Prefaces Quotes

#1. I never read prefaces, and it is not much good writing things just for people to skip. I wonder other authors have never thought of this.

E. Nesbit

#2. I like prefaces. I read them. Sometimes I do not read any further.

Malcolm Lowry

#3. PREFACE PROBLEM: Nobody reads prefaces.
SOLUTION: Call the preface Chapter 1.
NEW PROBLEM CREATED BY SOLUTION: Chapter 1 is boring.
RESOLUTION: Throw away Chapter 1 and call Chapter 2 Chapter 1.

Gerald M. Weinberg

#4. Shaw's plays are the price we pay for Shaw's prefaces.

James Agate

#5. They tell me that So-and-So, who does not write prefaces, is no charlatan. Well, I am. I first caught the ear of the British public on a cart in Hyde Park, to the blaring of brass bands,and this ... because ... I am a natural-born mountebank.

George Bernard Shaw

#6. He who always prefaces his tale with laughter, is poised between impertinence and folly.

Johann Kaspar Lavater

#7. Readers soon tire of prefaces, and skip them, and so the labor of writing them is lost.

Sarah Josepha Hale

#8. Daisy, Daisy, the coppers are after you,
If they catch you they'll give you a month or two,
They'll tie you up with wi-er
Behind the Black Mari-er,
So ring your bell
And pedal like hell
On a bicycle made for two.

Iona Opie

#9. The more you join with people in their joys and their sorrows, the more nearer and dearer they come to be to you.

Mark Twain

#10. Joscelin, is love supposed to make you feel like you're sick and dying, and mad enough to hit someone and drunk with joy, and your heart's a boulder n your chest trying to burst into a thousand pieces all at once?"
"Mm-hmm." He finished his ale. "That would be love.

Jacqueline Carey

#11. A mysterious character of UFOs is that they are sighted only in the First World,' she said, 'and no alien conquest of Earth begins until the mayor of New York holds an emergency press conference. When Mars attacks, it attacks America.

Manu Joseph

#12. Marilyn Monroe wasn't even her real name, Charles Manson isn't his real name, and now, I'm taking that to be my real name. But what's real? You can't find the truth, you just pick the lie you like the best.

Marilyn Manson

#13. A preface is usually an excrescence on a good book, and a vain apology for a worthless one;

Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

#14. July 4th fireworks exhale over the Hudson sadly.
It is beautiful that they have to disappear.
It's like the time you said I love you madly.
That was an hour ago. It's been a fervent year.

Frederick Seidel

#15. For a long time, I've had to hustle. If a film role is obviously great, then it's been difficult for me to get a look-in.

Rufus Sewell

#16. In politics, as in every other sphere of life, there are two important principles for a man of any sense: don't cherish too many illusions, and never stop believing that every little bit helps.

Italo Calvino