Quotes About Long Books

#1. Once I start reading something, I can't stop. I obsessively read, which is a problem with long books!

Keegan Allen

#2. I often feel newspapers are just filling up space. Of course, I also know people who write really long books.

Vikram Seth

#3. Generations of devoted American history buffs have spent countless hours reading and writing long books about the American Revolution without ever having come across the name of Dr. Thomas Young. Yet it was Young who came up with the idea for the original tea party - the one in Boston Harbor.

Matthew Stewart

#4. You know what writers say about their long books: If I had another year, the book would be half as long.

David Remnick

#5. I never understood the concept of a fluffy summer read. For me, summer reading means beaches, long train rides and layovers in foreign airports. All of which call for escaping into really long books.

Maria Semple

#6. I cannot write long books; I leave that for those who have nothing to say.

Celia Green

#7. Make no mistake, those who write long books have nothing to say.
Of course those who write short books have even less to say.

Mark Z. Danielewski

#8. I think shorter books are going to become more and more of the trend. So I don't think you have to write big, big, long books.

Larry Winget

#9. I'm a big believer in big books, and that doesn't necessarily mean long books.

Mark Z. Danielewski

#10. On the whole, I don't like reading long books. I'm not a fan of 'Ulysses.' And I haven't quite finished 'War and Peace.'

Vikram Seth

#11. People who rarely read long books, or even short stories, still appreciate the greatest examples of the shortest literary genres. I have long been fascinated by these short genres. They seem to lie just where my heart is, somewhere between literature and philosophy.

Gary Saul Morson

#12. Writing long books is a laborious and impoverishing act of foolishness: expanding in five hundred pages an idea that could be perfectly explained in a few minutes. A better procedure is to pretend that those books already exist and to offer a summary, a commentary.

Jorge Luis Borges

#13. Long books, when read, are usually overpraised, because the reader wishes to convince others and himself that he has not wasted his time.

E. M. Forster

#14. Well, I don't know. It's long, it's longer than both of the other books put together, so it's more ambitious. I think I get under the skin of the people a lot more than in the other books.

Cory Doctorow

#15. You know, I like to think my life is kind of like the books I read, only I'm the author. I can write the story I want. The future can be anything I want it to be." He moved his head side to side, considering my words. "That works, as long as your story has a blond stud that fucks like an animal.

Adriana Locke

#16. It's true, too, that I'm tired of using books as political bullets and grenades. Books are too precious and wonderful to be used for long in such a fashion.

Yann Martel

#17. The ability to read awoke inside of me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive.

Malcolm X

#18. Living your life is a long and doggy business ... And stories and books help. Some help you with the living itself. Some help you just take a break. The best do both at the same time.

Anne Fine

#19. I've been a big music guy for a long time and a lot of my books have music in them so I like music analogies.

Charles Soule

#20. I've got a lot of books in my head, so hopefully we can be friends for a long time. With all my heart, mind, body, and soul ... thank you!

James Dashner

#21. Jessica, falling in love can't always be a happily ever after or a once in a lifetime kind of story. Those happen in books, in movies. This is life and it's real. Life has no script, no outline. We broke the rules of love long ago. All I know for sure is that with you, the rules will never apply.

Kathryn Perez

#22. The Voice
There is a voice inside of you
That whispers all day long,
"I feel this is right for me,
I know that this is wrong."
No teacher, preacher, parent, friend
Or wise man can decide
What's right for you
just listen to
The voice that speaks inside.

Shel Silverstein

#23. Even books are nurses, medicines are nurses. But we must work to bring about the time when man shall recognise his mastery over his own body. Herbs and medicines have power over us as long as we allow them; when we become strong, these external methods are no more necessary.

Swami Vivekananda

#24. Whatever it is that you're feeling, whatever it is you have a question about, whatever it is that you long to know, there is some book, somewhere, with the key. You just have to search for it.

Adriana Trigiani

#25. I've been around so long that I might be in record books for being the longest, weirdest, most pathetic great player ever. Look t how precocious I am at 33.

Vince Spadea

#26. I read a lot of books. Here are the books I'm using for my 9/11 project. [Wright gestures to three six-foot-long shelves of books.] As I read them I highlight certain passages. Then I have an assistant write down each quote on an index card and note where it came from.

Lawrence Wright

#27. I fear books; for I have heard it said, and I think it true, that a man who
spends long enough in their company grows at last unmindful of the world outside their covers, and lives finally in a twilight world of fantastic things and places as insubstantial as dreams.

