Top 100 Idea Book Quotes
#1. In Beijing, the joke among hacks is that, after the drive in from the airport, you are ready to write a column; after a month, you feel the stirrings of an idea-book; but after a year, you struggle to write anything at all, because you've finally discovered just how much you don't know.
Evan Osnos
#2. 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
#3. My taking pictures means I'm taking a series of pictures which become an essay and then get extended into a book. That's what's exciting, to take an idea and work it through to completion.
George A Tice
#4. A book is the only place in which you can examine a fragile thought without breaking it, or explore an explosive idea without fear it will go off in your face. It is one of the few havens remaining where a man's mind can get both provocation and privacy.
Edward P. Morgan
#5. The trouble with most problem-solving books for parents is that they start with the idea that the child has a problem. Then they try to tell us how to fix the child, or else, after blaming the parent, they suggest how we can fix ourselves.
Polly Berrien Berends
#6. Happy," said Thomas. "When I grow up, I am going to be happy."
Mrs. van Amersfoort was about to pull a book from the shelf, but turned in surprise. She looked at Thomas with a smile and said, "That is a damn good idea. And do you know how happiness begins? It begins with no longer being afraid.
Guus Kuijer
#7. I like the quiet it takes to pursue an idea the way I pursued 'Hamilton,' but I couldn't write a book, because there's no applause at the end of writing a book.
Lin-Manuel Miranda
#8. If I want to write a movie, I'll write a screenplay, but if I have an idea for a book, it's something that I think can only be done novelistically.
Bret Easton Ellis
#9. We still have to evolve, that's how we're created, we're created to evolve so you can believe in that the answer is in this book or in this one idea that the masses most believe in, each individual must evolve themselves, spiritually and consciously.
Ziggy Marley
#10. My friend Markus Zusak wrote a story from the point of view of death, 'The Book Thief.' I thought that's a great idea, where your omniscient narrator is death. I'm glad he had that idea because I wouldn't have been able to work so well with it.
Shaun Tan
#11. All who have read a few old books have picked up the old tactics of considering every new idea a 'heresy' which must be rooted out.
Lu Xun
#12. I like the idea that when a guy comes over to the house, I get to say I wrote the book.
Greg Behrendt
#13. I was eighteen when I wrote my first book, and I can't remember what it was called. I have no idea where the manuscript is - I lost it when I was twenty-one.
Cynthia Voigt
#14. It's the third book of the Bible, called The Final Testament of the Holy Bible.My idea of what the Messiah would be like if he were walking the streets of New York today. What would he believe? What would he preach? How would he live? With who?
James Frey
#15. My idea of a delicious time is to read a book that is wonderful. But the ruling passion of my life is being a seeker after truth and the divine.
Bell Hooks
#16. I had an idea in the beginning to do a book about some of the events that I had covered, just various stories that I've covered. Reporters spend a lot of time telling each other tales about how they covered stories, and that's what this book started out to be.
Bob Schieffer
#17. Sometimes you have no idea what you are you doing, but you just do it anyways. And that can be a good thing
Anita Babic
#18. I reckon I can count on 30 more writing years, averaging a book a year (I can't keep up the 2-2.5 a year I used to do these days). And these days I've gotten round to wondering, for each new idea, "do I want to be remembered for this?" before I get to the point of spending a year on it.
Charles Stross
#19. Each book first begins with a little idea.
Dick Bruna
#20. The book has to give the idea of another kind of newspaper, has to show how I labored away for a year to create a model of journalism independent of all pressure, implying that the venture failed because it was impossible to have a free voice
Umberto Eco
#21. I never outline. I don't work from an outline. I have no idea where the book is going. I mean, even two-thirds of the way through, I don't know how it's going to end.
Tom Robbins
#22. I had thought up the title, 'The Good Luck of Right Now,' several years ago. I had no idea what it meant or what the book would be about but I thought, 'Someday I'm going to write a book with that title.'
Matthew Quick
#23. Amongst Women concentrated on the family, and the new book concentrates on a small community. The dominant units in Irish society are the family and the locality. The idea was that the whole world would grow out from that small space.
