Top 100 My First Book Quotes
#1. I have read only the first 'Harry Potter' book. I thought it excellent, perhaps the best thing written for older children since The Hobbit. I wish the books had been around when my kids were the right age for them.
Gene Wolfe
#2. When I first opened this book and saw all those scholarly footnotes, my heart leapt up as though I saw a host of golden daffodils.
Steven Moore
#3. With a book tucked in one hand, and a computer shoved under my elbow, I will march, not sidle, shudder or quake, into the twenty-first century.
Ray Bradbury
#4. My first novel, 'The Lions of Lucerne,' just poured out of me. It was an amazing feeling of accomplishment. My biggest fear and therefore my biggest obstacle to becoming an author had been, 'What if I spend all that time and the book is no good?'
Brad Thor
#5. Eventually someone will find out the truth. It could be you.
Criag Whitman
#6. One of the first times that I went into a book store and saw a bunch of my books, my impulse was to put them all under my coat and run away so that no one else could see them, even though, of course, I wanted everyone to see them.
Stacey D'Erasmo
#7. I really absolutely loved writing my first book.
Jill Davis
#8. Emotionally, I have no picture-book illustrated with memories of my first five years, but externally, I have impressions that possess a haunting vividness comparable only to the texture of dreams, when dreams are tumultuously alive.
E.F. Benson
#9. 'Britain's Royal Families' became my first published book, in 1989, from The Bodley Head, and the rest of the story is - dare I say it? - history!
Alison Weir
#10. For several days after my first book was published, I carried it about in my pocket and took surreptitious peeps at it to make sure the ink had not faded.
James M. Barrie
#11. My second book, Follow Me Down had some success, got good critical notices, went into a second printing and things like that, but Shiloh was by far the most successful of those first five novels.
Shelby Foote
#12. I once read Updike after writing a first draft, and I wanted to put my own book on the fire. I've since learned to read utter crap while I'm writing: pulp is the thing.
John Niven
#13. My colleague Bill Keegan has written a very short book ('Saving the World?') on an unlikely topic - he is the first economist to try to rehabilitate Gordon Brown.
Simon Hoggart
#14. I worked in videogames for 16 years before writing my first book in 2009.
Margaret Stohl
#15. My first addiction was to books. -B. Chelsea Adams
Larry Smith
#16. I read the books the day before I had met with (director) Catherine Hardwicke. The first I heard of it was my agent called and said, 'Do you want to be in a vampire movie?' and I said 'No.' I thought it was like a zombie, blood-and-guts, vampire movie.
Peter Facinelli
#17. I was nearly 40 when I published my first book. I was a slow starter - or rather, I was slow to gather my work together, though I had published translations, mainly of the Italian poet Montale, by then.
Jonathan Galassi
#18. When I was eleven, my mother gave me Robert K. Massie's 'Nicholas and Alexandra.' It was the first 'grownup' book I read, and I loved it.
Kathryn Harrison
#19. I had always presumed that my first book would be published, but I never dreamt that I would write 15 bestsellers and have this wonderful life in America that I have entirely built for myself.
Jane Green
#20. The expectation was that 'True Confessions' would be my first published book, but that didn't happen. After it was rejected by every publisher in New York and Canada, I shoved it in a closet and went on to write and publish my next three books.
Rachel Gibson
#21. With my first book, I was hired to write a draft of the script. I was so young and less confident. They put me through seven or eight drafts and it was just getting worse and worse, and then the film was never made.
Emma Donoghue
#22. My first book didn't even have a Canadian publisher. And that upset me, because I so wanted a readership up there.
Patrick DeWitt
#23. Fall into the cavern of my mind, and together there, we will dine.
Brad Jensen
#24. One of the first things my father taught me was that the library was made for and available to me. It's a place where you not only learn from books but you learn responsibility - how to borrow, take care of, and give back.
Marcus Samuelsson
#25. I remember once asking Grandma about a book she was reading, a biography of Abraham Lincoln, and how she answered me: this was the first conversation of my life that concerned a book, and 'the life of the mind' - and now, such subjects have become my life.
Joyce Carol Oates
#26. For the first time in my life, I became actively interested in a book. Me the sports fanatic, me the game freak, me the only ten-year-old in Illinois with a hate on for the alphabet wanted to know what happened next.
William Goldman
#27. I like mechanical things; my first book was a mechanics guide - that was what my parents couldn't pry away from me; that was the blanket.
