writing a book what is more important? Grammar and spelling or telling a great story? I know which I would choose.
Samuel Colbran
#2. Thanks for being the kind of person who likes to pick up a book. That's a genuinely great thing. I met a librarian recently who said she doesn't read because books are her job and when she goes home, she just wants to switch off. I think we can agree that that's creepy as hell.
Max Barry
#3. I have an ambition to write a great book, but that's really a competition with myself. I've noticed that a lot of young writers, people in all media, want to be famous but they don't really want to do anything. I can't think of anything less worth striving for than fame.
Zadie Smith
#4. It holds my essential stuff, including a book - for true contentment, one must carry a book at all times, and great books so rarely fit, my friends, into one's pocket[ ... ]
Michael Chabon
#6. I went on a Buddha jag. I read 'Confession of a Buddhist Atheist' by Stephen Batchelor and Karen Armstrong's biography of Buddha, which is a great book.
Denis O'Hare
#7. Life involves effort and growth. You won't grow by watching a situation comedy, though you can grow by reading a book. I hope we aren't becoming a nation of watchers, because what made us great is that we've always been a nation of doers.
Ronald Reagan
#8. I always thought that as much as I love 'White Jazz,' it became almost unfilmable at some point, because there are so many strands, so much, and it became so psychotic ... that's what made it such a great book, but those things would not carry over into the filmic realm, I thought, with ease.
Joe Carnahan
#9. A great many years ago I purchased a fine dictionary. The first thing I did with it was to turn to the word "impossible," and neatly clip it out of the book. That would not be an unwise thing for you to do.
Napoleon Hill
#10. Exposition suggests a great trust in the reader, and this expression of trust makes a book feel tender.
Akhil Sharma
#11. A blanket would be a great surface to print my new book on, so you could read it in bed while you're having boring, obligatory sex with your spouse, who's as dry and exciting as a sack of flour.
Jarod Kintz
#12. No matter how much a man may study, reflect and meditate on all the books in the world, he is nothing more than a minor scribe unless he has read the great book.
Denis Diderot
#13. I have always been a big fan of the character and am more of a moviegoer than a comic book guy, there is always something about the character of Batman that is very elemental. There is a great powerful myth to the character and romantic element that draws from a lot of literary sources
Christopher Nolan
#14. Reading is a choice. The will to do depends the reader. We may or may not do it but when we kill reading, we kill a purposeful mind. Reading a page of a purposeful book per day is not only a great medicine to the mind but also a powerful antidote to ignorance and mediocrity
Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
#15. I've been around so long that I might be in record books for being the longest, weirdest, most pathetic great player ever. Look t how precocious I am at 33.
Vince Spadea
#16. Books make great gifts because they have whole worlds inside of them. And it's much cheaper to buy somebody a book than it is to buy them the whole world!
Neil Gaiman
#17. But you're kind of like a great book ... you know, you pick up a book at the bookstore because it has a beautiful cover ... but it's what's inside that pulls you in.
Miranda Kenneally
#18. There are great books in this world and great worlds in books.
Anne Bronte
#19. The great bell of Beaulieu was ringing. Far away through the forest might be heard its musical clangor and swell.
Arthur Conan Doyle
#21. John Green has written a powerful novel - one that plunges headlong into the labyrinth of life, love, and the mysteries of being human. This is a book that will touch your life, so don't read it sitting down. Stand up, and take a step into the Great Perhaps.
KL Going
#22. I write titles that are confrontational. I write titles that make people want to pick up a book and find out more about it. I write good books; I write great titles though.
Larry Winget
#23. Every ceremony or rite has a value if it is performed without alteration. A ceremony is a book in which a great deal is written. Anyone who understands can read it. One rite often contains more than a hundred books.
George Gurdjieff
#24. The Bible remained for me a book of books, still divine - but divine in the sense that all great books are divine which teach men how to live righteously.
Joseph Joubert
#25. Homeliness is almost as great a merit in a book as in a house, if the reader would abide there. It is next to beauty, and a very high art.
Henry David Thoreau
#26. I would love it if my book was considered chick-lit or a beach read. That would be great. People would buy my book.
Emily Gould
#27. Reading a book is like going on a great journey. You don't know what'll happen, but something is bound to change. And for me, that change has always been good.
