Best Book Quotes & Sayings

Books are everywhere; and always the same sense of adventure fills us. Second-hand books are wild books, homeless books; they have come together in vast flocks of variegated feather, and have a charm which the domesticated volumes of the library lack. Besides, in this random miscellaneous company we may rub against some complete stranger who will, with luck, turn into the best friend we have in the world. — Virginia Woolf

It's not about you, it's about the next person. The single best use of a business book is to help someone else. Sharing what you read, handing the book to a person who needs it ... pushing those around you to get in sync and to take action-that's the main reason it's a book, not a video or a seminar. A book is a souvenir and a container and a motivator and an easily leveraged tool. Hoarding books makes them worth less, not more. — Seth Godin

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

I have begun in old age to understand just how oddly we all are put together. We are so proud of our autonomy that we seldom if ever realize how generous we are to ourselves, and just how stingy with others. One of the booby traps of freedom
which is bordered on all sides by isolation
is that we think so well of ourselves. I now see that I have helped myself to the best cuts at life's banquet. — Saul Bellow

I work hard and I party hard. When I go to work, I know what I am doing and I do it to the best of my abilities. When I party, I take exactly the same rule book with me. — Rhys Ifans

The art of injudicious reading, the art of miscellaneous reading which every normal man ought to cultivate, is a very fine and satisfactory art; for the best guide to books is a book itself. It clasps hands with a thousand other books. — Maurice Francis Egan

Force me to choose my best book, and I always come back to 'Gorilla.' It was the first time I felt I understood what picture books could do. — Anthony Browne

THE LAST CHAPTER OF a book, Marcus, should always be the best. — Joel Dicker

Janice Gould is one of our best poets. The music of her poetry will delight you, and her gentle courageous accounts of tribal, family, and personal history make this book unforgettable. Doubters and Dreamers is a master-piece. — Leslie Marmon Silko

They say it's always darkest before the dawn and it was pitch black by the time I arrived at the Marriott. However I still had a few bullets left for my deadbeat uncle that tried to stab me in the back. — Angel Ramon Medina

Eric Schlosser's book on the economy and strategies of the fast-food business should be read by anyone who likes to take their children to fast-food restaurants. I shall certainly never do that again. He employs a long, cold burn, a quiet and impassioned accumulation of detail, with calm, wit and clarity. ( ... ) Fast Food Nation is witness to the rigour and seriousness of the best American journalism, readable, reliable and extremely carefully done. — Adam Nicolson

What readers ask nowadays in a book is that it should improve, instruct and elevate. This book wouldn't elevate a cow. I cannot conscientiously recommend it for any useful purposes whatever. All I can suggest is that when you get tired of reading "the best hundred books," you may take this for half an hour. It will be a change. — Jerome K. Jerome

The lack of definitive answers to questions discussed in this book also
reflects the fact that science is an ongoing process in wh ich the most important sign of progress is often that results of an experiment or observational study lead to a new set of questions. This is part of what makes science exciting and rewarding for scient ists, but it entails an important dilemma: how do we make the best pract ical and even ethical decisions based on incomplete scient ific knowledge? — Stephen H. Jenkins

Sometimes a soldier returns home and all he can do is share his story in the hopes that somehow, in some way, it helps another soldier make sense of things. And although the stories may not be perfect, sometimes just sharing is enough to make a difference. — Michael Anthony

Buy good books, and read them; the best books are the commonest, and the last editions are always the best, if the editors are not blockheads. — Lord Chesterfield

The central theme of the book is that prayer is best understood as a long, sometimes perilous, epic journey that eventually leads to triumph. — Gerald L. Sittser

From REQUSISITION FOR: A THIEF - Book 1
Female Reporter: "Agent Garret, could you answer one more question?... Why can't the FBI catch this guy?"
Director Denny Garret: "The problem is two-fold, really. ...If we're ever gonna catch him it's gonna be because he's failed. If you want to see Gregg Hadyn fail, a jewel heist is the last place to look."