Chris Naylor

#28. I never try to give a message in my books. It's about living with characters long enough to hear their voices and let them tell me the story. Sometimes I would love to have a happy ending, and it doesn't happen because the character or the story leads me in another direction.

Isabel Allende

#29. Now that you're here, now that they know you exist, you'll never be free again. Ever. We're prisoners to our books, our fates planned long before we were born. You're no different than us. Fight your fate all you want, but deep down you know it's true.

Angela Parkhurst

#30. Could he continue to maintain his sanity that long? He didn't know. That's why he was devouring two or three books a day - to remove himself every minute that he possibly could from the madness of this life.

Philip Roth

#31. Writers are a savage breed, Mr. Strike. If you want life-long friendship and selfless camaraderie, join the army and learn to kill. If you want a lifetime of temporary alliances with peers who will glory in your every failure, write novels.

Robert Galbraith

#32. I love words. I crave descriptions that overwhelm my imagination with vivid detail. I dwell on phrases that make my heart thrum. I cherish expressions that pierce my emotions and force the tears to spill over. In essence, I long for a writer's soul sealed in ink on the page.

Richelle E. Goodrich

#33. I have written things that Republicans and Democrats and all kinds of figures have either hated or felt very uncomfortable about. Because in doing these long projects and books, you get close to the bone. And they're not calling me up and asking me for dinner.

Bob Woodward

#34. Libraries have certainly come a long way. The days of card pockets inside the backsleeves of books seemed like a faded dream. As a kid, I used to love all those withdrawal date stamps.

Haruki Murakami

#35. One, I have a wonderful publisher, Black Sparrow Press; as long as they exist, they will keep me in print. And they claim they sell very respectable numbers of my books, so I guess, and it's true, every place I go, my books are in libraries and on bookshelves.

Diane Wakoski

#36. I've learned to look like I'm listening to long confusing plots of cartoons and comic books when I'm actually sound asleep or making grocery shopping lists in my head.

Patricia Heaton

#37. For such a long time, when you're a writer, you really are just writing for yourself, and maybe a few friends. So it's really amazing when your book gets out there and more people are reading and responding to it. It really makes the world of the books feel real.

Cassandra Clare

#38. It has long been my belief that everyone's library contains an Odd Shelf. On this shelf rests a small, mysterious corpus of volumes whose subject matter is completely unrelated to the rest of the library, yet which, upon closer inspection, reveals a good deal about its owner.

Anne Fadiman

#39. I long ago ran out of bookshelf space and so, like a museum with its art, simply rotate my books from the boxes to the shelves and back again.

Michael Dirda

#40. I think books and movies are going to go a long way together in the future. I think we writers are very important material for directors.

Tatiana De Rosnay

#41. One summer morning at sunrise a long time ago
I met a little girl with a book under her arm.
I asked her why she was out so early and
she answered that there were too many books and
far too little time. And there she was absolutely right.

Tove Jansson

#42. For a long while they are silent, thinking about abstract things like control and what it means to love an institution that is defined by loss, because a library is such a space and their duty is to encourage the books to leave.

Lindsey Drager

#43. Salvation is the work of God planned in eternity, communicated by the prophets in the Old Testament and fulfilled in Christ; all of which the apostles bear witness to and the angels long to look into these things.

Jonah Books

#44. I don't read my books, I write them. Once I've finished the many years it usually takes me to write them, I can't bear to read them, because I've spent too long with them already. I'm not advertising them very well, am I?

Salman Rushdie

#45. There was a long stint during my childhood after I gave up on being a pro football player - we're talking sixth grade here - that I strongly considered a future writing and drawing comic books. I have been making stuff up ever since.

Adam Ross

#46. The printed word will be around long after many of our digital creations are gone, either because books don't require monthly hosting, and blogs and websites do ... or because the languages and platforms for which a particular digital creation was published will become obsolete.

Jeffrey Zeldman

#47. My father was sleepless most of his life. So by the age of five, I was awake with him all night long, watching bad television or we'd lie in the same bed, and I'd read my comic books while he read his latest spy or mystery novel.

Sherman Alexie

#48. That kiss was amazing; it had all the passion and longing we had been holding onto for so long. That is when the dam finally broke for me and I started crying. I knew right then that Hunter was the only one I wanted. He was my happily ever after.

Megan Smith

#49. Great books, if long enough and full of topical description and contemporary comment, were now coming into even wider public favor. The lengthier and fuller of comment, the better.

