I'll Be There Book Quotes

#1. Of publishing a book on religion, my dear sir, I never had an idea. I should as soon think of writing for the reformation of Bedlam, as of the world of religious sects. Of these there must be, at least, ten thousand, every individual of every one of which believes all wrong but his own.

Thomas Jefferson

#2. At times there seems to be a million ideas worth painting. However, there are days when it's a challenge to pull any idea together. On these days I go to my studio, leaf through an art history book, and tell myself that I am part of this great tradition.

James Dean

#3. But I give you my word, in the entire book there is nothing that cannot be said aloud in mixed company. And there is, also, nothing that makes you a bit the wiser. I wonder
oh, what will you think of me
if those two statements do not verge upon the synonymous.

Dorothy Parker

#4. So before I start work on a book, I'm like a pregnant mole - I obsessively tidy and order my closets and everything in my study. Because there's such a cascade of images and ideas that I'm grapping with mentally, I couldn't also be in a chaotic setting.

Diane Ackerman

#5. In the early 1980s, I wrote a book called 'The Complete Guide to Financial Privacy.' If I would write that book today, it would be a pamphlet. There is precious little privacy left.

Mark Skousen

#6. For me, language and how I use it are very important. I held back on doing a poetry book, walking the fine line between trying to be helpful and just putting more junk out there.

Sakyong Mipham

#7. Every person has a range. In fiction, you get to be it all. I'm as much the men in my book as I am the women. I write how I write and there is no mission to stake a claim.

Rachel Kushner

#8. I told her it was over and I meant it but she doesn't seem to be on the same page." "She better open the book and get there before I have to read it for her." Moira snapped.

Kendra Reeves

#9. It's literature. It's all books. There are good books and bad books. Literary fiction can be bad, and so can sci-fi. Sci-fi can be wonderful and so can literary fiction. As long as it's a good book, who cares? Hold my attention; that's all I ask. Make me believe.

Margaret Atwood

#10. The thing is when you play a character it's the persona you bring across from a book to film, or book to script to film. If I play Frank Sinatra, there's gonna be things I do in a movie that Frank might not have done, but it's the personality that comes across.

Alex Pettyfer

#11. I want to say more, but don't know what the words are supposed to be. I feel such a tenderness for these vulnerable night time conversations, the way words take a different shape in the air when there's no room in the air.

David Levithan

#12. Knowing that books are something that is hidden, that almost has that alchemical quality to it. There is a secret society in here, and if you belong to it, you'll be able to transform your lead into gold. I have that rather magical sense about books - that they do, somehow, have special powers.

Jeanette Winterson

#13. I met a bunch of comic-book writers at the Metropolis convention and there was such an interesting discussion about the story of 'Supergirl' and trying to get it right. It can be a challenge, because you don't want it to be the same as the Superman story.

Helen Slater

#14. 'XIII' is a spy show. I think the comic book is a little too similar to 'The Bourne Identity.' I tried to take it away from that. I believe there was, many years ago, before the Bourne movies, a lawsuit that made it so they couldn't be published in English.

Roger Avary

#15. For something that's supposed to be secret, there is a lot of intelligence history. Every time I read one book, two more are published.

Alan Furst

#16. I thought there might be some grand design I did not understand, but the government's policy clearly was not working, because India was still poor. I was determined to learn more, so I became interested in economics. This book is another unintended consequence of the government's policies.

Raghuram G. Rajan

#17. I never wanted to be a fashion designer, although there is a book somewhere of fashion design I did for a collection when I was seven years old. I always wanted to be an actor.

Gwendoline Christie

#18. Sometimes I wonder what the world would be like if we all got along. If there were no terrorism, Islamophobia, Western hypocrisy, corrupt government in African countries (especially Liberia), sexism, nativism, people like Donald Trump, stereotypes, war, Capitalism, Communism, Marxism and xenophobia.

Henry Johnson Jr

#19. I feel like all this stuff that we make: books and art and music, all of it. There's this energy that circles the world that wants to be made manifest, and it is just looking for someone to come through. And it's dying for you to make it. And if you don't do it, it will go find somebody else.

