Top 100 My Books Quotes
#1. I don't read my books, so I don't allow myself the dangerous luxury of toying with the idea of doing things differently.
Neel Mukherjee
#2. I am a beau in nothing but my books.
Adam Smith
#3. If my books appear to a reader to be oversimplified, then you shouldn't read them: You're not the audience!
Malcolm Gladwell
#5. I've lived the lives of all the characters in all my books, and all their mighty wisdom thunders in my head.
Eliezer Yudkowsky
#6. I don't believe in personal immortality; the only way I expect to have some version of such a thing is through my books.
Isaac Asimov
#7. In all my books, I try to have a strong element of realism underlying the fantastic.
Garth Nix
#8. India has been a very accepting culture. We pride ourselves on that. That is a global truth. In fact, it forms a major theme in my books.
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
#9. You importune me, Tucca, to present you with my books. I shall not do so; for you want to sell, not to read, them.
Martial
#10. 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
#11. The truth is that I'm never sure how any of my books will be received, and because I can be thin-skinned, I try not to read too many reviews when a book first comes out.
Charles Baxter
#12. Most people know my music but will never read my books.
Chico Buarque
#13. Please, dear God. Let her come back. You can have whatever you like. All my magazines, all my books, my things. Whatever you want. But just make it so she comes back. To me. Please, please God.
John Ajvide Lindqvist
#14. If there is one thing I hope my books do always and forever, it's that they honor working people.
Adriana Trigiani
#15. 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
#16. My books are based on emotions, feelings, relationships. In these areas women are experts, so it's not strange that the main characters of my novels are females.
Isabel Allende
#17. I grew up with that completely fictive idea of motherhood, where the mother never strayed from the kitchen. All the women in my books are very afraid that if they do anything with their minds they won't be complete women. I don't think my daughters' generation has that feeling.
A.S. Byatt
#18. I would not read the proof of one of my books for any fair & reasonable sum whatever, if I could get out of it. The proof-reading on the P & Pauper cost me the last rags of my religion.
Mark Twain
#19. Well see, I'm a good enough writer that not everybody in my books talks exactly like I do.
Robert Kirkman
#20. The younger generation is surrounded by the Internet, apps, and video games. But somehow, my books make them read.
Chetan Bhagat
#21. The feedback I get is that my books are honest. I don't sugar-coat anything. Life is really hard.
Laurie Halse Anderson
#22. I do a lot of research and yes, do know quite a few police officers, friends of mine and my husbands. However, most of my books are researched based on Canadian laws or the laws of each country (ie: Mexico and USA) and I do my best to make them accurate.
Franny Armstrong
#23. Since I've written many of my books from a less-than-sympathetic viewpoint, I think that being able to see things from all sides is a useful talent.
Alex Flinn
#24. I offer detailed but mostly invented narratives about the provenance of my books.
Jim Crace
#25. I demand that my books be judged with utmost severity, by knowledgeable people who know the rules of grammar and of logic, and who will seek beneath the footsteps of my commas the lice of my thought in the head of my style.
Louis Aragon
#26. In all of my books, I really want to work with working-class people. My goal is to show the moments of grace and dignity in their lives.
Matt De La Pena
#27. I started as a playwright. Any sort of scriptwriting you do helps you hone your story. You have the same demands of creating a plot, developing relatable characters and keeping your audience invested in your story. My books are basically structured like three-act plays.
Suzanne Collins
#28. Since, in the best Southern tradition, I was named Edmund Valentine White III, sometimes when people look up my books on Amazon they find 'Chocolate Drops from the South' by my grandfather.
Edmund White
#29. Here stand my books, line upon line
They reach the roof, and row by row,
They speak of faded tastes of mine,
And things I did, but do not, know.
Andrew Lang
#30. It's funny - my wife is more jealous of my books than of other women because I'm always working and thinking about my books.
Antonio Lobo Antunes
#31. One of the themes in my novels is that our crises can turn into blessings. We can feel like our world has crumbled, but ten years down the road when we look back on that time, we can see God's hand at work. I love writing that theme into my books.
Terri Blackstock
#32. I make money using my brains and lose money listening to my heart. But in the long run my books balance pretty well.
Kate Seredy
#33. My recipes aren't geared towards women; my books are marketed towards women because women are the biggest market for weight loss, weight management and weight maintenance and for cooking.
Bethenny Frankel
#34. My university degree is in art and, yes, I do a lot of drawing for all my books. I have a big drafting table set up in a spare bedroom and I cover it with maps and house plans and sketches that I use in the books. Also, I truly love architecture, so that plays a big part in all my books.
Jude Deveraux
#35. My books are like water; those of the great geniuses are wine. (Fortunately) everybody drinks water.
Mark Twain
#36. I am the son of a murdered woman - anybody who'd call my books misogynistic is, frankly, out of their fucking mind.
James Ellroy
#37. All my books come out of sermons, and I'm really a pastor who writes rather than a writer who pastors.
