All Good Reads Quotes & Sayings

It is immensely rewarding to work carefully with Shakespeare's language so that the words, the sentences, the wordplay, and the implied stage action all become clear - as readers for the past four centuries have discovered. It may be more pleasurable to attend a good performance of a play - though not everyone has thought so. But the joy of being able to stage one of Shakespeare's plays in one's imagination, to return to passages that continue to yield further meanings (or further questions) the more one reads them - these are pleasures that, for many, rival (or at least augment) those of the performed text, and certainly make it worth considerable effort to "break the code" of Elizabethan poetic drama and let free the remarkable language that makes up a Shakespeare text. — William Shakespeare

I'm not an Internet person that reads behind-the-scenes stuff. I see a trailer, and if it looks good, then I go. That's that. — Evan Goldberg

Unfortunately I'm not on the same wavelength as Maria yet in the literary sphere. She writes me such good, natural letters, but she reads ... Rilke, Bergengruen, Binding, Wiechert; I regard the last three as being below our level and the first as being decidedly unhealthy. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

And some poets are far better read off the page because they're very bad speakers. I'm thinking of one in particular whom I won't name, a good poet, and he reads in such a dry, boring way, your eyes start drooping. — Norman MacCaig

All boys wish to be manly; but they often try to become so by copying the vices of men rather than their virtues. They see men drinking, smoking, swearing; so these poor little fellows sedulously imitate such bad habits, thinking they are making themselves more like men. They mistake rudeness for strength, disrespect to parents for independence. They read wretched stories about boy brigands and boy detectives, and fancy themselves heroes when they break the laws, and become troublesome and mischievous. Out of such false influences the criminal classes are recruited. Many a little boy who only wishes to be manly, becomes corrupted and debased by the bad examples around him and the bad literature which he reads. The cure for this is to give him good books, show him truly noble examples from life and history, and make him understand how infinitely above this mock-manliness is the true courage which ennobles human nature. — James Clarke

i have a headache i bet thtat hammer will work — Shelly Laurenston

I feel good with my husband: I like his warmth and his bigness and his being-there and his making and his jokes and stories and what he reads and how he likes fishing and walks and pigs and foxes and little animals and is honest and not vain or fame-crazy and how he shows his gladness for what I cook him and joy for when I make him something, a poem or a cake, and how he is troubled when I am unhappy and wants to do anything so I can fight out my soul-battles and grow up with courage and a philosophical ease. I love his good smell and his body that fits with mine as if they were made in the same body-shop to do just that. What is only pieces, doled out here and there to this boy and that boy, that made me like pieces of them, is all jammed together in my husband. So I don't want to look around any more: I don't need to look around for anything. — Sylvia Plath

Daydreaming does not enjoy tremendous prestige in our culture, which tends to regard it as unproductive thought. Writers perhaps appreciate its importance better than most, since a fair amount of what they call work consists of little more than daydreaming edited. Yet anyone who reads for pleasure should prize it too, for what is reading a good book but a daydream at second hand? Unlike any other form of thought, daydreaming is its own reward. — Michael Pollan

One often reads about the art of conversation-how it's dying or what's needed to make it flourish, or how rare good ones are. But wouldn't you agree that the infinitely more valuable rara avis [rare bird] is a good listener. — Malcolm Forbes

The odds of surviving are not good for serfs, or clerics, since they tended the sick, but miraculously I survive. Mr. Erikson rewards me with a laminated badge that reads, I SURVIVED THE BLACK PLAGUE.
Mom will be so proud. — Cynthia Hand

But I honestly don't read critics. My dad reads absolutely everything ever written about me. He calls me up to read ecstatic reviews, but I always insist that I can't hear them. If you give value to the good reviews, you have to give value to the criticism. — Fiona Apple

Carol would not be a bad one to [settle down] with. She's pretty and bright, and maybe this is what love is. She's good company: her interests broaden almost every day. She reads three books to my one, and I read a lot. We talk far into the night. She still doesn't understand the first edition game: Hemingway, she says, reads just as well in a two-bit paperback as he does in a $500 first printing. I can still hear myself lecturing her the first time she said that. Only a fool would read a first edition. Simply having such a book makes life in general and Hemingway in particular go better when you do break out the reading copies. I listened to myself and thought, This woman must think I'm a government-inspected horse's ass. Then I showed her my Faulkners, one with a signature, and I saw her shiver with an almost sexual pleasure as she touched the paper where he signed. Faulkner was her most recent god[.] — John Dunning