Elizabeth Gilbert

#20. need a driver for the next few days, maybe more. You want to do it, the job's yours. I'm paying ten bucks an hour plus any meals. You'd have to bring a book or something because there will be a lot of sitting around waiting for me.

Michael Connelly

#21. I've illustrated many children's books and I feel awfully lucky to be able to do something I love so much, and yes, to be able to pay the rent, but there was a yearning to do something more grown up, and something where I didn't have to cater to anyone; I was just waiting for the material.

Sophie Blackall

#22. I mean somebody could write another book and say Brad's idea about Buddhism and sex is wrong, and here's mine, and that would be great. Just the fact that it would exist would be good because nobody is saying it, it's like they're trying to pretend it's not there.

Brad Warner

#23. So up I got in anger, And took a book I had, And put a ribbon on my hair To please a passing lad. And, "One thing there's no getting by
I've been a wicked girl," said I; But if I can't be sorry, why, I might as well be glad!

Edna St. Vincent Millay

#24. I think there is something barbaric in children, and it's missing in lots of books for them because we don't like to think of it. We want them to be happy [but] childhood is a very tough time.

Maurice Sendak

#25. There's never really been a time when vampires weren't so over that you would be crazy to write a vampire book, or so huge that you would be crazy to write a vampire book. I'm not sure there's ever going to be a time. We went from Anne Rice to Buffy to 'Twilight.'

Holly Black

#26. There's no rule book that tells you how to act in every given situation in life, you know? So what I always say is that it's always better to err on the side of kindness. That's the secret. If you don't know what to do, just be kind. You can't go wrong.

R.J. Palacio

#27. There are people who say they want to write novels. They think, 'I'll learn my craft on the romance novel.' If you don't love the genre, it's going to show, and it's not going to be a good book.

Julia Quinn

#28. I really couldn't say how famous I really am, that's for the history books to decide. But I'll probably be pretty up there.

Zach Braff

#29. I read anything that's going to be interesting. But you don't know what it is until you've read it. Somewhere in a book on the history of false teeth there'll be the making of a novel.

Terry Pratchett

#30. There is not one piece of artwork I have ever done that lived up to the vision I had for it in my head. That's why I keep on trying. Maybe someday I'll do it. I don't want to be in the past. I want to get to the next thing.

Jim Steranko

#31. I'll never have so compelling a figure within my embrace as Joan of Arc; there will never be a book whose last chapter is so very hard to get right.

Kathryn Harrison

#32. Even a person like this makes mistakes, can't always hold on to everything they'd like to,can't always force the world to spin in the direction of their choosing. You'll hug him longer than necessary and tell him to keep in touch. And you'll know, finally, that it had nothing to do with you.

Sloane Crosley

#33. I don't despise 'Don Quixote,' but it is a book I don't ... get. I'll have to come back it. Maybe there'll be a gateway story that opens it up for me; that happened for me with 'Paradise Lost' and the 'His Dark Materials' trilogy.

Helen Oyeyemi

#34. I never read. I've never read one book ... I just can't do it. Something's wrong with me. I have what they call now is 'ADD,' like I'll read and all of a sudden I'll be thinking about shopping or ... I'm not there. I drift off. I get crazy, so I don't even bother.

Steve Jones

#35. I seek a place that can never be destroyed, one that is pure, and that fadeth not away, and it is laid up in heaven, and safe there, to be given, at the time appointed, to them that seek it with all their heart. Read it so, if you will, in my book.

John Bunyan

#36. There's a reason we eat popcorn during a movie. If I want to zone out, be brainless and entertained, then I watch TV, go to a movie. If I want a good story, then I read a book." "Ah

Penny Reid

#37. I understand that what I am to do is to be a bridge between the people who would never set foot in a church in their entire lives and people who would like to get them there. So I write books that Christians can give to their non-Christian friends that they will actually read.