Carly Macklin: "What is your thing, Gregg Hadyn?"
Gregg Hadyn: "You know, I'm really good at taking things that don't belong to me."

Director Denny Garret: "Bobby pins?"
International Jewel Thief Gregg Hadyn: "They make the best handcuff picks. — J.A. Devereaux

I get intrigued by a puzzle, and writing a book is the best way to solve it. — Anthony Storr

You're writing, you're coasting, and you're thinking, 'This is the best thing I've ever written, and it's coming so easily, and these characters are so great.' You put it aside for whatever reason, and you open it up a week later and the characters have turned to cardboard and the book has completely fallen apart," she says. "That's the moment of truth for every writer: Can I go on from here and make this book into something? I think it separates the writers from the nonwriters. And I think it's the reason a lot of people have that unfinished manuscript around the house, that albatross. — Jacqueline Woodson

A good book appeals to what is best in us.... — Scott Russell Sanders

It took me the bulk of my twenties to write one book about a family of alligator wrestlers. Whereas somebody like Steve Martin is releasing his latest banjo symphony, having just completed another movie and acclaimed, best-selling novel. — Karen Russell

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

Let a book be your best defense to bordem — Carmela Dutra

I journaled: "Why do I feel like crap after being offered a book deal by one of the best publishers on the planet?" The answer that I came up with surprised me. I knew there were people who would have done anything to get their work out into the world this way. i knew there were people who had worked their butts off and still hadn't made it. I knew there were people who had amazing, life-changing things to say who didn't have the platforms to say it yet. I knew there were people who would have been doing cartwheels in the street if they were me right now. And I felt like because they wanted it more, they should have it instead of me. — Kate Northrup

It is neither the best nor the worst things in a book that defy translation. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Try to read books about meditation, but not so many different viewpoints that they get confusing. There is no best way. It's just what works for you at the time. — Frederick Lenz

The best books ...
The best books of men are soon exhausted
they are cisterns, and not springing fountains.
You enjoy them very much at the first acquaintance,
and you think you could hear them a hundred times over-
but you could not- you soon find them wearisome.
Very speedily a man eats too much honey:
even children at length are cloyed with sweets.
All human books grow stale after a time-
but with the Word of God the desire to study it increases,
while the more you know of it the less you think you know.
The Book grows upon you: as you dive into its depths
you have a fuller perception of the infinity which remains
to be explored. You are still sighing to enjoy more of that
which it is your bliss to taste. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

I try very hard to write the best book I possibly can, every time. — Charlaine Harris

The best thing about doing a signing tour is that numbers become faces. I got to sign books for six or seven thousand people, all of whom were dreadfully nice. Everything else, the interviews, the hotels, the plane travel, the best-seller lists, even the sushi, gets old awfully fast. Well, maybe not the sushi. — Neil Gaiman

Amity Gaige has written a flawless book. It does not contain a single false note. Playful and inventive, SCHRODER movingly depicts the ways we confound our own hearts
how even with the best intentions, we fail to love those closest to us as well as we wish we could. Eric Schroder should take his place among the most charismatic and memorable characters in contemporary fiction, and Amity Gaige her place among the most talented and impressive writers working today. — David Bezmozgis

I've always felt that writing can be learned but not really taught. The best thing somebody can do for you is to put the right book in your hands at the right time. I grew up in a family where the right book was always being put in my hands. — Jennifer Haigh

I've always liked to read about extremely wealthy people, especially when they are crazy (like Howard Hughes or Caligula.) While writing this book I did a lot of fun research on robber barons like Rockefeller and Morgan. But the most helpful stuff came from studying royal families and mad emperors. The best book I read was probably A King's Own Story, which is the memoir of Edward VIII. Also, anything about Ivan the Terrible or Ted Turner. — Simon Rich

I always want readers to lose themselves completely in a story and feel something, whatever the book invites them to feel. That experience is the best takeaway any book can offer. — Julie Berry