Shannon Hale
#28. When 'Tracks' first came out, I was courted by Sydney Pollack. I had lunch with him, and he opened the conversation with, 'Honey, you ain't gonna like what I'm gonna do to your book.' I really liked him, but I turned him down, because - well, I was stupid. I also turned down a great deal of money.
Robyn Davidson
#29. 'The Great Gatsby,' by F. Scott Fitzgerald, remains the most perfect novel that has ever come out of the United States. Everything in the book moves as it should, in the manner of a piece by Bach or Mozart.
Frank Delaney
#30. We know a great deal about the configuration of the menorah from the biblical book of Exodus. Beaten out of solid gold, the ancient candelabrum boasted six branches emerging from a seventh, its central shaft. The menorah was adorned with golden buttons, cups, and flowers.
Meir Soloveichik
#31. Men saw the stars at the edge of the sea They thought great thoughts about liberty Poets wrote down words that did fit Writers wrote books Thinkers thought about it.
Van Morrison
#32. I don't think of my books as being biographies. I never had any interest in doing a book just to write the life of a great man. I had zero interest in that. My interest is in power. How power works.
Robert Caro
#33. For a true writer, each book should be a new beginning where he tries again for something that is beyond attainment. He should always try for something that has never been done or that others have tried and failed. Then sometimes, with great luck, he will succeed.
Ernest Hemingway,
#34. I get a glimpse of the mind of many souls from their sacred books.
Lailah Gifty Akita
#35. Maybe you could be a great writer - maybe even good enough to write a book or articles in a newspaper - but you might not know it until you write that English paper - that English class paper that's assigned to you.
Barack Obama
#36. When you read a book [The Hunger Games], you create that tonal bandwidth. You set a tone for yourself, as you're reading it, in which everything exists within the world of your imagination. In the book, it's great when she can push a button and food comes up, as per your order.
Nina Jacobson
#37. When you're an established name, you know that a children's book will have a pretty good chance of getting picked up. Like Madonna. It's not that I had this great idea. Actually, in my case, it was a great idea.
Jo Nesbo
#38. All of my sermons become books. I've been accused of having no unpublished thought. I encourage pastors to do that. I think there are so many great sermons that never really get circulation.
Max Lucado
#39. William Armstrong is a great teacher. He speaks truthfullyabout the discipline required for learning, and about the pleasures oforder and system in acquiring knowledge. Any reader, of any age, will enjoythis book.
Jill Ker Conway
#40. The great thing about having digital comics is that it is like having a comic-book shop on your digital device. It has turned comics from a destination buy to an impulse buy.
Jim Lee
#41. What I love about 'The Walking Dead' is it's a human story, which is to me what makes the comic book so good, but once you jump from the pages of the book to the screen, the gore and the zombies have to look great.
Scott Ian
#42. Wisdom is not what comes from reading great books. When it comes to understanding life, experiential learning is the only worthwhile kind, everything else is hearsay.
Joan Erikson
#43. In the great books of India, an empire spoke to us, nothing small or unworthy, but large, serene, consistent, the voice of an old intelligence, which in another age and climate had pondered and thus disposed of the questions that exercise us.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#44. It is mere nonsense to put pain among the discoveries of science. Lay down this book and reflect for five minutes on the fact that all the great religions were first preached, and long practiced, in a world without chloroform.
C.S. Lewis
#45. We are all the same and we are all different. What great friends we will be.
Kelly Moran
#46. The only way to write a great book is to write it with the eyes of a child who sees things for the first time.
Arnold Bennett
#47. Why do you read many books? The great book is within your heart. Open the pages of this inexhaustible book, the source of all knowledge. You will know everything.
Sivananda
#48. My first reaction to finding Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty in a book was, Wow, what a great photograph! I could not believe that someone had gone to so much trouble just to end up with a picture.
Vik Muniz
#49. Let us read thoughtfully; this is a great secret in the right use of books.
George Gilfillan
#50. Every town you go to, they tell you what's special about their town. What they're number one at ... This guy comes up and says, 'D'you know that we're the home of the world's largest frying pan?'
' ... Really! That is great 'cause I'm writin' a new book called Things I Don't Care About.
Tim Hawkins
#51. I think we have a great deal of mythology around writing. We believe that only a few people can really do it. I wrote a book called 'The Right to Write.' In it, I argued that all of us have the capacity to write. That it's as normal to write as it is to speak.