John McGahern
#24. When I get an idea for a book, something appeals to me, it's usually a character. I'll see a picture of a female marshal in front of the courthouse in Miami and she's got a shotgun on her hip and it goes up on an angle. And she's good-looking. And I say, 'I've got to use her.'
Elmore Leonard
#25. I don't like the idea of a book being a test or being used for a test. The way - in my opinion - to make good readers is to let kids choose their own books and not test them.
Avi
#26. Have you ever thought what a God would be like who actually ordained and executed the cruelty that is in [the biblical Book of Revelation]? A holocaust of mankind. Yet so many of these Bible-men accept the idea without a second thought.
C.J. Sansom
#27. One of the main reasons I wanted to work on 'World War Z' was because I'm a huge fan of the book, and I love the idea of taking a non-linear story and creating a three-act structure out of it.
Marc Forster
#28. A lot of my close friends had tolerantly washed their hands of the whole idea of me writing a book. They had said to themselves, "I don't know what he's doing."
Chad Harbach
#29. In this book," he said, "Mr. Simak postulates the idea that there are a number of worlds like ours. Not other planets but other Earths, parallel Earths, in a kind of ring around the sun.
Stephen King
#30. When I'm writing, I try not to think things like, 'Gosh, I have to finish writing this book.' Books are very long and it's easy to get discouraged. Instead I think to myself, 'Wow, I have this great story idea, and today I'm going to write two pages of it. That's all - just two pages.'
Linda Sue Park
#31. When we sat down, Lacey started reading "Song of Myself," and she agreed that none of it sounded like anything and certainly none of it sounded like Margo. We still had no idea what, if anything, Margo was trying to say. She gave the book back to me, and they started talking about prom again.
John Green
#32. Every book is the wreck of a perfect idea.
Iris Murdoch
#33. Books ... were merely nodes in a near-infinite matrix of information that exists in four dimensions, evolving toward the idea of the concept of the approximation of the shadow of Truth vertically through time as well as longitudinally through knowledge.
Dan Simmons
#34. It has always been a favorite idea of mine, that there is so much of the human in every man, that the life of any one individual, however obscure, if really and vividly perceived in all its aspirations, struggles, failures, and successes, would command the interest of all others.
Harriet Beecher Stowe
#35. It was just an idea I had, that it could be cool to have a book covered in fake fur.
Dave Eggers
#36. When I finish a book, I get extremely restless; I have to aggressively find ways to occupy myself; going off into the woods alone, doing things that are physically or mentally demanding to keep myself busy until the next big idea comes.
Philipp Meyer
#37. My idea of rich is that you can buy every book you ever want without looking at the price and you're never around assholes. That's the two things to really fight for in life.
John Waters
#38. The book, the idea of a book or the image of a book, is a symbol of learning, of transmitting knowledge.. I make my own books to find my way through the old stories.
Anselm Kiefer
#39. You never know how - or when - the idea for a book will appear.
Deb Caletti
#40. Someone needs to buy a radio station, then play nothing but audio books, with a different genre of book played at set times. That way we can always have something new to read, no matter where we are.
Shana Chartier
#41. The idea that only the educated are privileged is an illusion.
A.R. Bremsley
#42. In art school, I started to see Pettibon in magazines, and I figured it out backward. I was into the idea that someone could show work in galleries while making album covers and photocopied books.
Michael Dumontier
#43. It makes me nuts, the idea that if you put a political struggle at the heart of your book, then it has to be that the author - me - is trying in some way to push my views onto my readers.
Ruth Ozeki
#44. A book is simply the container of an idea like a bottle; what is inside the book is what matters.
Angela Carter
#45. I'm humbled and enormously grateful to be connected to [Franz] Kafka in a any way. He is one of the writers I admire. I think he has been a big influence on me. I appreciate the idea of the individual person battling the society - which is true in all his books.
Alan Lightman
#46. I don't know where I got the idea for 'The Great Thumbprint Drawing Book'; I just told my brain to think of a book, and it did.
Ed Emberley
#47. The idea of being productive, the idea of producing many books is going to lead you toward you becoming a better and better writer.