Max Lucado
#38. I don't think of myself as fitting into a category. But I had to be careful in all of my books not to repeat things, because I have these ideas, and though the subjects were disparate, the same idea would come up through different portals.
Melissa Holbrook Pierson
#39. I don't write that much horror. People tell me my books are scary, but they're not really; I don't go there.
Melissa De La Cruz
#40. The stakes in my books tend to be kind of ridiculously high. In 'Kid vs. Squid,' the question is whether or not the California coast will be subsumed by the ocean in favor of the creation of a new Atlantis. In 'The Boy at the End of the World,' what's at stake is the survival of the human species.
Greg Van Eekhout
#41. [Acknowledgments] I recommend them all for further reading, but when you're finished, you may have to read several of my books and watch a lot of TV just to get stupid enough to function in the modern world again.
Christopher Moore
#42. I'm floating between multiple media. I really wish you could buy the hardcover book and it would come with the digital download and audible version. I spend stupid amounts of money because I'm usually buying my books in at least two formats.
Atul Gawande
#43. He seems to read nothing but my books, and says his one desire is to 'follow in my footsteps'! But I have told him that they lead to terrible places.
Oscar Wilde
#44. I should like to write my books only for the dear person who lies awake reading in bed until page last, then lets the open book fall gently on her face, to touch her smile or drink her tears.
Barbara Kingsolver
#45. At a Boston signing, someone from the audience asked why I was so obsessed with furniture in my books. The question rattled around in my head. I had no idea that I was obsessed with furniture.
Jonathan Carroll
#46. It gives me a huge buzz when people say they've enjoyed my books, because this grew out of a hobby, and it's an absolute passion, and it's lovely when I get feedback.
Alison Weir
#47. I'm not into fame. I'm not into making money, outside of financing my books. I'm not into status. My thing is basically about time - not wasting it.
Henry Rollins
#48. I would hope that people, no matter what age, would find something to identify with in my books, pick one up and experience a personal sense of discovery. That's great. But for them, not for me.
Shel Silverstein
#49. The writer I feel the most affinity with - you said you felt my books are 19th century novels, I think they're 18th century novels - is Fielding, Henry Fielding, he's the guy who does it for me.
Jonathan Coe
#50. My favorite of my books is DAVE AT NIGHT, because it's loosely based on my father's childhood in an orphanage.
Gail Carson Levine
#51. What I always try to do in all my books is to make the stories such that if you don't agree with me politically or you're not interested in the thematics, the story will still keep you turning the pages.
China Mieville
#52. These books ... , she begins, and stops. I am frightened for her, for myself decades from now, struggling to retain dignity with two strangers as they take away my books. I can see the straight line to her grave, to mine.
Deborah Meyler
#53. I don't separate my books into historical novels and the rest. To me, they're all made-up worlds, and both kinds are borne out of curiosity, some investigation into the past.
Peter Carey
#54. I have been attacked in Turkey more for my interviews than for my books. Political polemicists and columnists do not read novels there.
Orhan Pamuk
#55. It's always extremely interesting to speak at colleges. My books are taught in many colleges in America and are part of the educational system, so it's really important to me. I don't believe in so many things in life, but something I believe in is education.
Marjane Satrapi
#56. To come out and meet kids who have my books in their hands is kind of amazing.
Jeff Kinney
#57. My books are inert as cordwood till a reader's imagination ignites one and an old flame jumps to life.
David James Duncan
#58. Don't judge me by my books. They're not my voices, and they were never my stories to tell.
Nadege Richards
#59. I'm a novelist, editor, short story writer. I also teach, and I freelance sometimes as an arts consultant. Most of my books have been published by Warner Books, now known as Grand Central Books.
Nalo Hopkinson
#60. I do recall how I got the ideas for some of my books. Many of them are a result of doodling.
Bill Peet
#61. I think with all my books, language has been their subject as much as anything else. Language can elide or displace or sideline whole groups of people. You can't necessarily change the way language is used, but if it becomes something you're conscious of ... that gives you a certain power over it.
Kate Grenville
#62. Sometimes, my books start with a scene I see in my mind, such as a woman in a wedding dress running away from her wedding like in 'Embers of Love.' Sometimes, a book can start with a character.
Tracie Peterson
#63. I myself don't know what makes my books work. I enter a bookstore and I'm frankly overwhelmed by the number of books in most of them, and I know people are buying mine.
Chetan Bhagat
#64. I don't have a boss. Well, I have a boss: the public. If the public doesn't buy my books, I would be out of a job.
Peter Mayle
#65. I think I write for reluctant readers. Of course I want everyone to enjoy my books, but if the kids in the back row who normally don't pick up a book are engaged with what I'm writing, along with the kids who are big readers anyway, then I really feel like I've done my job.
Rick Riordan
#66. I've always been a homemaker, like, I like creating spaces. Even if I stay in a hotel, I'll unpack, I'll put my books out, I'll put my camera out, I'll throw a sweater over the lamp to get better light. I am a homemaker.