Philipp Meyer
#28. First of all there is always that artistic challenge of creating something. Or the particular experience to take slum life in that period and make something out of it in the form of a book. And then I felt some kind of responsibility to my family.
Frank McCourt
#29. My first book was published without any editorial advice. Nobody said, 'You might do this or that,' or 'Why don't we see more of this.' I merely took the book and published it.
James Salter
#30. One professor in college told me flat out I wasn't good enough to enter the creative writing program. I saved that letter and promised myself I would send it back to her when my first book came out.
Ellen Potter
#32. If your like a powerful modern thriller with an historical core in the Scandinavian style of many separate threads which eventually come together, Purple Killing will grip you. It is my latest book and a companion to Hitler's First Lady, but in a very different style. Set equally in the US and UK.
Malcolm Blair-Robinson
#33. When I wrote my first book, 'Koolaids,' I felt rejected and not wanted.
Rabih Alameddine
#34. First, my love and thanks to Ben Smith, my Hollywood agent, who has been a true visionary in a job that is often maligned (in this book, for instance)
Clive Barker
#35. My first book took five years to write and I made $1,000 on it. The second took three years and I made $3,000. All this time I was a housewife being supported by a husband. I was very lucky.
Judith Rossner
#36. Few real people appear in my two novels, actually. "Ari" appears on the edge of this book a couple of times - but on the edge, she's never in it, even if she's a determining force from the outside. Everybody in the first book was basically made up, if never from scratch.
Ben Lerner
#37. My first book is really comparable to what I do now, where it's pretty surreal and strange at moments, but that being my first book - I wrote that when I was 22; it came out when I was 24 - and it was just really overwritten. I just didn't trust myself as a writer to say something once.
Joe Meno
#38. My first book, 'Running Loose', was censored back in 1983 or '84. Every book I've written since has been censored somewhere.
Chris Crutcher
#39. As a very small boy, my passion was nature, and I had pets - cats, a dog and a bunny rabbit - and I wrote a very small book called 'My Pets,' filled with their photographs and a discussion about my pets and how much I loved them ... That was my first book.
Tony Buzan
#40. 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
#41. The Little Friend is a long book. It's also completely different from my first novel: different landscape, different characters, different use of language and diction, different approach to story.
Donna Tartt
#42. The most terrifying thing I can think of is being alone - and I mean utterly alone, like no one else in the world alone - at night. That's the nucleus of the first story in my collection and it's also where the title came from for the book.
Paul Kane
#43. All my life, I have taken inventory at intervals. For example, when I became a movie actor and suddenly I had to deal with fame, money and playing so many roles, I lost myself. I said, 'Who am I?' And I wrote my first book to deal with that, 'The Ragman's Son.'
Kirk Douglas
#44. I was really the first-line editor of the 'House of Night' series. I didn't write that much of the story, and I didn't know what was happening until my mom finished the book and sent it to me because I wanted to read it with fresh eyes as a general reader would.
Kristin Cast
#45. My first book really did change my life. It allowed me to fully express myself. There was a sense that I was worth something as an artist.
Gary Shteyngart
#46. My favourite all time quote is from Eileen Gray, the subject of my new book The Interview. She believed, 'to create one must first question everything'. A concept that applies to writing as to life
Eileen Gray
#47. I never abandoned either forms or freedom. I imagine that most of what could be called free verse is in my first book. I got through that fairly early.
Howard Nemerov
#48. In 2007, I sold my first book, 'Grimspace.' It says it's SF on the spine. I believe it to be SF, though it's certainly written differently. I write in first person, present tense, and the protagonist is a woman with a woman's thoughts, feelings, and sexual desires.
Ann Aguirre
#49. The Thames Torso murders almost fell into my lap. After deciding to use a real historical crime as the focus for the book, I went to Google and searched for unsolved murders in Victorian London, and they basically popped out at me about halfway down the first results page.
Sarah Pinborough
#50. I look at my first books and am glad they weren't published ... You start writing by imitating your heroes, then you keep the heart of that worship in your work. As time goes by, you get other influences and find your own voice.
Markus Zusak
#51. I was at the end of my tether when my first book was published. For eight years I didn't make a penny, I worked so hard, didn't drink, didn't enjoy life.
Orhan Pamuk
#52. My company, Against All Odds Productions, has done print on demand; we were the first to do a book with a CD-ROM in the early 1990s. We do custom covers. It's always fun to do something new.