James Purdy

#50. Beast Books will be longer than conventional long-form magazine articles but shorter than conventional nonfiction books. They will be published digitally and distributed on multiple platforms, and will soon thereafter be available as handy paperbacks.

Tina Brown

#51. Let's face it - online promotion of your books could easily become a full-time career if you're not careful. But if you're not writing regularly, then it won't be long before there's nothing to promote.

Teresa Medeiros

#52. The terms of copyright last far too long: either the life of the author plus 70 years after death for a personal work or 95 years for a corporate work. That length doesn't encourage more authorship - it merely limits the speakers who could share powerful speeches, books, and films.

Marvin Ammori

#53. As with men, it has always seemed to me that books have their own peculiar destinies. They go towards the people who are waiting for them and reach them at the right moment. They are made of living material and continue to cast light through the darkness long after the death of their authors.

Miguel Serrano

#54. It took me a long time to realise how many of our classic books on animals were by gay writers who wrote of their relationships with animals in lieu of human loves of which they could not speak.

Helen Macdonald

#55. The dog growled again, long and ferocious. The hair on my neck tingled.
And just when I knew he would attack, a horrible scream split the air, and Darlene passed out and fell over on her side.

Carol Petrie

#56. As far as 'Birdsong' is concerned, I think the television program made a very honorable attempt at it, but the truth of the matter is that adaptations of long, ambitious books very seldom transfer well to the screen, and why would they?

Sebastian Faulks

#57. I'm a better writer now because I've worked very hard at getting better. My long-range goal will always be to write better books.

George Pelecanos

#58. I am often asked what I would be doing if I hadn't become a writer. I have long said I would probably be a chef or a garden designer or a decorator, but since recording my own books, there is no doubt in my mind that if the writing doesn't work out, voice work is what I would choose.

Jane Green

#59. She saw the shallow lines beaded with blood in her long mirror, and when he told her that she was beautiful, she believed him.

Astrid Knowles

#60. I've really written my books for my husband and our family. They've brought us closer together by allowing us to discuss things that were unspoken for so long.

Pamela Stephenson

#61. There are adventures of the spirit and one can travel in books and interest oneself in people and affairs. One need never be dull as long as one has friends to help, gardens to enjoy and books in the long winter evenings.

D.E. Stevenson

#62. There are too many books I haven't read, too many places I haven't seen, too many memories I haven't kept long enough.

Irwin Shaw

#63. I have thought you could not give everything to your books and also to your children, so for a long time, I thought if I had a child or a family, I'd think, 'How would I support them?' because basically I would stop writing.

Sonya Hartnett

#64. I don't have a real home. When I got 'Avatar,' I sold everything that I owned because I knew it was going to be a long journey. I've got two bags, and that was four years ago, and I've been working ever since, and I've still only got two bags - a bag of books and a bag of clothes. That's about it.

Sam Worthington

#65. The silence was a comfortable one, as if they had known each other for a long time. This was a feeling about which Louis had read in books, but which he had never experienced until now.

Stephen King

#66. I can think of no other writer who so thoroughly embodies the Jamesian spirit as Alison Lurie. Like him she can excavate all the possibilities of a theme. Like his, her books seem long, unbroken threads, seamless progressions of effects.

Edmund White

#67. I've got a long list of books I wish I'd never written-and I've kept them all out of print for the past 20 years.

Dean Koontz

#68. Although all days are equally long regardless of the season, some days are long not only seasonally but by rewards they offer.

Dejan Stojanovic

#69. When a day passes, it is no longer there. What remains of it? Nothing more than a story. If stories weren't told or books weren't written, man would live like the beasts, only for the day. The whole world, all human life, is one long story.

Isaac Bashevis Singer

#70. I like zombies; I like them fine. But I don't have a long list of zombie movies or books that are among my favorite things in the world.

Steve Hockensmith

#71. I'm glad to know I will never live long enough to run out of books to read.

Douglas Self

#72. ... some bits of Dickens-books with which latter I am long familiar and long enamored for the restful falseness of their sentiment and the pungent appetizing charm of their villains.

Mary MacLane

#73. It doesn't matter how long we've used something; all that matters is how awesome the thing replacing it is. MP3s and automobiles happen to be really, really awesome, whereas ebooks - at least so far - are fairly limited in their awesomeness.

John Green

#74. I don't know exactly how long the book as we know it will exist, but I fully expect to make it to my death without having to give up on books.

