Quotes About A Book Review

#1. How I envy writers who can work on aeroplanes or in hotel rooms. On the run I can produce an article or a book review, or even a film script, but for fiction I must have my own desk, my own wall with my own postcards pinned to it, and my own window not to look out of.

John Banville

#2. I thought, well I can do that. I couldn't be bothered writing a book review, because I'd have to read the book, I haven't got time to read a whole book for a fifty dollar write-up.

Eddie Campbell

#3. The first function of a book review should be, I believe, to give some idea of the contents and character of the book.

Walter Kaufmann

#4. I'm accused of, and perhaps rightly so, of not being mean enough. I've been taken to task in many a book review; a good satirist has to, you know, has to kill.

Christopher Buckley

#5. Perhaps in a book review it is not out of place to note that the safety of the state depends on cultivating the imagination.

Stephen Vizinczey

#6. How much of a book review is about the reviewer? Sometimes it's mostly about the reviewer!

Kathryn Harrison

#7. When someone writes a book review, they obviously already self-identify as a writer. I mean, they are. They're writers, they're critics, and they're writing about a book about a writer who's a critic. So I think it's really hard for people to distance themselves from what they're criticizing.

Chuck Klosterman

#8. every time a reader leaves a book review, a crippled monkey gets a free banana. I

Bobby Adair

#9. There's a guy, Anatole Broyard, of the N. Y. Times Book Review, who's still chasing Kerouac's corpse with a stiletto.

Allen Ginsberg

#10. E-books are great for instant gratification - you see a review somewhere of a book that interests you, and you can start reading it five minutes later.

Anne Lamott

#11. A week or so ago I did a two hour book review in Baltimore Maryland.

Betty Hill

#12. Every day I review the ways he works, I try not to miss a trick. I feel put back together, and I'm watching my step. GOD rewrote the text of my life when I opened the book of my heart to his eyes.

Eugene H. Peterson

#13. _'You shouldn't say thank you for a good review,' said Harriet. 'That would imply that one had done a favour to the author, whereas one has simply done justice to the book.'_

Dorothy L. Sayers

#14. A mom reads you like a book, and wherever she goes, people read you like a glowing book review.

Robert Breault

#15. A good day is one where I can not just read a book, but write a review of it. Maybe today I'll be able to do that. I get for some reason somewhat stronger when the sun starts to go down. Dusk is a good time for me. I'm crepuscular.

Christopher Hitchens

#16. One cannot review a bad book without showing off.

W. H. Auden

#17. A bookshelf is as particular to its owner as are his or her clothes; a personality is stamped on a library just as a shoe is shaped by the foot.
[Baffled at a Bookcase (London Review of Books, Vol. 33 No. 15, 28 July 2011)]

Alan Bennett

#18. I never read a book I must review; it prejudices you so.

Oscar Wilde

#19. It never stops me from saying what I want to say about Ethiopia, the fact that a tour company is paid for me to go there. Book reviewers don't pay for the books they review.

John Gimlette

#20. [P]ersonally, I know I'd prefer to read an honest review by someone who has no reason to lie, than a book reviewer who has an employer and a publishing house to keep happy.

Catherine Ryan Howard

#21. There is nothing like a good negative review to sell a book.

Hugh Barbour

#22. I review books."
"Do you get paid for them?"
I laughed out loud at that. "No, not at all."
Daemon seemed confused by that. "So you review books and you don't get paid if someone buys a book based on your review?

Jennifer L. Armentrout

#23. People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like.
[in review of a book]

Abraham Lincoln

#24. We sometimes reveal how ignorant or bored we were when we read a book by giving it 5-stars.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

#25. A critic can only review the book he has read, not the one which the writer wrote.

Mignon McLaughlin

#26. If a book I've committed myself to review turns out to be 'disappointing' I make an effort to present it objectively to the reader, including a good number of excerpts from the text, so that the reader might form his or her own opinion independent of my own.

Joyce Carol Oates

#27. Like many of the people quoted on this dust-cover, I have not read Carl King's book. I am confident, however, that my review still applies: So, You're a Creative Genius is the best book available on modern cartography.