Rick Smolan
#53. Well, the whole story is in the book, but the short answer is that I was the first information architect in an organization that was traditionally design-oriented, and I felt I needed a tool to help me gain the trust and support of my colleagues.
Jesse James Garrett
#54. Andi Teran's first novel is vivid and fully realized, an entire universe expertly condensed into the pages you hold in your hands. Ana herself is a complicated delight, and by the end of the book I wanted to scoop her up into my arms.
Emma Straub
#55. At one point I took a copy of Berkeley's Principles from my father's library. That was the first philosophy book I read. I found it fascinating and wanted to read more philosophy.
Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra
#56. The first paragraph of my book must get me my reader. The last paragraph of a chapter must compel my reader to turn the page. The last paragraph of my book must ensure that my reader looks out for my next book.
Ashwin Sanghi
#57. When I finished graduate school, I had a master's of fine arts from a prestigious institution, a manuscript that would eventually become my first published book - and almost no marketable skills.
Victor LaValle
#58. My stuff is direct. Critics have compared my writing style with boxing all the way back to 1978 when my first book of essays appeared: it was compared to Muhammad Ali's style.
Ishmael Reed
#59. this is a good book and this is my first vampire book i have ever read in my life
Richelle Mead
#60. I bury my mind in my book, the Bible. Every morning it's the first thing that I do. I've been doing it for years and years. So I want to come back here [to Israel] to see the places that I read about every day. It's very important to my faith to feed [my] spirit in Israel.
Bobby McFerrin
#61. Well, unfortunately, my father passed away before my first book was published, so he never lived to see me as an author. But I think my mum was suitably pleased because she was mad about words. If she ever came across a word that she didn't know, she would always look it up in the dictionary.
Geraldine McCaughrean
#62. I've been bragging for over 25 years that my first New York Times bestseller was a book I copied from the U.S. Government Printing Office!
Matthew Lesko
#63. I don't know how old I was when I started writing books. But, I was born in 1931, and I wrote my first book in 1961.
Ed Emberley
#64. I did the pilot, and when they came through and said they were going to put it on the air, I had already some dates in the book with my band and so on. So Barry did the first one, he may have done a few more than the first one in the series, and I took it up from then.
Humphrey Lyttelton
#65. It's important for moms to have alone time. However, that's the first thing that goes on a busy day. Fortunately for me, because of my job, I have to find the time to do it. At least that's the way my mind sees it. I have to exercise to be able to fit the clothes and book the jobs.
Cindy Crawford
#66. I left my job as a feature writer on a newspaper to write a book, then sent it off to a number of agents thinking they would all reject me. Within a week, most had come back to say they loved what they had read, which then led to a bidding war for my first two novels.
Jane Green
#67. And I think about my cell at the Pawiak prison. During the first week I felt I would not be able to endure a day without a book, without the circle of light under the parafin lamp in the evening, without a sheet of paper, without you ...
Tadeusz Borowski
#68. In the first book of my Discworld series, published more than 26 years ago, I introduced Death as a character; there was nothing particularly new about this - death has featured in art and literature since medieval times, and for centuries we have had a fascination with the Grim Reaper.
Terry Pratchett
#69. For my wrap present, Colin Farrell gave me a first edition book. I got so involved with this character and I was so sad when the movie was over that when I got home and I tried to read the book I got really emotional and I started crying.
Salma Hayek
#70. I guess my most prized pop culture possession is a signed first edition of the book 'Fight Club' by Chuck Palahniuk.
Jen Lancaster
#71. My first book deal was actually for a textbook - 'Judo and You' - that I wrote while teaching at Temple University. A scout for Kendall-Hunt came looking for someone to write the book, and even though it wasn't a course I was teaching there, I agreed to write it.
Jonathan Maberry
#72. I had forgotten until I looked up old notes that I sold the film rights of my first book, a life of Mary Wollstonecraft: there was a lunch, a contract, a small sum of money, then nothing.
Claire Tomalin
#73. My first book is really about heat. That book, for me, was an exploration of heat as ingredient. Why we don't talk about heat as an ingredient, I don't quite understand, because it is the common ingredient to all cooking processes.
Alton Brown
#74. In my own experience as president of Brazil I observed first hand many of the trends that Nam identifies in this book, but he describes them in a way that is as original as it is delightful to read. All those who have power-or want it-should read this book.