We live in the best of worlds. But still, it's like we've lost something on the way to here: a sense of life. I can't know for sure, I might be the only one who's lost it. Maybe everybody else is living the now, thinking they're having it well. Anyhow, that motivated me to write the books. — Karl Ove Knausgard

Carver's best book yet! FROM A CHANGELING STAR combines deft characterization and fascinating extrapolation into a complex, compulsively readable thriller. I wish all science fiction novels could be this good. — Craig Shaw Gardner

That's still the best reading experience: falling in love with a book I meet by accident. — Alice Hoffman

This is the best book ever written by any man on the wrong side of a question of which he is profoundly ignorant. — Thomas B. Macaulay

Missions are hard. By this point in my quest, however, I had become comfortable with "hard," and I hope that if you've made it this far in the book, you have gained this comfort as well. Hardness scares off the daydreamers and the timid, leaving more opportunity for those like us who are willing to take the time to carefully work out the best path forward and then confidently take action. — Cal Newport

I do know that the best way to make a mediocre movie is to just transcribe the book. — Andy Weir

I've always loved literature, and the best books I read were always trilogies. — Dawn Angelique

One's first book, kiss, home run is always the best. — Clifton Fadiman

I have no idea whether beginning with my accident was the best decision, as I've never written a book before. Truth be told, I started with the crash because I wanted to catch your interest and drag you into the story. You're still reading, so it seems to have worked. — Andrew Davidson

In that sense, this is not a standard book of interviews. Nor is it what you might call a book of 'celebrity conversations.' What I was searching for - with increasing clarity as the sessions progressed - was something akin to the heart's natural resonance. What I did my best to hear, of course, was that resonance coming from Ozawa's heart. After all, in our conversations I was the interviewer and he was the interviewee. But what I often heard at the same time was the resonance of my own heart. At times that resonance was something I recognized as having long been a part of me, and at other times it came as a complete surprise. In other words, through a kind of sympathetic vibration that occurred during all of these conversations, I may have been simultaneously discovering Seiji Ozawa and, bit by bit, Haruki Murakami. — Haruki Murakami

To Senor Sempere, the best friend a book could ever have: you opened the doors to the world for me and showed me how to go through them. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

A good book is like a good friend. It will stay with you for the rest of your life. When you first get to know it, it will give you excitement and adventure, and years later it will provide you with comfort and familiarity. And best of all, you can share it with your children or your grandchildren or anyone you love enough to let into its secrets. — Charlie Lovett

If books were roads, some would be made for driving quickly - details are scant, and what details there are appear drab - but the velocity and torque of the narrative is exhilarating. Some books, if seen as roads, would be make for walking - the trajectory of the road mattering far less than the vistas these roads might afford. The best book for me: I drive through it quickly but am forced to stop on occasion, to pull over and marvel. — Peter Mendelsund

Blurbs don't work anymore!" was another. "You should make sure that the quotable lines of dialogue in your book never exceed a hundred and forty characters!" seemed at best debatable. — Scott Westerfeld

The best ideas are those that really affect me emotionally - those are the ones you never forget. You think to yourself, 'I want to write that book', for years; those are the ideas that I love to work with, and 'The Bone Garden' was one of them. — Tess Gerritsen

Everything that is printed and bound in a book contains some echo at least of the best that is in literature. — Henry David Thoreau

I Never Liked You. I think that's my best book. I think it works the best as a story, and I like the drawing. It works on both levels, for me at least. — Chester Brown

Insider can be more ludicrous. How did I ever end up [as one]? Carsick [Waters's book on hitchhiking] was on the New York Times best-seller list for five weeks. [One of the characters was] a singing asshole that does a duet with Connie Francis! Times have changed. That's mainstream, in a weird way. — John Waters

His gaze settles on the discarded book. He leans, reaching until his fingertips graze Dante's Inferno, still on its bed of folded sheets. "What have we here?" he asks.
"Required reading," I say.
"It's a shame they do that," he says, thumbing through the pages. "Requirement ruins even the best of books. — Victoria Schwab