Andy Andrews

#38. If I could come out in this book and advocate complete revolution and the violent overthrow of the United States of America, without being thrown in jail, I would not have written The Anarchist Cookbook, and there would be no need for it.

William Powell

#39. Sleep with Seth Mortensen? Good grief. It was the most preposterous thing I'd ever heard. It was appalling. If I absorbed his life force, there was no telling how long it'd be until his next book came out.

Richelle Mead

#40. I am never going to please all 100 million people who read the book. I'll be lucky if half that number are happy with me playing Christian Grey. I know there are campaigns of hate against me already.

Jamie Dornan

#41. I think the players, I put in the book for example that we should go back to wood rackets, probably they laughed at me, I'm a dinosaur, but I think that you see these great players, have even more variety and you see more strategy, there'd be more subtlety.

John McEnroe

#42. I spend a lot of time looking at rococo books. And almanacs used to be huge sellers - they were pretty much part of the fabric of life. I thought, this is bizarre, I'd love to buy a book like this, and there isn't one. So I thought, all right then, this could be fun. I'll write an almanac.

Ben Schott

#43. People say there's a book in everyone but I'm not sure there is. There might be a pamphlet in me.

Sophie Thompson

#44. When I was training to be a pilot, there was a large section in the book on how to drop mail from the plane.

Rahul Gandhi

#45. There are errors in this book. I do not know where they are. If I did they wouldn't be there. But with close to two hundred thousand words my probabilistic mind tells me some are wrong.

Alan Greenspan

#46. At a certain moment, when I started doing my own shows, I felt it would be really interesting to know what is the history of my profession. I realized that there was no book, which was kind of a shock.

Hans Ulrich Obrist

#47. What he says may be true for English, but why should I want to go into this God's house if only English are there? If God wanted us in this house than he would have sent our ancestors such a book.

Geraldine Brooks

#48. Any seed or insect or lizard or mammal that found itself in LA had to believe that there was a chance to thrive. Living in Southern California was like waking up in a children's book titled Would Be If I Could Be.

Walter Mosley

#49. I reveled in solitude. If Lily wanted to believe there was a somebody out there just for her, I wanted to believe that I could be somebody in here just for me.

Rachel Cohn

#50. I still feel childlike. Not childish - there's a difference. But to be childlike is to be savoured and treasured. I offer my books to those who like the things of childhood; the challenges, intrigue, joy and fun.

Graeme Base

#51. There are guys I'd love to learn from, but they wouldn't be a good fit for me, so I read their blogs and books.

Ryan Blair

#52. I've turned down a lot of stuff. I've read several scripts and said "That's not me, I'm not interested in doing that." It's got to be something that inspires me and captures my imagination. I want to be able to say "There's a challenge.".

Karl Urban

#53. I don't know what to do or where to turn in this taxation matter. Somewhere there must be a book that tells all about it, where I could go to straighten it out in my mind. But I don't know where the book is, and maybe I couldn't read it if I found it.

Warren G. Harding

#54. I don't think anyone wants a reader to be completely lost - certainly not to the point of giving up - but there's something to be said for a book that isn't instantly disposable, that rewards a second reading.

John M. Ford

#55. I think about stories and their logic and wonder if there can be any such thing as simply there is a book.

Scarlett Thomas

#56. I'm addicted to email, but other than that, there are practical things - being able to buy a book on the internet that you can't find in your local bookshop. This could be a lifeline if you live further from the sources.

Marilyn Hacker

#57. Having a record company and putting out my own CD. There's clothes and shoes. There's also an upcoming book deal that I'm trying to do. I'm trying to be positive. I'm a big fan of the Nobel Peace Prize.

Metta World Peace

#58. There's a little book I'm thinking of writing - "Swan Song" is what I shall call it. The song of the dying. And my book will be incense burnt at the deathbed of this society, damned with the damnation of its own impotence.

Maxim Gorky

#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. The book is warm. The book is handy. The book is handsome to the eye. The book occupies the shelf of the owner and is a reflection of him or her or, actually, me. The book is always there, to be reached for, to be thumbed and, too often I admit, to wonder about: Why did I buy this?