Heather Anne Campbell

#28. Mind is a dark fathomless ocean, and every time I sink into it, this world fades, replaced by one far more terrible and beautiful in which I will happily drown. - New York Times Book Review

Neil Gaiman

#29. I've never yet read a review of one of my own books that I couldn't have written much better myself.

Edward Abbey

#30. I read the GAO report, and it reminds me of a review I read of Lady Chatterley's Lover in the magazine Field and Stream. The reviewer of that book knew as much about the real purpose of Lady Chatterley's Lover as the GAO knows about the design and development of submarines.

Sherry Sontag

#31. There are two perfumes to a book. If a book is new, it smells great. If a book is old, it smells even better. It smells like ancient Egypt. A book has got to smell. You have to hold it in your hands and pray to it. You put it in your pocket and you walk with it. And it stays with you forever.

Ray Bradbury

#32. TOTALLY AMERICAN" personifies the dreams, inspiration, and ambition of the American people at a time we need it most. Reach deep in tribute to our founding Fathers, our Constitution, and our brave military forces. This is the fabric of America!

Stu Taylor

#33. I rarely read or buy a book because of a review.

Jim Harrison

#34. So many Jonathans. A plague of literary Jonathans. If you read only the New York Times Book Review, you'd think it was the most common male name in America. Synonymous with talent, greatness. Ambition, vitality.

Jonathan Franzen

#35. One of the maddening ironies of writing books is that it leaves so little time for reading others'. My bedside is piled with books, but it's duty reading: books for book research, books for review. The ones I pine for are off on a shelf downstairs.

Mary Roach

#36. REVIEW, v.t. To set your wisdom (holding not a doubt of it./ Although in truth there's neither bone nor skin to it)/ At work upon a book, and so read out of it/ The qualities that you have first read into it.

Ambrose Bierce

#37. I apologize if I've rated your book but not left a review. I've noticed lately that some of my reviews are disappearing after a day or two. It may be a tech issue, might be operator error (me) but I always intend to leave at least a short comment along with a rating.

Chris Norbury

#38. Nowadays, even The New York Times Book Review is afraid to say when a popular book is crap.

Lorin Stein

#39. Because this absolutely insane - the craziest thing I'd ever done. Worse than giving a one-star review, scarier than asking for an interview with an author I'd give my firstborn to eat lunch with, more stupid than kissing Daemon.

Jennifer L. Armentrout

#40. Horror. I can't manage it. I become
well
horrified. Self-help books have a similar effect.
When asked, "Any literary genre you simply can't be bothered with?" - (By the Book: Writers on Literature and the Literary Life from the NYT Book Review, by Pamela Paul)

Emma Thompson

#41. Sad to say, multi-tasking is beyond me. I read one book at a time all the way through. If I'm reviewing the book, I have to write the review before I start reading any other book. I especially hate it when the phone rings and interrupts my train of thought.

Michael Dirda

#42. Really good 'hard' novels - say, Wolf Hall - yield, if you read them carefully, the information you need when you need it, in order to follow their paths. But there is a point at which subtle storytelling maneuvers outmaneuver their own intelligibility.

Daniel Menaker

#43. Of the true mysteries of the universe . . . the one we may never solve is the mystery of other people. This is the underlying subject of all fiction--Who ARE you, and why are you different from me?--from a NYT Book Review review of Since We Fell, by Dennis Lehane

Noah Hawley

#44. A writer should not review a book. A reviewer should not write.

Bhaskar Sharma

#45. I find myself more and more behind these days. You have to be really diligent. I don't have kids, which helps. I'm always working on something, whether a book, or a law review article that no one will ever read, or teaching. It pretty much means I work a lot, but it's all stuff I love.

Alafair Burke

#46. What a pity when editors review a woman's book, that they so often fall into the error of reviewing the woman instead.

Fanny Fern

#47. i really like when someone reads my book and then review and rate it. this is very important to me because it shows me where i stand as an author and where i can improve as a writer.