They knew that you breathed and you slept and you worked, but they didn't know that you read. Such a thing was beyond comprehension. They thought that in your spare time you sat and gazed into space, or looked at Peg's Paper or the Crimson Circle. You could almost see them reporting you to their friends. 'Margaret's a good cook, but unfortunately she reads. Books, you know. — Margaret Powell

Everything one reads is nourishment of some sort - good food or junk food - and one assumes it all goes in and has its way with your brain cells. — Lorrie Moore

A lot of today's campaigns are based on optimum positioning but are totally ineffective - because they are dull, or badly constructed, or ineptly written. If nobody reads your advertisement or looks at your commercial, it doesn't do you much good to have the right positioning. — David Ogilvy

One must neither passively yield to fate ("God has brought it about") nor obstinately protest against it ("Satan did it"), but rather ask oneself, "How can I best use this situation for the advance of God's Kingdom?" This is a very creative question-and it is also biblical. The promise in Romans 8:28 reads, "And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God. — Christian A. Schwarz

The Declaration of Sentiments, written in 1833, reads that our principles 'forbid the doing of evil that good may come, and lead us to reject - and to entreat the oppressed to reject - the use of all carnal weapons for deliverance from bondage; relying solely upon those which are spiritual, and mighty through God — Lynn Austin

Humanity should be our Religion and every Human should be our God, This world should be our Temple and doing good to fellow Humans should be our Prayer.
Quran Bible and Bhagwad Geeta all have this message if not just read but also understood properly.
Share it, even if one misguided person reads and understands it and gets back to humanity you will for sure be blessed! — Honeya

The script for 'Infamous' was so poised between tragedy and comedy. It's a dream part. One reads those scripts with a sense of melancholia. When you read a script that good ... I remember thinking, 'Oh, this script is too good. They'll never give it to me.' — Toby Jones

Anyway, who lives a rich and beautiful life that I know? It's no longer possible, surely, for anyone who works for a living, or lives in a city, or shops in a supermarket, or watches TV, or reads a newspaper, or drives a car, or eats frozen pizzas. A nice life, possibly, with a huge slice of luck and a little spare cash. And maybe even a good life if ... Well, let's not go into all that. But rich and beautiful lives seem to be a discontinued line. — Nick Hornby

A trap screenwriters can fall into is making scripts that are good reads, which doesn't necessarily mean it will make a good film. — Peter Straughan

Every first-rate editor I have ever heard of reads, edits and rewrites every word that goes into his publication ... Good editors are not 'permissive'; they do not let their colleagues do 'their thing'; they make sure that everybody does the 'paper's thing.' A good, let alone a great editor is an obsessive autocrat with a whim of iron, who rewrites and rewrites, cuts and slashes, until every piece is exactly the way he thinks it should have been done. — Peter Drucker

Life is art and art is life. — Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha

If a man brings a good mind to what he reads he may become, as it were, the spiritual descendant to some extent of great men, and this link, this spiritual hereditary tie, may help to just kick the beam in the right direction at a vital crisis; or may keep him from drifting through the long slack times when, so to speak, we are only fielding and no balls are coming our way. — Rudyard Kipling

One reads many scripts, and some of them are good and some of them are not, but every now and then, one really grabs you. You simply can't put it down. — Gavin Hood

A man ought to read just as inclination leads him; for what he reads as a task will do him little good. — Samuel Johnson

Stephen King started to read comics first, I started to watch films and little reading books...Now everything has changed Stephen King reads books and watch films, I read comics, watch films, read books listen to audiobooks...
This are two different stories, you were challanged to open them, good job you open them now but can you try to start a new life??
To start by opening a new book??
Meeting with new characters??
With new writers??
With one new book which has a story which you haven't heard??
Probably, you aren't still ready! — Deyth Banger

Loving my Poet as I do, though, I try hard to understand what a poet is. The first clue lies in the fact that my Poet - every poet - is an insomniac. My own reads or wanders about our apartment for the best part of most nights. She told me she often feels she would give up every poem she's ever written for one good night's sleep. — Naeem Murr

