Quotes & Sayings About Book Themes

I usually give a book 40 pages. If it doesn't grab me by then, adios. With young adult books, you can usually tell by Page 4 if it's worth the time. The author establishes the conflict early, sometimes in the first sentence. The themes of hope, family, friendship and overcoming hardship appeal to most everyone. — Regina Brett

I genuinely was just such a fan of the books. When I heard that this was on the cards, I've got to do this; I've got to get involved with this. I'm such a Philip Pullman fan and actually his philosophies, morals and the way he looks at the world. He does what he does brilliantly as a writer. He writes children's stories with major adult themes and major ideas about making the right choices. — Daniel Craig

Bureaucracy holds out at least the possibility of dealing with other human beings in ways that do not demand either party has to engage in all those complex and exhausting forms of interpretive labor described in the first essay in this book, where just as you can simply place your money on the counter and not have to worry about what the cashier thinks of how you're dressed, you can also pull out your validated photo ID card without having to explain to the librarian why you are so keen to read about homoerotic themes in eighteenth century British verse. — David Graeber

I began my effort at improving my flight experiences by reading purposefully during my flights. My airplane reading would often be centered on themes. On some flights I would read only newspapers and magazines, catching up on one particular event. On other flights I would read a short novel, and finishing the entire book during the flight would give me a great thrill, as if I'd just flown a cross-Atlantic mission with Amelia Earhart. — Edwidge Danticat

It was Sci-Fi and fantasy that got me reading, and Sci-Fi writers in particular have pack rat minds. They introduce all sorts of interesting themes and ideas into their books, and so for me it was a short leap to go from the fantasy and Sci-Fi genres to folklore, mythology, ancient history and philosophy. I did not read philosophy because I set out to become a philosopher; I read it because it looked interesting. — Terry Pratchett

The Bible is the most thought suggesting book in the world. No other deals with such grand themes. — Herrick Johnson

I've never written a book with an outline or a predetermined theme. It's only in retrospect that themes or subjects become identifiable. That's the fun of it: discovering what's next. I'm often surprised by plot developments I would not have dreamed of starting out, but that, in the course of the writing, come to seem inevitable. — Susan Choi

Happiness is never a guarantee and it always requires effort. — Charity Bradford

There are many themes found in the Book of Psalms that are generally not found in modern music. These include the fear of God, the righteousness and justice of God, the sovereignty of God, the judgement of God, the evil of sin, spiritual and physical warfare, the arch enemies of the Christian, the destruction of the wicked, the reality of hell, the blessedness of the church, the vicious attacks upon the church, the commandments of God, the dominion of David's son, and so on. Without the backdrop of these truths, the themes of love, mercy, faith, and salvation become largely meaningless. — Kevin Swanson

I know now that a studied evasiveness has its own limitations, its own ways of inhibiting certain forms of happiness and pleasure. The pleasure of abiding. The pleasure of insistence, of persistence. The pleasure of obligation, the pleasure of dependency. The pleasures of ordinary devotion. The pleasure of recognizing that one may have to undergo the same realizations, write the same notes in the margin, return to the same themes in one's work, relearn the same emotional truths, write the same book over and over again - not because one is stupid or obstinate or incapable of change, but because such revisitations constitute a life. — Maggie Nelson

I know the Bible pretty well. I'm not one of those guys who can immediately start quoting every book, but usually I know where to look to find certain themes. — John Darnielle

When authors claim new revelations dealing with apocalyptic themes, book sales increase. Christians who chase after the sensational constantly look for keys to unlock the mysteries of the apocalypse. — Stan Newton

It's good.' She chirps the last bit as if that were all to say about a book: It's good or it's bad. I liked it or I didn't. No discussions of the writing, the themes, the nuances, the structure. Just good or bad. Like a hot dog. — Gillian Flynn

More generally, I made an effort to leave out things that weren't relevant to the main narrative themes of the book, namely that there were two sides to Steve Jobs: the romantic, poetic, countercultural rebel on one side, and the serious businessperson on the other. — Walter Isaacson

I don't really do themes. I might accidentally, but themes are an emergent phenomena of the writing of the book, of just trying to get a story out there. — Iain Banks

There were some particular themes that I knew I wanted to hit, and when I got deeper into the project I found that it was becoming serious in and on its own. By the end, it's not very funny at all. I think, now, that part of the power of the book is that the jokes are kind of sparkly distractions. — Moshe Kasher

Even revolution, particularly
revolution, which claims to be materialist, is only a limitless metaphysical crusade. But can totality claim
to be unity? That is the question which this book must answer. So far we can only say that the purpose of
this analysis is not to give, for the hundredth time, a description of the revolutionary phenomenon, nor
once more to examine the historic or economic causes of great revolutions. Its purpose is to discover in
certain revolutionary data the logical sequence, the explanations, and the invariable themes of
metaphysical rebellion. — Albert Camus

I thought of the structure as musical. The first piece, for instance, contains the names/subject matter of every person to come in the book. Like a piece of music with themes, etc. — Hilton Als

They were like English teachers who took the fun out of a perfectly good book by breaking it down into themes and sentence structures — Tawni O'Dell

I think that books for young people should have serious and important themes, they shouldn't be trivial. So the books I write, they would be the kind of stories you would write in an adult novel only they just happen to feature a child at the center of them. — John Boyne

You know, a vampire book is not a book to be the vehicle for big themes and stuff, where sometimes when you're dealing with art or the life of Christ or the oeuvre of Shakespeare, you know, it's a little more ambitious. — Christopher Moore