Richard Cohen

#61. In the story of my life, that's where you cracked the spine of the book. The mark is there, forever tattooed on my narrative and I couldn't be happier.

Cara Lynn Shultz

#62. If I pick up a book with vampires on the cover, I want there to be vampires. If I pick up a book with spaceships on the cover, I want spaceships. If I see one with dragons, I want there to be dragons inside the book. Proper labeling. Ethical labeling.

Margaret Atwood

#63. Why do people always want to put their hands on vulnerability? I sped up.

Sloane Crosley

#64. I have children, and this notion - that there might be a single book that introduces children to literature - terrifies me. But you could do worse than Mary Norton's 'The Borrowers.' I loved it as a kid, and my kids love it, too.

Elizabeth McCracken

#65. It will be my birthday on Tuesday. Last year, I reached the painful conclusion that there wasn't enough time left to read every book ever written. This year, my gloomy realisation is even more painful - I will not be able to correct everyone's mistakes before I depart.

Daniel Finkelstein

#66. My name is Kyran. You look like an honorable woman," he whispered, practicing what he would say to any prospective mate. "I have a home with my parents and my brother. There we will live and you will be part of our family. Would you like to give me many children?

Michelle M. Pillow

#67. I don't do a comic book thinking there is a movie. I just want it to be as good a comic book as it can be.

Frank Miller

#68. It's really an interesting problem, trying to earn a living and serve art and serve kids. What I try to create are these visual layers so that readers feel the possibility exists that there might be something in the book they never saw before.

Peggy Rathmann

#69. Yes, take it all around, there is quite a good deal of information in the book. I regret this very much; but really it could not be helped.
-from the Prefatory

Mark Twain

#70. At university - when I was supposed to be studying biochemistry - I had tried to write a children's book about a boy and a wolf cub, and there was a paragraph in that which was from the wolf's point of view.

Michelle Paver

#71. I think once you sort of cross over and you realize what books can be - and if they mean something to you - there's just no stopping you.

Molly Ringwald

#72. I am very happy to be alive. There is much fun to be had. Music, movies, books, paintings, drawingsI hope you have these things where you are. If you have them, what does the real world matter anyway?

John Frusciante

#73. You can't judge a book by its cover, though. People think I'm bad because I got tattoos or snort a little cocaine here and there. They think I'm a killer. But what if I wasn't a killer? Then what? Don't be tripping on me. I pay my damn taxes, OK? Chill.

Gunplay

#74. I lead a normal life and I don't assume there is anything I can impart to people. The only reason to write a book would be to make money, and I don't want to do that. To write a book would be going against how I've lived.

Patrick Duffy

#75. In the comic-book world, there tends to be an overblown sense of tradition. Bad habits die hard. There are ways I think the form could work more effectively if we lost the bad habits that were created before we were born.

Frank Miller

#76. I write what I want and how I want. Reviews do not need to be condescending nor do they need to tell me to read your book (if you're a fellow author). Either you like the books or you don't. That's all there is to it.

Amanda Byrd

#77. For me, reading has to be pleasurable. Otherwise, I'm ditching the book and turning on Netflix. There's way too much good TV right now to write dull.

Christopher Noxon

#78. I don't know how Frank presented the old Mothers, since I never read the book. There might be some opinions on what he said, but I - or anyone else - could not make any corrections to anything Frank did.

Jimmy Carl Black

#79. Before I start a project, I always ask myself the following question. Why is this book worth a year of my life? There needs to be something about the theme, the technique, or the research that makes the time spent on it worthwhile.

David Morrell

#80. I think it's a bit like coming to the end of a book. The plot's in its thickest, all the characters are in a mess, but you can see that there aren't fifty pages left, and you know that the finish can't be far off.

Herman Wouk

#81. If it's just brushstrokes wrestling around, it isn't much of a picture book, is it? There still has to be a picture. And maybe it needs to be a picture of a dog named Daisy or a little girl riding a bike. So I have to be careful before I get too carried away in the manner itself.