In the case of Switzerland, a whole country is concerned with the species-appropriate treatment of all things green. The constitution reads, in part, that "account [is] to be taken of the dignity of creation when handling animals, plants and other organisms." So it's probably not a good idea to decapitate flowers along the highway in Switzerland without good reason. Although this point of view has elicited a lot of head shaking in the international community, I, for one, welcome breaking down the moral barriers between animals and plants. When the capabilities of vegetative beings become known, and their emotional lives and needs are recognized, then the way we treat plants will gradually change, as well. Forests are not first and foremost lumber factories and warehouses for raw material, and only secondarily complex habitats for thousands of species, which is the way modern forestry currently treats them. Completely the opposite, in fact. — Peter Wohlleben

Father, R.I.P., Sums Me Up at Twenty-Three
She has no head for politics,
craves good jewelry, trusts too readily,
marries too early. Then
one by one she sends away her friends
and stands apart, smug sapphire,
her answer to everything a slender
zero, a silent shrug
and every day
still hears me say she'll never be pretty.
Instead she reads novels, instead her belt
matches her shoes. She is master
of the condolence letter, and knows
how to please a man with her mouth:
Good. Nose too large, eyes too closely set,
hair not glorious blonde, not her mother's red,
nor the glossy black her younger sister has,
the little raven I loved best. — Deborah Garrison

Schools and libraries are the twin cornerstones of a civilized society. Libraries are only good if people use them, like books only exist when someone reads them. — Nicholas Meyer

If you're feeling pain, express that to the Lord. If you're feeling worried, express those worries. One passage that gives me comfort is in Psalms, Chapter 11, verse 3, it reads, "When all that is good falls apart, what can good people do?" That's really the question of the day. — Max Lucado

(on the Pip and Squeak asking for a taxi tip)
"How about a tip?"
"Here's a tip," I said. "Next time you're at the library, check out a book about a champion of the world."
"By that author with all the chocolate?"
"Yes, but this one's even better It has some very good chapters in it."
"That's the kind of tip we can use," Squeak said. "Pip reads to me between fares. — Lemony Snicket

Better to work for one's self alone. The public is so stupid. Who reads? And what do they read?
And what do they admire? Ah, blessed peaceful times of the past, blessed eras of powdered wigs! You lived with complete assurance, poised on your high heels, twirling your silver-headed canes! Beneath us the earth is trembling. Where can we place our fulcrum, even admitting that we possess the lever? The thing we all lack is not style, nor that dexterity of finger and bow known as talent. We have a large orchestra, a rich palette, a variety of resources. We know many more tricks and dodges, probably, than were ever known before. No; what we lack is the intrinsic principle, the soul of the thing, the very idea of the subject.We take notes, we make journeys: emptiness! Emptiness! We become scholars, archaeologists, historians, doctors, cobblers, connoisseurs. What good is all that? Where is the heart, the verve, the sap? Where to start out from? Where to go to? — Gustave Flaubert

A lot of people worry much too much about what their children are reading ... If a child picks up a book and reads something she has a question about, if she can go to her parents, great. Or else they will read right over it. It won't mean a thing. They are very good, I think, at monitoring what makes them feel uncomfortable. If something makes them feel uncomfortable they will put it down. — Judy Blume

If you have friends, relatives and other people whom you know who are struggling with terminal, chronic or rare illnesses, refer them to the Stellah Mupanduki Healing Books and they will be saved. You can also read to your grandparents/parents with diseases like, cancer, Alzheimer's, MS, Parkinson And Coma...you can also read these to children and you can also read these good reads for your own salvation. there is a wide selection for everything you need for true healing from this author's books. — Stellah Mupanduki

Any historian of warfare knows that it is in good part a comedy of errors and a museum of incompetence; but if for every error and every act of incompetence one can substitute an act of treason, we can see how many points of fascinating interpretation are open to the paranoid imagination: treason in high places can be found at almost every turning
and in the end the real mystery, for one who reads the primary works of paranoid scholarship, is not how the United States has been brought to its present dangerous position, but how it has managed to survive at all. — Richard Hofstadter

Far and away the greatest menace to the writer - any writer, beginning or otherwise - is the reader. The reader is, after all, a kind of silent partner in this whole business of writing, and a work of fiction is surely incomplete if it is never read. The reader is, in fact, the writer's only unrelenting, genuine enemy. He has everything on his side; all he has to do, after all, is shut his eyes, and any work of fiction becomes meaningless. Moreover, a reader has an advantage over a beginning writer in not being a beginning reader; before he takes up a story to read it, he can be presumed to have read everything from Shakespeare to Jack Kerouac. No matter whether he reads a story in manuscript as a great personal favor, or opens a magazine, or - kindest of all - goes into a bookstore and pays good money for a book, he is still an enemy to be defeated with any kind of dirty fighting that comes to the writer's mind. — Shirley Jackson