Robert Trouble Johnson

#48. If a reviewer is beating me up, I just say, 'Oh well, my writing is not to his or her taste.' And that's as far as it goes. Because I will simultaneously read a review where somebody says, 'Oh my God, I had so much fun reading this book and I learned so much.'

Dan Brown

#49. 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

#50. See Amazon's bio on don loedding and a review of his first book of short stories"The Search For the Bearded Clam" and read inside "Global Warming:The Iceman Cometh".

Donald R. Loedding

#51. Reviewing a book written by someone you're living with and sleeping with is, needless to say, wrong.

Jill Lepore

#52. i listed my faults under a book called
Retail Ramblings
by Kevin Domenic (Goodreads Author)

in the comments for the review by Leanne Bell, someone i love dearly and wish i never hurt and forced her to go.

Kevin Domenic

#53. I never can understand why people take the time to leave a negative review on a book or piece of artwork. There are other ways for you to find outlets in the world.

K.L. Adams

#54. If you have the indecency to steal my book, at least have the decency to write a review.

Grea Alexander

#55. You are a total bitch with no humor. Please go get treatment and ENJOY my latest novel!!!! You old crow!"

[Response to a review of her book]

Susan Reinhardt

#56. Is it ever worthwhile to buy a review? Not in my opinion. With independent paid review services, quality can be a problem; plus, there are plenty of non-professional book review venues out there that will review for free.

Victoria Strauss

#57. PAIN was no longer a cause of suffering, but a source of pleasure, Because they were redeeming humanity from its sins. Pain becomes joy, the meaning of life, pleasure..

Paulo Coelho

#58. I was devastated when I got the review for my first book. The book came out a couple years before the women's movement broke through, and people were putting it down, asking, 'Why does the woman in this book need to get a divorce? Why can't she just shut up and be happy?'

Gail Sheehy

#59. Literature should not be exclusive, it should be inclusive. My general view is that you can't, based on your own experience, project what a book will do for someone else. That's why I don't review books.

Richard Ford

#60. Any idiot can write a long book. All it takes is patience and a willingness to keep pounding on the keys. A short book is a challenge. It's all about what you don't say. What you trust the reader to bring with them.

Jason Sheehan

#61. Reviewing books is all about coziness. It is all of it a kind of caucus race. Women review women, Jewish writers review and praise Jewish writers, blacks review blacks, etc.

Alexander Theroux

#62. Religious reasons, which is no reason. I notice Skeptic had a review of Dennett's book, Darwin's Dangerous Idea. Religious reasons amount to what Dennett terms "skyhooks." Do you believe in skyhooks? I don't.

Garrett Hardin

#63. As a publisher what you are trying to build is a long life for a book, to help it find its readers in many different ways, whether or not it made this list or got that review, etc. I'm sure some of that thinking has been useful to me as a writer as well.

Danielle Dutton

#64. It is always dishonest for a reviewer to review the author instead of the author's book.

Edward Abbey

#65. It always felt good typing up a review on a book I enjoyed and I went all out, finding bizarre pictures to emphasis the wow factor. I preffered ones with cute kittens and llamas. And Dean Winchester. Hitting 'publish post' cracked a smile.

Jennifer L. Armentrout

#66. I'm interested in so many different things and I'd like to cover a lot of territory. I'm trying to see my show as the Sunday 'Times.' You have the Arts & Leisure section, you have the Op-Ed page, you have the Book Review ... even the Style section has those wonderful essays about relationships.

Joy Behar

#67. If I begin my book with a review of the coup, it is only to show that my abiding interests for Australia did not end with it. They shall end only with a long and fortunate life.

Gough Whitlam

#68. The process of self-invention is never-ending; writer, like children, are always growing into their gifts. (Susan Larson in a "Times-Picayune" book review.

Susan Larson

#69. You see, the world is as big as an elephant or small as a grain of sand, depending on you. You can let it stomp you, gore you, swallow you up. Or you can let it slip into your shell and turn into a pearl." -- Benjamin East

Jonathan Freedman