Walter Mosley
#48. Think of yourself as a detective looking for clues to a book's general theme or idea, alert for anything that will make it clearer.
Mortimer J. Adler
#49. I am just diving into life again. I just have nothing new to offer right now as an idea for a book. I feel like if I were to write something, I would probably repeat the same idea in a different story.
Karan Bajaj
#50. The ideas aren't that important. Really they aren't. Everyone's got an idea for a book, a movie, a story, a TV series.
Neil Gaiman
#51. When I start any book, I have no idea what I'm going to do.
Jon Krakauer
#52. I feel like I have a lot of novel ideas, but they often come up while I'm already in the process of working on a book. You have to watch out with the slutty new idea.
Matt De La Pena
#53. I've done 80 books and if anyone has entertained the idea of owning one of my books, I think this is the book that covers all the bases. I'm very proud of it.
Art Wolfe
#54. So much for the right books; the right use of them is another matter. The children must enjoy the book. The ideas it holds must each make that sudden, delightful impact upon their minds, must cause that intellectual stir, which mark the inception of an idea.
Charlotte Mason
#55. This isn't a book. This isn't a paranormal fantasy or whatever the hell it is you read. There is no set plot or clear idea of where any of this is going. The enemies aren't obvious. There are no guaranteed happy endings.
Jennifer L. Armentrout
#56. Books are something social - a writer speaking to a reader - so I think making the reading of a book the center of a social event, the meeting of a book club, is a brilliant idea.
Yann Martel
#57. Rather tiring to a person whose idea of outdoor activity was taking her book outside to read. "All
Kristan Higgins
#58. During the first five years that I was writing the series, I made plans and wrote small pieces of all the books. I concentrate on one book at a time, though occasionally I will get an idea for a future book and scribble it down for future reference.
J.K. Rowling
#59. Here is yet another statement of the core idea of this book, that data concerning people is best thought of as people in disguise, and they're usually up to something.
Jaron Lanier
#60. It is easy to destroy a book, but an idea once implanted has roots no man can utterly destroy.
Louis L'Amour
#61. 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
#62. Not all writers are artists. But all of us like the idea of somebody in the year 2283 blowing the dust off one of our books, thumbing through it and exclaiming, Hey, listen to what this old guy had to say back in the twentieth century!
William Attwood
#63. It all goes back to this idea of ownership again. Once I published that book and my words became a commodity, something broke between us.
Lily King
#64. I remember when I was a kid and I would go to the comic-book store, I would have no idea what was going on in that month's issues. Sometimes I wouldn't even know what comics were coming out until I walked into the store.
Brian K. Vaughan
#65. I hate to express political ideas directly in a book. I don't want my books to be seen as an expression of this or that political idea. At the same time I want to show a kind of rebellion and transgression, something further.
Abdellah Taia
#66. If I read a book that cost me $20 and I get one good idea, I've gotten one of the greatest bargains of all time.
Tom Peters
#67. I did toy with the idea of doing a cook-book ... I think a lot of people who hate literature but love fried eggs would buy it if the price was right.
Groucho Marx
#68. In my books, my idea is always to explore social context and social forces.
Alix Kates Shulman
#69. 'High Concept' means a book or a film whose core idea can be stated in a single sentence, such as 'Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito are twins.' Or, 'Arnold is pregnant.'
Martin Cruz Smith
#70. If you have a bright idea with such significance, don't pause but push, play and display that concept, it will be recognized or be seen somehow and it will not be forsaken.
( Taken from my forthcoming book " Ency Bearis' Ameliorated Poems" )
Ency Bearis
#71. I worry very much about kids growing up in a society where they think: "I'm not going to talk about this issue, read this book or explore this idea because someone may think I'm a terrorist." That's not the kind of free society I want for our children.
Bernie Sanders
#72. Because as any writer will tell you, an IDEA for a book is like falling in love, it's all wild emotion and headlong rush, but the ACTUAL ACT of writing a book is like building a relationship: it is joyous, slow, fragile, frustrating, exhilarating, painstaking, exhausting, worth it.
Ben H. Winters
#73. I like the idea that every page in every book can have a gem on it. It's probably what I love most about writing - that words can be used in a way that's like a child playing in a sandpit, rearranging things, swapping them around.