In a sense, we can tell a lot about anyone by looking at what books, if any, he reads, at what books are on his shelves ... I have always found books to be helpful, yet they must be good books. — James V. Schall

I appreciate another Good Reads member adding my book to their 'To Read' list. But I consider it rude to immediately add the same book to your 'Not interested' list. Ergo, exactly why did you bother? So do me a favour and kindly remove my book from your 'To read' list. Then, kindly attempt to write your own book so I can return the favour. Thank you! — Me

Every book tells a different story to the person who reads it. How they perceive that book will depend on who they are. A good book reflects the reader, as much as it illuminates the author's text. — Charles De Lint

The man who has not the habit of reading is imprisoned in his immediate world, in respect to time and space. His life falls into a set routine; he is limited to contact and conversation with a few friends and acquaintances, and he sees only what happens in his immediate neighbourhood. From this prison there is no escape. But the moment he takes up a book, he immediately enters a different world, and if it is a good book, he is immediately put in touch with one of the best talkers of the world. This talker leads him on and carries him into a different country or a different age, or unburdens to him some of his personal regrets, or discusses with him some special line or aspect of life that the reader knows nothing about. An ancient author puts him in communion with a dead spirit of long ago, and as he reads along, he begins to imagine what the ancient author looked like and what type of person he was. — Lin Yutang

Mortality is the great rescuer, it finally takes you out of everything, and that makes life good.Read Carl Jung. It makes life richer because this is it; none of us know where we go and this is the fun of it. — Anthony Hopkins

The secret of a good librarian is that he never reads anything more of the literature in his charge than the title and the table of contents. Anyone who lets himself go and starts reading a book is lost as a librarian ... He's bound to lose perspective. — Robert Musil

Mad! Quite mad!' said Stalky to the visitors, as one exhibiting strange beasts. 'Beetle reads an ass called Brownin', and M'Turk reads an ass called Ruskin; and-'
'Ruskin isn't an ass,' said M'Turk. 'He's almost as good as the Opium-Eater. He says we're "children of noble races, trained by surrounding art." That means me, and the way I decorated the study when you two badgers would have stuck up brackets and Christmas cards. Child of a noble race, trained by surrounding art, stop reading or I'll shove a pilchard down your neck! — Rudyard Kipling

The book of nature is like the Bible: Everyone reads into it what they want, from tolerance to intolerance, and from altruism to greed. It's good to realize, though, that if biologists never stop talking of competition, this doesn't mean they advocate it, and if they call genes selfish, this doesn't mean that genes actually are. Genes can't be any more "selfish" than a river can be "angry," or sun rays "loving." Genes are little chunks of DNA. At most, they are "self-promoting," because successful genes help their carriers spread more copies of themselves. — Frans De Waal

As one reads history ... one is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that the good have inflicted. — Oscar Wilde

It is woefully hard to find good, or even merely literate, writers, and they laugh at me when I say that sloppy, go-as-you-please writing carries less authority than decent prose. You must remember our public, they say. And indeed that is what I do, and I think the public is fully able to deal with the best they can produce. Patronizing the public, and assuming that it hangs, breathless, upon what it reads in the papers, is almost the worst of journalistic sins. — Robertson Davies

A reader reads a book. If it's a good book, he forgets himself. That's all a book has to do. When the reader can't forget himself and keeps having to think about the writer the whole time, the book is a failure. That has nothing to do with fun. If it's fun you're after, buy a ticket for a roller coaster. That — Herman Koch

Life has everything in store for you, Dorian. There is nothing that you, with your extraordinary good looks, will not be able to do."
"But suppose, Harry, I became haggard, and old, and wrinkled? What then?"
"Ah, then," said Lord Henry, rising to go, "then, my dear Dorian, you would have to fight for your victories. As it is, they are brought to you. No, you must keep your good looks. We live in an age that reads too much to be wise, and that thinks too much to be beautiful. We cannot spare you." (8.19) — Oscar Wilde

Margot Livesey, my dear friend, reads all the drafts of what I write, and I read hers. We have an intense working relationship. I've been really lucky to know her. She's a great reader and teacher as well as an astonishingly good writer. — Andrea Barrett