I might go on discussing this subject at great length, but after all is said, done, and written, my own book of experiences will best show what these obstacles are, and how I managed to overcome them to some extent. — Major Taylor

I have still the best comforts of life - books and friendships - and I trust never to lose my relish for either. — Mary Russell Mitford

The only book by a modern president that bears serious comparison with Obama's 'Dreams From My Father' is Jimmy Carter's short campaign autobiography, 'Why Not the Best?,' published in 1975. — Jonathan Raban

There are two kinds of reading, reading which is contemplation - even a kind of vision & reading for information. For the first only the best will do, for the rest - then one can let in anything one would like to read in the world. — Mary Butts

I love comic book movies, and Marvel Comics obviously are the best. — Maria Menounos

I mean, if you're really plunging - you said plunging, right? - into this book, then tethering yourself to every single guidepost along the way isn't really going to make that happen." Mr. Tipton's mirth was palpable. "So you think critical reading is a useless activity? That your classmates are just, what, not experiencing the book?" "I think the best way to experience this book is to let it happen to you and think about what it all means later." "Later when?" "Later when you're a high school English teacher. — Mira Jacob

Snow-melt in the stream: Mama Nature turning winter's storms into nourishment for the soil, fecundity, and beauty. This is what I must now learn to do with the stormy weather I've been passing through: turn it into beauty, turn it into art, so new life can germinate and bloom.
One example of a creative artist who does this is my friend Jane Yolen, who wrote her exquisite book of poems The Radiation Sonnets while her husband was undergoing treatment for the cancer that would eventually claim his life. This is what all artists must do: take whatever life gives us and "alchemize" it into our art (either directly and autobiographically, as in Jane's book, or indirectly; whatever approach works best), turning darkness into light, spinning straw into gold, transforming pain and hardship into what J.R.R. Tolkien called 'a miraculous grace. — Terri Windling

If you want to write something completely unique, you will probably fail or at best write something without redeeming value. The mind works in certain patterns: the mind organizes facts in story form; it is your commonality with that body of human thought that makes a good book, not its estrangement from the common values that humans share. — Janet Morris

We should do our best to satisfy your interests in stories and books and the world. There are libraries. — Neil Gaiman

Fiction is the best the self-help book. — Quinn Barrett

Jay Wexler is my kind of writer
a weird one, and a wry one, and one who isnt afraid to act silly in a sort of bait-and-switch that, to the readers surprise, moves him as much as it makes him laugh. Like all the best comedians, Wexler is clearly nursing a heart that the world broke a long time ago. Ed Tuttle is a book that cant decide what it wants to be when it grows up, but as with most cases of arrested development, theres something very serious going on behind all the antics. Plus, there are pictures. — Ron Currie Jr.

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

Indeed, the best books have a use, like sticks and stones, which is above or beside their design, not anticipated in the preface,not concluded in the appendix. Even Virgil's poetry serves a very different use to me today from what it did to his contemporaries. It has often an acquired and accidental value merely, proving that man is still man in the world. — Henry David Thoreau

I've written this book to explore and illuminate the lives, values, and experiences of just such people, and to offer a glimpse at how we raise our kids with love, optimism, and a predilection for independence of thought, how we foster a practical, this-worldly morality based on empathy, how we employ self-reliance in the face of life's difficulties, how we handle and accept death as best we can, how and why we do or do not engage in a plethora of rituals and traditions, how we create various forms of community while still maintaining our proclivity for autonomy, and what it means for us to experience awe in the midst of this world, this time, this life. — Phil Zuckerman

What I love about the thriller form is that it makes you write a story. You can't get lost in your own genius, which is a dangerous place for writers. You don't want to ever get complacent. If a book starts going too well, I usually know there's a problem. I need to struggle. I need that self-doubt. I need to think it's not the best thing ever. — Harlan Coben

Doctor Sleep - book (By Stephen King) is the best choice before going to bed! — Deyth Banger

TRIGGER CITY secures Sean Chercover's place as one of the best crime writers of his generation. It grabs you hard on the first page and doesn't let go, even after you've closed the book. — Tasha Alexander