Markus Zusak
#74. I like the idea of someone else's love safely sealed in a song or a book.
Henry Rollins
#75. I may have a general broad-based idea of what I want to write about when I sit down to write a book, but I don't have any idea of what it's going to say. I would call my experience of creativity 'inspired by God' to produce certain pieces of information that might be useful to others.
Neale Donald Walsch
#76. The telephone book is full of facts, but it doesn't contain a single idea.
Mortimer Adler
#77. I think I write what's interesting to me, and so if I'm reading I like to have a very thorough idea of a character in a book that's by someone else.
Curtis Sittenfeld
#78. The central idea of this book is that the self is a process, not a thing or an entity. The self isn't something outside experience, hidden either in the brain or in some immaterial realm.
Evan Thompson
#79. The idea that comics stores, distributors and publishers simply 'give the customers what they want' is nonsense. What the customers wanted they didn't get - and they left.
Scott McCloud
#80. For every age there is a popular idea about what madness is, what causes it, and how a mad person should look and behave; and it's usually these popular ideas, rather than those of medical professionals, that turn up in songs and stories and plays and books.
Margaret Atwood
#81. This idea was first coined by Charles Handy in his book The Age of Unreason
Jeff Goins
#82. Getting an idea for a book is not the problem, but you need 300 ideas - an idea a page.
Barbara Mertz
#83. I have an idea for a new book. It's a novel about a beautiful yet sensitive author whose spirit is crushed by her domineering editor. Do you like it?
Annie Barrows
#84. Let's put it this way: if you are a novelist, I think you start out with a 20 word idea, and you work at it and you wind up with a 200,000 word novel. We, picture-book people, or at least I, start out with 200,000 words and I reduce it to 20.
Eric Carle
#85. My introduction to the Brady book was an attempt to nail the exact same idea since Brady addressed the point. And since I write pornography, naturally, something of an obsession for me.
Peter Sotos
#86. When writing a book, don't think about who is going to see it. Write about how you feel in the moment. Don't let a good idea get away.
B.A. Gabrielle
#87. Whether it's from the books or the films, there are some people that will have a very fixed idea in their head. You're not going to match that. At a certain point, you have to accept that.
Hugh Dancy
#88. Every single line on the Oscar show is negotiated. Unless you've been there, you have no idea how it is put together. It's like nothing else on earth. I'm writing a book about it, but I have to throw in my sexual escapades to make sure it sells.
Bruce Vilanch
#89. 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
#90. Such a big majority of book critics and authors have begun to teach, whether they really believe it or not, that no book is TRUE TO LIFE unless it is true to the WORST IN LIFE, that the idea has infected even the women.
Gene Stratton-Porter
#91. I never plan ahead, with the exception of the Amber books which had to proceed in sequence. But I don't really like to know what I'm going to be working on a year in advance. So I just sign blank contracts for books and whatever strikes me as a good idea is what I write about.
Roger Zelazny
#92. My belief that the publishing industry is run by prigs and cowards dates back to many years before I even had the idea for the book.
Jessa Crispin
#93. 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
#94. The opening chapter was the book's unique selling point, the singular idea that had carried Darcy through last November, and Coleman had just come up with it off the top of his head.
Scott Westerfeld
#95. It's a sort of patronizing idea that literature for children has to feature role models of exemplary behavior. I think not only is that bogus, but it leads to really boring books.
Mac Barnett
#97. Every man of sound brain whom you meet knows something worth knowing better than yourself. A man, on the whole, is a better preceptor than a book. But what scholar does not allow that the dullest book can suggest to him a new and a sound idea?
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
#98. Harnessing steam power required many innovations, as William Rosen chronicles in the book 'The Most Powerful Idea in the World.'
Bill Gates
#99. At one point I felt a tension between objects, their real, physical lives, and the idea of meaning: the physical, material reality of a book, and the totally intangible experience of reading it.
Sergio Chejfec
#100. if a book has one passage, one idea with the power to change a person's life, that alone justifies reading it, rereading it, and finding room for it on one's shelves.
Viktor E. Frankl