Chris Raschka

#82. I think solitude is a really positive thing. I cherish solitude immensely. In today's society, there's so much pressure to communicate, eat out, be friends with people. Why can't you read a book on your own? Why have you got to have a book club?

Nicky Wire

#83. God really must have had a sense of humor, because if I had to name my biggest turn-on, it was literature. And he had just recommended a book that I didn't know, that wasn't taught in school. If I were single, there would be no better pick-up line.

Kody Keplinger

#84. When I began 'Wicked', I really thought of it entirely as a one-off, as the English say. There was no intention that there should ever be a follow up, because the subtitle was 'The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West'. She was dead and gone, as the book says, at the end.

Gregory Maguire

#85. And now, talking of praying, I realise sadly that there will be little point in praying for you. You are passing now to a region where you will be beyond the reach of the power of prayer.

Anthony Burgess

#86. I look for two things when I am about to launch into a book. First, there has to be a dramatic arc to the story itself that will carry me, and the reader, from beginning to end. Second, the story has to weave through larger themes that can illuminate the world of the subject.

David Maraniss

#87. So with 'There Will Be Blood,' I didn't even really feel like I was adapting a book. I was just desperate to find stuff to write.

Paul Thomas Anderson

#88. Steal not this book, my worthy friend,
For fear the gallows will be your end;
Up the ladder, and down the rope,
There you'll hang until you choke;
Then I'll come along and say -
'Where's that book you stole away?

Jen Campbell

#89. I began thinking there should be an American phrase book, 'cause I've got an Italian phrase book, and an Arabic one ... now a British one. I think it'd be pretty good to have an American phrase book.

Joe Strummer

#90. Well I just so happened to bump into a chess book in the library at school and I didn't know that there were books on chess and so I take this book out and I'm like this is going to be cool, I'm going to whoop on this guy now, so I studied the book and I go back and the guy crushes me again.

Maurice Ashley

#91. There's a lot of people that need these stories, and they can't come to my book, so I'm going to be the bookmobile and I'm going to come to them.

Sandra Cisneros

#92. It may sound a bit like an army barracks, but the truth of the matter is: there must be some time laid aside for arranging, time for working on either a book or an article - I've written two articles in the last four months for the New York Times book review section.

Mel Torme

#93. I actually think there are more Republicans than people realize who would be sympathetic to immigration reform in the rank and file. I think the lesson for Jeb Bush is politicians shouldn't write books with long lead times.

E. J. Dionne

#94. Yet I'm making a book and I'm going to care immensely about what words get bound in the pages, and I want the object to look good. I won't believe in it and it won't be real to me until there's a finished book I can hold.

Jonathan Lethem

#95. Censors never go after books unless kids already like them. I don't even think they know to go after books until they know that children are interested in reading this book, therefore there must be something in it that's wrong.

Judy Blume

#96. The moment I said I'd finished a book, I knew what would happen. There would be a bidding war, and I would end up with someone who'd got the fattest wallet, who had bought it because I'd written Harry Potter. That would have been why.

J.K. Rowling

#97. If you want to be a writer, you should go into the largest library you can find and stand there contemplating the books that have been written. Then you should ask yourself, 'Do I really have anything to add?' If you have the arrogance or the humility to say yes, you will know you have the vocation.

Margaret Atwood

#98. I had thought for years, probably 30 or 40 years, that it would be a lot of fun to try my hand at a classic English mystery novel ... I love that form very much because the reader is so familiar with all of the types of characters that are in there that they already identify with the book.

Alan Bradley

#99. The others in the dorm thought I wanted to be a writer, because I was always alone with a book, but I had no such ambition. There was nothing I wanted to be.

Haruki Murakami

#100. I think there's a reason that horror appeals to teens. There's a lot of useful lessons to take away from reading horror. We get to be scared in the comfort and safety of our own homes. We can put the book down if we get too scared, and no one will ever know if we decide not to pick it up again.

Holly Black