The right constraints can lead to your very best work. My favorite example? Dr. Seuss wrote The Cat in the Hat with only 236 different words, so his editor bet him he couldn't write a book with only 50 different words. Dr. Seuss came back and won the bet with Green Eggs and Ham, one of the bestselling children's books of all time. — Austin Kleon

I am not qualified to say whether or not God exists. I kind of doubt He does. Nevertheless I'm always saying that the SF( The SF is the supreme Fascist, the Number-One guy up there) has this transfinite book-transfinite being a concept in mathematics that is larger than infinite-that contains the best proofs of all mathematical theorems, proofs that are elegant and perfect. — Paul Erdos

3,2,1 ... Launch! A lot of preparation goes into launching a rocket ship. No short cuts or cheating will get that rocket to its destination. A lot of hard work and dedication goes into every launch. What are you doing to launch? Are you doing the proper work needed? Are you dedicated? — Robert D. Kintigh

The Male Factor is the singularly best business book for women I've read in years. This well-researched yet thoroughly readable book is rich with rare insights into how men really see women in the workplace-and how with a few simple adjustments you can even the playing field. — Lois P Frankel

Friends: people who borrow my books and set wet glasses on them. — Edwin Arlington Robinson

Since I was a kid. I had this series by Ballantine Books about the history of World Wars I and II. In my 20s, it was the Vietnam War literature of novelists like Tim O'Brien, Philip Caputo, and Tobias Wolff, and then nonfiction such as "A Bright Shining Lie" by Neil Sheehan and "The Best and Brightest" by David Halberstam . Those are the two best histories of Vietnam. — George Packer

I feel that I'm an essayist and that my best work gets done in that form. I wanted to do a book where the essays could exist on their own terms. A book that was neither a book of essays that were shoehorned into a memoir, nor [one where] the essays had been published elsewhere first, [because] then they would kind of bear the marks of those publications. — Meghan Daum

Ford Maddox Ford's 'The Good Soldier' is my favourite novel. I first read it in the 1950s and have read it about 20 times since. It's possibly the best-constructed book in the English language. — Ruth Rendell

Even the best cookery book is no substitute for even the worst dinner. — Aldous Huxley

Dr. Parent has been a great influence on my mental game. ZEN GOLF is the best book at connecting golf and the mind together. It's for everyone, it really helps, and you're really going to enjoy it. — Vijay Singh

The best effect of any book is that it excites the reader to self activity. — Thomas Carlyle

When you're writing a book, it's rather like going on a very long walk, across valleys and mountains and things, and you get the first view of what you see and you write it down. Then you walk a bit further, maybe up onto the top of a hill, and you see something else. Then you write that and you go on like that, day after day, getting different views of the same landscape really. The highest mountain on the walk is obviously the end of the book, because it's got to be the best view of all, when everything comes together and you can look back and see that everything you've done all ties up. But it's a very, very long, slow process. — Roald Dahl

The best thing about a book is that you don't have to plug it in. — Joseph Voelbel

I like best to have one book in my hand, and a stack of others on the floor beside me, so as to know the supply of poppy and mandragora will not run out before the small hours. — Dorothy Parker

I am trying to give the best performance possible in 400 pages. I want readers to be scared; I want them to be moved. Entertainment doesn't necessarily mean something trivial, but it does mean people wanting to get to the end of a book. — Mark Billingham

I would say that, in the future, the book will be reserved for things that function best as a book. So, if I need a textbook that's going to be out of date because of new technological inventions, you're better off having it where you can download the supplements or the update. — Art Spiegelman

I love books where you can't get out of bed. You want to consume them in one sitting, devour them. Those are my favorites, where you've almost abandoned your life for them. That doesn't happen every time, but those are the best. — Rachel McAdams

Was it possible that the emotion of love had somehow made me more susceptible to fear? Does the noble emotion of love make us start valuing our own lives and the lives of our loved ones more so that the feeling of fear creeps into our mindset? — Vivek Pereira