Julia Cameron
#52. Most of the books that I've adapted I'm doing because I love the book and I feel like it's a great work of art in itself, and when it's a great book I feel as a director or a writer that I have a responsibility to rise to the level of the original. It makes me try to reach higher.
James Franco
#53. A great book feeds our soul and nourishes our spirit in a way nothing else can.
C.S. Lakin
#55. It must be a really great book because one can read it as a boy in one way, and then re-read it in middle life and get something very different out of it - and that to my mind is one of the best tests.
C.S. Lewis
#56. I can hear some of you groaning as you read this section. "Great," you're saying. "I have to put a theme in my book? Themes are only for that 'high literature' stuff that gets taught in universities, not for my nice, entertaining genre fiction.
Libbie Hawker
#57. A lot of people have said to me, 'That's a great idea, running for president. You'll get booked for more speeches. You can write a book.'
John Bolton
#58. There is pressure when you have a very big book like 'Shadow Divers' to follow up with something big. But you can't let that pressure determine what you do. You just look for the best stories, and when you find a great one, you tell it.
Robert Kurson
#59. What I like about the third movie is you get to see a side of Carlisle you haven't seen before. You actually get to see what his vampire capabilities are because there's some great battle sequences. It's my favorite book. Carlisle is holding on to that humanity. He doesn't want to be a vampire.
Peter Facinelli
#60. But you don't hire Ang Lee to do a typical children's movie. But it's such an interesting combination, whoever thought of getting Ang together with a comic book, that was just great.
Dennis Muren
#61. One of the main arguments that I make in my new book, 'The Great Degeneration,' is that the rule of law in the U.S. is becoming the rule of lawyers.
Niall Ferguson
#62. While they read and talked together, there was opened before them the great book wherein God has written, in the language of mountain, and tree, and sky, and flower, and brook, the things that make truly wise those who pause to read.
Harold Bell Wright
#63. When you got source material, whether it's a play or a book - a great writer often appreciates being adapted and developed. It's like when you go see a production of a great play and they are always different. There is always room for interpretation.
Jude Law
#64. The only thing that makes me put down a book is if the characters are boring, or the situations aren't fraught with the potential for some great change or I don't mind if an author torments his protagonist, but I do expect a decent payoff in the end.
Michael Boatman
#65. Somehow I have the feeling that in some book is the great treasure I've been looking for all my life.
Jessamyn West
#66. If a book is really good, it deserves to be read again, and if it's great, it should be read at least three times.
Anatole Broyard
#67. Stepping into the "shoes" of someone's life other than my own, great movies such as Cinema Paradiso, scenic landscapes, the work of Daniel Day-Lewis, the books of Joel Goldsmith, traveling, doughnuts, ice cream.
Reggie Lee
#68. I love to eat, I love to feed people, and I'm a great cook. I joked with my friends that I wanted to write a book where desserts had to be extensively researched, since I have a terrible sweet tooth. My particular downfall is cake.
Julia Glass
#69. We each contribute our own book to the great library of humanity.
Steve Maraboli
#70. So young and yet already carrying a great burden on her shoulders. Do not worry, my dear, I will make sure you can protect yourself and others. Because you are our hope ... sweet, darling ... Arima.
Stephanie Beerden
#71. It's been amazing to watch, because for 'Thor', which was always a mid-selling book, to be in the top ten for every single issue since the reboot is just a great compliment.
J. Michael Straczynski
#72. The process of writing a book is so removed in my mind from the process of publishing it that I often forget for great stretches that I eventually hope to do the latter.
Karen Joy Fowler
#73. She told fortunes for a living. It's a wacky book and was great fun to write. It is very much a look at what life was like for women in Australia in the 1960's.
Colleen McCullough
#74. A great book is a thing of mystery and beauty; it has the power to move you.
Neil Leckman
#75. Students learn best not by reading the Great Books in a closed room but by opening the doors and windows of experience.
Thomas Ehrlich
#76. The broader the topic, the easier it is, not only to fill a book, but to set the bar pretty high for really great stuff.
Mary Roach
#77. The function of a great library is to store obscure books.