Drew Barrymore
#67. I'm really not responsible for what mental operation people have when they're reading my books other than the ones which are created by literary effects.
Edward St. Aubyn
#68. My books are never about the crimes. They are about how the characters react to the crimes.
Karin Slaughter
#70. My values are not based on violence. My values are based on courage, which you see time and time again in my books. A warrior isn't somebody like Bruce Willis or Arnold Schwarzenegger. A warrior can be any age. A warrior is a person people look up to.
Brian Jacques
#71. Among my books, the ones that sell best are for readers between the ages of 8 and 12. According to a study by the Association of American Publishers, the largest area of industry growth in 2014 was in the children and young adult category.
Kate Klise
#72. I like to imagine that, on the day after my last, my library and I will crumble together, so that even when I am no more I'll still be with my books.
Alberto Manguel
#73. One thing that's really delightful is my books tend to attract people who are funny, so I get the benefit of people writing me with things that crack me up.
Christopher Moore
#74. When I am attacked by gloomy thoughts, nothing helps me so much as running to my books. They quickly absorb me and banish the clouds from my mind.
Michel De Montaigne
#75. I feel like there's so much darkness in all of my books.
Rachel Cohn
#76. I write at a desk. I have a room of my own where I can have my computer. I write in there, usually directly onto my computer. It used to be the room where my two sons used to sleep with the dog and the cat, but now it's all mine. It has pictures of art from my books on the walls.
Eve Bunting
#77. I try to only read light things when I'm working on my books, and in the evenings I watch a lot of mindless TV. I have to break up the 'dark,' or I wouldn't be a very happy person.
Chevy Stevens
#79. There's nothing like privacy. You know, I like people. It's nice that they might like my books and all that ... but I'm not the book, see? I'm the guy who wrote it, but I don't want them to come up and throw roses on me or anything. I want them to let me breathe.
Charles Bukowski
#80. I have Black guys who tell me they put my books on their bed stands to read at night like something for guidance or information. That really pleases me a lot. I think my work has changed some things. It's changed me.
Ishmael Reed
#81. None of my books has been ever in my head; after they're finished, they go. It's like being a sort of medium; you just grab it when it's there then just release it when it's time to go. There's a lot of instinct, not planning.
Peter Ackroyd
#82. Borrow my umbrellas, my clothes, my money, and I will likely not think of them again. But borrow my books and I will be on your track like a bloodhound until they are returned.
Phyllis McGinley
#83. 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
#84. What someone calls my books is irrelevant to me. I consider them works of art and rules and categories and labels mean nothing.
James Frey
#85. There's no spirit or soul. I will be dead. Get that through your thick head. I'll be dead. And I live, in quotation marks, in my children, in my DNA, in my books, in my reputation. It's as simple as that.
Edwin S. Shneidman
#86. I think being a woman and writing frankly about violence has gotten me some attention, and as someone who wants people to read my books, I can't complain about that attention, but it does puzzle me that this is something reviewers focus on.
Karin Slaughter
#87. Very few of my books are about who stole the Maltese Falcon.
Robert B. Parker
#88. I've seen a lot of people buy my books and then fall asleep on the plane soon afterwards.
Maeve Binchy
#89. What gives my books authenticity is that I actually do what it is I'm writing about. I think the fact that I am in the autopsy room, I go to the crime scene and I do work in the lab gives my books this flavor that otherwise they wouldn't have.
Kathy Reichs
#90. My goal is to teach readers how to treat and respect themselves and each other in an entertaining way. I do that in all of my books.
Lisi Harrison
#91. Two dads have sent me letters that said my books changed their daughters' lives. I send them packages with T-shirts and posters because, come on ... that's the coolest.
Simone Elkeles
#92. Guerrilla ontology The basic technique of all my books . Ontology is the study of being; the guerrilla approach is to so mix the elements of each book that the reader must decide on each page 'How much of this is real and how much is a put-on?
Robert Anton Wilson
#93. Got an hour or two? That's all it takes for one of my books.
Mitch Albom
#94. I lean toward anything with a dark sense of humor. And since I've been out of school, the majority of my books have been contemporary; basically, I like my characters to have electricity - even better, a TV.
Andrea Seigel
#95. I write because I know I am only one to control the world I created in my books.
Anamika Mishra
#96. I hope in my books I help children to see their strengths, and show them I have some idea of what they may occasionally be going through. Especially at tricky moments when it is easier to go back and evade things rather than go forwards and confront them.
Nina Bawden
#97. The fictive structure, my work, my imagination, my books are about the details, the huge construction about culture, Islamic culture or modern Turkey. They're all intertwined.
Orhan Pamuk
#98. At night, when the curtains are drawn and the fire flickers, my books attain a collective dignity.
E. M. Forster
#99. My attitudes have changed, but somebody would have to read all my books to find out how they have.
Irwin Shaw
#100. When I write my books, actually, I'm known for very logical rule-based magic systems. I write with one foot in fantasy and one foot in science fiction.
Brandon Sanderson