The Apple Marketing Philosophy" that stressed three points. The first was empathy, an intimate connection with the feelings of the customer: "We will truly understand their needs better than any other company." The second was focus: "In order to do a good job of those things that we decide to do, we must eliminate all of the unimportant opportunities." The third and equally important principle, awkwardly named, was impute. It emphasized that people form an opinion about a company or product based on the signals that it conveys. "People DO judge a book by its cover," he wrote. "We may have the best product, the highest quality, the most useful software etc.; if we present them in a slipshod manner, they will be perceived as slipshod; if we present them in a creative, professional manner, we will impute the desired qualities. — Walter Isaacson

In the case of 'Goon Squad,' which sold slowly for a long time despite the good reviews, those 'best of 2010' lists were pivotal, and made the book really sell. — Jennifer Egan

Kyle is my best friend. Why would I risk screwing that up?"
"Mackenzie Catherine Dobson, have you learned nothing from romantic comedies? Do I need to make a trip to the video store?" Tess set her fork down and sighed. "'We're just friends' is the oldest plot device in the book. All it really means is that you're just friends until one of you get the balls to do something about all the unresolved tension. — Kathleen Peacock

The Losing of Love ... Like discovering a shard of heaven's handwriting in the snowflake that has landed upon your hand, desperately wishing you could give such beauty to your best friend before it melts away. And what you are left with is an exquisite regret - the eloquent conspiracy of memory - of the moment lived and the moment wished for that never will arrive. — Carew Papritz

We live in an era where the best way to make a dent on the world may no longer be to write a letter to the editor or publish a book. It may be simply to stand up and say something ... because both the words and the passion with which they are delivered can now spread across the world at warp speed. — Chris Anderson

Sister, spot me. — Joe Hill

It is the power of a girl with a book that is the best weapon for progress. (...) Because with educated women comes prosperity. And with our voices comes mercy. And with our strength comes change. — Deborah Rodriguez

Gina Hyams has put together a fabulous fun book/gift: Pie Contest in a Box: Everything You Need to Host a Pie Contest. There's a great book inside, with recipes, pie history, and plenty of inspiration for gathering your friends together to see who can make the best pie. Plus, ribbons! And scorecards! This would be a great party. — Shauna James Ahern

A book comes and says, 'Write me.' My job is to try to serve it to the best of my ability, which is never good enough, but all I can do is listen to it, do what it tells me and collaborate. — Madeleine L'Engle

All human activity is prompted by desire. — Bertrand Russell

Today we hear a great deal about Organizational Men, Mass Culture, Conformity, the Lonely Crowd, the Power Elite and its Conspiracy of Mediocrity. We forget that the very volume of this criticism is an indication that our society is still radically pluralistic. Not only are there plenty of exceptionalists who take exception to the stereotyping of the mass culture but that very string of epithets comes from a series of books that have been recent best-sellers, symptoms of a popular, living tradition of dissent from things as they are. — Kenneth Rexroth

A Path Appears is an insightful book focused on how individuals can contribute to positive change and the remarkable people behind the organizations that make it happen. The authors' desire to motivate people to support good causes, learn about the situation in other countries, and find the best way to help their fellow men and women is inspiring. — Angelina Jolie

What matters is the character of ... stereotypes, and the gullibility with which we employ them. And these in the end depend upon ... our philosophy of life. If in that philosophy we assume that the world is codified according to a code which we possess, we are likely to make our reports of what is going on describe a world run by our code. But if our philosophy tells us that each man is only a small part of the world, that his intelligence catches at best only phases and aspects in a coarse net of ideas, then, when we use our stereotypes, we tend to know that they are only stereotypes, to hold them lightly, to modify them gladly. We tend, also, to realize more and more clearly when our ideas started, where they started, how they came to us, why we accepted them. All useful history is antiseptic in this fashion. It enables us to know what fairy tale, what school book, what tradition, what novel, play, picture, phrase, planted one preconception in this mind, another in that mind. — Walter Lippmann