Fernando Henrique Cardoso
#75. With all editing, no matter how sensitive - and I've been very lucky here - I react sulkily at first, but then I settle down and get on with it, and a year later I have my book in my hand.
Michael Morpurgo
#76. My very first book was a games collection of Anatoly Karpov. On the whole I was attracted by positonal play with some tactics, and already then I was aiming for universality.
Vladimir Kramnik
#77. People often call 'If I Stay' my baby novel, and I have to correct them. It's not my first book. It's just the first one anybody paid attention to.
Gayle Forman
#78. While researching my first book, I discovered so many fascinating tidbits that I wanted to share them with readers to remind them that while the book was fiction, the situations were based on historical realities - some of which were pretty hard to believe.
Julie Klassen
#79. I was incredibly lucky that my first book found a large and loyal readership. It changed my life - from being a very withdrawn adult to living in Paris as a full-time writer. It has also given me enormous confidence.
Daniel Tammet
#80. Thanks to the comic book publishers. Batman and Captain Marvel were responsible for my learning to read at least a year before I showed up at school. They got me interested in writing. Started my first novel at about eight. The title: 'The Canals of Mars.'
Jack McDevitt
#81. The book that made a lasting impression was the one my mother gave each of us when she decided we were ready for our first 'adult novel,' Lucy Maud Montgomery's 'The Blue Castle.'
Hallie Ephron
#82. I have been writing for 50 years and readers still read my first book from when I was in the Marine Corps.
Leon Uris
#83. Our true birthplace is that in which we cast for the first time an intelligent eye on ourselves. My first homelands were my books.
Marguerite Yourcenar
#84. I couldn't decide on a title for my first novel and my editor came up with Everything Good Will Come. After that, I thought I should name my own books.A Bit of Difference seems just right.
Sefi Atta
#85. My hope when I wrote the first book was that I would get to do it again. But it was not entirely clear that that would happen.
John Hodgman
#86. I was very naive, and I thought it was just a matter of writing my first book and sending it in, and for the rest of my life I would be writing books and collecting royalties. Nobody told me how hard it was going to be to get published.
Jerry Spinelli
#87. Even though I was trained in play writing and screenwriting, when I sat down to write a comic book for the first time, Alan Moore was first and foremost in my mind.
Brian K. Vaughan
#88. When I came home, I was asked to put my pictures in a photo exhibit at the Cinematography College ... my pictures won first prize. I began to ask myself what I was doing, and why. A few months after the exhibit, I dropped out of college, left my wife and began to write this book.
Vladislav Tamarov
#89. I made a very conscious effort to finish 'The Cypress House' before 'So Cold the River' launched, because I thought that would help build a buffer between my writing and any impact that came from either the success or the failure of that first book.
Michael Koryta
#90. I wrote my first book, I published it in 1955, it was in Jiddish and it was called And The World Was Silent.
Elie Wiesel
#91. My first course came and I put down my book, and I just happened to put up my hand to scratch my head and discovered that my toupee had been blown by the wind and was folded over backwards on the top of my head!
Derek Jacobi
#92. I'm 19 now, and I go to The New School in New York, where I study Criminal Psychology. My first week of second semester was during Fashion Week when my first editorials in 'CR Fashion Book' and 'Sports Illustrated' came out. It was crazy!
Gigi Hadid
#93. A great book increases my heartbeat as if I'm prey, melts my insides in anticipation of a first kiss, immerses me in its depths.
Carmen DeSousa
#94. One day at my grandmother's house, I discovered 'The Secret Garden' and read it. This was the first book I found entirely for myself, and I cherished it.
Cynthia Voigt
#95. I've never written a children's book, but when people meet me for the first time and I say I write books, they invariably reply, 'Children's books?' Maybe it's something about my face.
Sophie Kinsella
#96. I was going to do a book about the first prearranged Karpov-Kasparov match, '84-'85. But the God-damn Jews have stolen my entire file on that.
Bobby Fischer
#97. My first book, 'The Age of Wire and String,' came out in 1995, and it was hardly reviewed at all.
Ben Marcus
#98. Many aspects of the writing life have changed since I published my first book, in the 1960s. It is more corporate, more driven by profits and marketing, and generally less congenial - but my day is the same: get out of bed, procrastinate, sit down at my desk, try to write something.
Paul Theroux
#99. The aphorism in which I am the first master among Germans, are the forms of 'eternity'; my ambition is to say in ten sentences what everyone else says in a book - what everyone else does not say in a book.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#100. 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