As one reads history, not in the expurgated editions written for schoolboys and passmen, but in the original authorities of each time, one is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that the good have inflicted; and a community is infinitely more brutalized by the habitual employment of punishment than it is by the occasional occurrence of crime. — Oscar Wilde

Buying a book is not enough ... You must absorb the knowledge it contains. Your personalized knowledge is not what's on your shelf, but how much you put into yourself! — Israelmore Ayivor

In ages past, there was less of a dichotomy between good literature and fun reads. In the twentieth century, I think, it split apart, so that you had serious fiction and genre fiction. — Ruth Glick

If a nation reads what is good with a good understanding, it gets a good understanding for a good nation building! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Always write exactly what you're feeling at the exact moment when writing something like poetry or an emotional novel. Put yourself, pour all emotions into your work ... make yourself cry, feel joy if you are writing joyful things, feel lovey if it calls for it ... just put your heart and soul into all that you do ... then you will be a good writer when you can make whoever reads your work, feel. -Nina Jean Slack — Nina Jean Slack

Nothing frustrates me more than someone who reads something of mine or anyone else's and says, angrily, 'I don't buy it.' Why are they angry? Good writing does not succeed or fail on the strength of its ability to persuade. It succeeds or fails on the strength of its ability to engage you, to make you think, to give you a glimpse into someone else's head - even if in the end you conclude that someone else's head is not a place you'd really like to be. — Malcolm Gladwell

It is also a warning. It is a warning that, if nobody reads the writing on the wall, man will be reduced to the state of the beast, whom he is shaming by his manners. — Mahatma Gandhi

I have a good Muslim friend who comes over to my house. Good guy; reads the Qur'an in Arabic. He comes over to my house and we talk about faith and we talk about things we have in common, but I can't shy away from the differences that we have. So I talk about why I'm not a Muslim and about the evidence that exists that show Christianity is true. — Lee Strobel

The secret of using makeup for fashion is to have fun with it. When people see that you are playful, that's attractive. Sometimes people apply makeup because they have bags under their eyes or because they don't feel good, and that just reads 'insecure.' — Isabella Rossellini

No, no. You shall make no such confession, Stephen. I am sure that if he is still alive now, if Father Joseph rejoices, he is also full of terror. He is a man, Stephen, just as you are. Listen, he told me some years ago that he reads St. John's account of Gethsemane every day. It reminds him that our Lord himself desired not to suffer, not even for his Father's will. Never deny your own humanity, lest you deny the same humanity of our Lord." He saw that Stephen struggled with this admonition. "Hold your fear close to your heart, even cherish it, for that is where you share our Savior's Cross - not in his divinity, but in his humanity, in his Gethsemane." He was relieved to learn that the young man was no zealot, that he had the good sense to be frightened - it would make him cautious. — Dena Hunt

Marry someone who flatters you. Because I've written 80 books since 'War Horse' but when my wife reads one, all she says is, 'It's quite good, but it's not as good as 'War Horse,' is it?' — Michael Morpurgo

I've got a man might do. No good for me, doesn't care for a flutter, and doesn't like Art either. But he has Proust in his overcoat pocket. Come to think of it, I suppose he reads it for the dirt, so no good for you, cancel what I said. — Doris Lessing

If a person reads a good book - they become permanently changed. They can't even help it. They can't unlearn what they've learned. It will always be with them. — Loretta Lost

Good updates are nice, as a matter of netiquette. Bad ones are negative. — David Chiles

The books one reads in childhood, and perhaps most of all the bad and good bad books, create in one's mind a sort of false map of the world, a series of fabulous countries into which one can retreat at odd moments throughout the rest of life, and which in some cases can survive a visit to the real countries which they are supposed to represent. — George Orwell

I'm sure most parents read to their children to explain what certain things mean. So books are a good way to convey a message to anybody. Everybody reads. — Joyce Meyer

Anyway, my office is small - one room, but on the corner, with a couple of windows. The sign on the door reads, simply, HARRY DRESDEN, WIZARD. Just inside the door is a table, covered with pamphlets with titles like: Magic and You, and Why Witches Don't Sink Any Faster Than Anyone Else - a Wizard's Perspective. I wrote most of them. I think it's important for we practitioners of the Art to keep up a good public image. Anything to avoid another Inquisition. — Jim Butcher