Rick Moody

#75. There are a lot of books about the passing of the English aristocracy, but the vast majority of Long Islanders don't understand their own backyard. It's a private preserve.

Nelson DeMille

#76. Wherever you are, I will be happy as long as I'm with you." August 2009 Dear Reader: For twelve books, I've written about the types of evil men and women commit against their fellow human

Allison Brennan

#77. I just met Stephen King in my dreams... I just said what I have watched and read from his books... Mainly I received a hug from him, it was like we are friends from long time.

Deyth Banger

#78. But I've been at writing long enough now to know that every three or four books I have to start a new direction.

Daniel Woodrell

#79. The books take a year just to do the drawing. I will travel to a country to do the research and get ideas. Sometimes I don't travel to do research, but mostly I do. It takes a long time, but do I ever get tired of it? Not really. The characters kind of grow and evolve.

Jan Brett

#80. USAGE, n. The First Person of the literary Trinity, the Second and Third being Custom and Conventionality. Imbued with a decent reverence for this Holy Triad an industrious writer may hope to produce books that will live as long as the fashion.

Ambrose Bierce

#81. You can read books on stuff all day long, but until you get out there and just do it, if you want to start playing, and you want to make some music, then go out and play. Go find yourself a venue and play, even if it's in your home. Just play every day. You win the fight by fighting.

Christian Kane

#82. I'd volunteer to go to prison, as long as there are books. Because with books I am free.

Mohammad Hatta

#83. As a historian, I love every little detail, but whole long passages about wood paneling and journeys on horseback and every stop at every inn had to go out the window. I decided the history in the books should be like spice in a soup - a little went a long way. Like cilantro.

Deborah Harkness

#84. Oh, books, what books they used to know, Those children living long ago! So please, oh please, we beg, we pray, Go throw your TV set away, And in its place you can install A lovely bookshelf on the wall.

Roald Dahl

#85. As long as she had books and money, nothing could be a catastrophe.

Katarina Bivald

#86. So long as ignorance and poverty exist on earth, books of the nature of Les Miserables cannot fail to be of use.

Victor Hugo

#87. Still, even without the country or a lake, the summer was a fine thing, particularly when you were at the beginning of it, looking ahead into it. There would be months of beautifully long, empty days, and each other to play with, and the books from the library.

Edward Eager

#88. What are these things that this houses, Eva?" Rovender picked up a crumbling tome. He handed it to her.
"These are books," Eva said as the yellowed bits of paper flaked away in her hands to rest on the floor. "It's what humans used to put all of their writing in long ago.

Tony DiTerlizzi

#89. You can't count on notoriety lasting very long, and there's no way to predict whether anyone will care about your books or you in three years, let alone ten or twenty.

Dan Chaon

#90. Read about things that wouldn't keep you up all night long, weeping and tearing out your hair.

Lemony Snicket

#91. Since I spend such a long time making each book, I only choose books that I'm really interested in and that I really love.

Brian Selznick

#92. Books to the ceiling, Books to the sky, My pile of books is a mile high. How I love them! How I need them! I'll have a long beard by the time I read them.

Arnold Lobel

#93. As long as a reader hasn't willingly put down his book, he is a potentially dangerous individual.

Annie Francois

#94. I remember when I was very young, I had a fever - a long rheumatic fever in bed for four months. And in the days, I stayed alone with the maid. I only had my father's books with me. They were fantasy books about ghosts, and also books by Edgar Allen Poe that made a forever impression on me.

Dario Argento

#95. As long as a man had the courage to reject what society told him to do, he could live life on his own terms. To what end? To be free. But free to what end? To read books, to write books, to think.

Paul Auster

#96. I found out a long time ago that if I indulged by stuffing my face with great food, lying about reading books and watching TV or talking on the phone, I was not a happy camper.

Raquel Welch

#97. The thing is, 'Discworld' had been going on for a very long time, and I've written children's books as well. Usually when people have a really big series they franchise it, which I thought is a bit of a no-no, so I thought what I'd do is I'd franchise it to myself.

Terry Pratchett

#98. I treated the first few books as a very long journalistic exercise. I thought of every chapter as an article that needed to be finished.

Jane Green

#99. What refuge is there for the victim who is oppressed with the feeling that there are a thousand new books he ought to read, while life is only long enough for him to attempt to read a hundred?

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

#100. Books can be viewed as food for the mind

Stop reading and your brain can become anemic

Read junk and your thinking can become malnourished

But handle your diet with books well and your life long learning never stops

Jonathan Frakes