Nicholson Baker
#78. They all chose Indian names for themselves. Teddy was Little Fox ("Naturally," Ursula said). Nancy was Little Wolf ("Honiahaka" in Cheyenne, Mrs. Shawcross said. She had a book she referred to). Mrs. Shawcross herself was Great White Eagle ("Oh, for heaven's sake," Sylvie said, "talk about hubris").
Kate Atkinson
#79. My attraction to story is a ceaseless current that runs through the center of me. My inexhaustible ardor for reading seems connected to my hunger for storylines that show up in both books and in the great tumbling chaos of life.
Pat Conroy
#80. It is not for nothing that Skaldin in one part of his book quotes Adam Smith: we have seen that both his views and the character of his arguments in many respects repeat the theses of that
great ideologist of the progressive bourgeoisie.
Vladimir Lenin
#81. All great changes in life were inspired either by a book or by a personal point of view. The greatest were inspired by a woman.
Sameh Elsayed
#82. Why are not more gems from our great authors scattered over the country? Great books are not in everybody's reach; and though it is better to know them thoroughly than to know them only here and there, yet it is a good work to give a little to those who have not the time nor means to get more.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
#83. Tom Paine was a great American visionary. His book, Common Sense, sold a couple of hundred thousand copies in a population of four or five million. That means it was a best seller for years. People were thoughtful then. Hope is one thing. But you need to have hope with thought.
Studs Terkel
#84. Every book is a great action and every great action is a book!
Martin Luther
#85. The works of the great artists are silent books of eternal truths.
Stefan Zweig
#86. Good books teach you about others;
great books teach you about yourself.
Matshona Dhliwayo
#87. Cousin-screwing. It is not totally safe. It raises the risk of birth defects slightly. But I was reading in a book for history that there's, like, a 99.9999 percent chance that at least one of your great-great-great-grandparents married first cousin.
John Green
#88. I started to book good television jobs in 2010. I started to get really close to exceptional jobs in 2011, and then I got 'Arrow' in 2012. I know how lucky I am because just getting the lead in a pilot doesn't guarantee that that pilot is going to turn into something great.
Stephen Amell
#89. Most great books have been about striving in some sense. In a sense, money is the great topic of the novel. You couldn't necessarily say that about poetry.
Chad Harbach
#90. A great book remains eternally in one's memory as today's legend.
Mayi Ngwala
#91. The Book of Mormon is another testament of Jesus Christ, and we learn about Him in its pages. We know that it has great power. It has the power to change lives. It has the power to convert. If you read it with an open heart, you will know that it is the word of God and that it is true.
Henry B. Eyring
#92. I write with a sense of my future readers being ever on the verge of setting down the book and pronouncing it a bore. Fear and insecurity are great motivators.
Mary Roach
#93. People read newspapers far more than they read the Word of God and then we wonder way America is in the mess she's in today. This is the Book that made America great, but since it's been kicked out, we've seen America go under and down.
Lester Roloff
#94. Other people's creativity inspires me. Seeing great art, or reading a fab book or watching an interesting documentary or an exciting film - these things make me want to let my own imagination fly.
Kate Cary
#95. There were heavy beams - planks of sun - falling randomly, wonderfully, onto the road. Clouds arched their backs to lok behind as they started again to move on. 'It's such a beautiful day,' he said, and his voice was in many pieces. A great day to die. A great day to die, like this.
Markus Zusak
#96. If you think success is about so many more things and is so much more arbitrary, then you can be much more open to the idea that you can be Ben Fountain and publish your great book at forty-nine.
Malcolm Gladwell
#97. politicians and pundits tell you what your rights are. Read this book to learn your constitutional rights and together, we can keep the spirit of freedom alive in this great nation. Click here to view this
Sean Patrick
#98. Great is the fortune of he who possesses a good bottle, a good book, and a good friend.
Moliere
#99. Pictures are very important. I remember at home we had illustrated editions of Rudyard Kipling's 'Just So Stories' and 'The Jungle Book,' which were read to me. Living in Zimbabwe made it very real, especially the 'Just So Stories' with the 'great grey-green greasy Limpopo.'
Korky Paul
#100. I feel certain that if, in our homes, parents will read from the Book of Mormon prayerfully and regularly, both by themselves and with their children, the spirit of that great book will come to permeate our homes and all who dwell therein.
Ezra Taft Benson
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