There are some themes, some subjects, too large for adult fiction; they can only be dealt with adequately in a children's book. In adult literary fiction, stories are there on sufferance. Other things are felt to be more important: technique, style, literary knowingness ... The present-day would-be George Eliots take up their stories as if with a pair of tongs. They're embarrassed by them. If they could write novels without stories in them, they would. Sometimes they do. We need stories so much that we're even willing to read bad books to get them, if the good books won't supply them. We all need stories, but children are more frank about it. — Philip Pullman

This is natural: one must read Herodotus's book-and every great book-repeatedly; with each reading it will reveal another layer, previously overlooked themes, images, and meanings. For within every great book there are several others. — Ryszard Kapuscinski

Books about colonization in early America more typically dwell on themes of politics, trade, religion, demography, and warfare. Without discounting the importance of these topics (for each has a place here) and with no intention of offering a monocausal explanation for complex events, this book argues that sometimes mundane decisions about how to feed pigs or whether or not to build a fence also could affect the course of history. — Virginia DeJohn Anderson

In a book you can really talk about ideas and themes and characters in a deeper way than you can even on the screen. — Noah Hawley

I never really approach any project or story thinking of themes first or what a certain character 'represents.' Maybe other writers do, but for me, it just starts with the characters and a certain emotion I want to convey. It usually isn't until I get deeper into a book and look back a bit that I start to see the themes, etc. — Jeff Lemire

I think it's difficult to be honest about certain aspects of my work without acknowledging that I have experienced or felt or questioned certain of the themes in the books. — J.K. Rowling

The fact is that certain themes cannot be celebrated in words, and tyranny is one of them. No one ever wrote a good book in praise of the Inquisition. — George Orwell

I'm certainly a plot and character man. Themes, structure, style - they're valid components of a novel and you can't complete the book without them. But I think what propels me as a reader is plot and character. — David Mitchell

You leave the previous book with idea's and themes - characters even - caught in the fibers of your clothing - and when you open a new book, they are still with you. — Diane Setterfield

"Biblical theology" refers to something more precise than theology that is faithful to the Bible. It might be helpful to draw a contrast: at the risk of oversimplification, systematic theology tends to organize theology topically and with an eye cast on its contemporary relevance, while biblical theology tends to organize the same biblical material so that it is easier to see the distinctive contribution of each biblical book and human author, and to trace the trajectories of themes across the Bible so we see how the books of the Bible hold together. — D. A. Carson

The commonalities include the following, in the order of the Moses myth as in the Bible. For the exact book or tablet in which these themes appear, please consult the epic itself. — D.M. Murdock

In general, the main themes emerge early for each book, even before the storyline and characters, as I research the time and place I want to draw upon. Having said that, every single book so far has offered me surprises en route, and these include motifs that come forward as I am writing. — Guy Gavriel Kay

Since 1870 a commander has seldom if ever been able to survey a whole battlefield from a single spot; and in any case he has had little opportunity - although sometimes a considerable inclination - to try. For the modern commander is much more akin to the managing director of a large conglomerate enterprise than ever he is to the warrior chief of old. He has become the head of a complex military organization, whose many branches he must oversee and on whose cooperation, assistance, and support he depends for his success. As the size and complexity of military forces have increased, the business of war has developed an organizational dimension that can make a mighty contribution to triumph - or to tragedy. Hitherto, the role of this organizational dimension of war in explaining military performance has been strangely neglected. We shall return to it later - indeed, it will form one of the major themes of this book. For now we simply need to note its looming presence. — Eliot A. Cohen

I would wish this book could take the form of a plea for everlasting peace, a plea from one who knows ... Or it would be fine to confirm the odd beliefs about war: it's horrible, but it's a crucible of men and events and, in the end, it makes more of a man out of you.
But, still, none of these notions seems right. Men are killed, dead human beings are heavy and awkward to carry, things smell different in Vietnam, soldiers are afraid and often brave, drill sergeants are boors, some men think the war is proper and just and others don't and most don't care. Is that the stuff for a morality lesson, even for a theme?
Do dreams offer lessons? Do nightmares have themes, do we awaken and analyze them and live our lives and advise others as a result? Can the foot soldier teach anything important about war, merely for having been there? I think not. He can tell war stories. — Tim O'Brien

In my lifetime I was to write only one book, this would be the one. Just as the past Lingers in the present, all my writings after night, including those that deal with biblical, Talmudic, or Hasidic themes, profoundly bear it's stamp, and cannot be understood if one has not read this very first of my works. Why did I write it? Did I write it so as not to go mad or, on the contrary, to go mad in order to understand the nature of the madness, the immense, terrifying madness that had erupted in history and in the conscience of mankind? — Elie Wiesel

I look for two things when I am about to launch into a book. First, there has to be a dramatic arc to the story itself that will carry me, and the reader, from beginning to end. Second, the story has to weave through larger themes that can illuminate the world of the subject. — David Maraniss

This is not a book about race, though the disproportionate number of those who fell that day were black, and certain racial themes are unavoidable. It is not a book that sets out to compare the United States unfavorably with Britain, though it is written by a Briton to whom gun culture is alien. Finally, it is not a book about gun control; it is a book made possible by the absence of gun control. — Gary Younge

Themes that are "too large for adult fiction can only be dealt with adequately in a children's book" - Philip Pullman
(Hunt and Lenz, 2001, p. 122 as cited by Hunt, 2005, p. 204) — Philip Pullman

The aim of great books is ethical: to teach what it means to be a man. Every major form of literary art has taken for its deeper themes what T.S. Eliot called "the permanent things"-the norms of human action. — Russell Kirk

Most of the Bible is a history told by people living in lands occupied by conquering superpowers. It is a book written from the underside of power. It's an oppression narrative. The majority of the Bible was written by a minority people living under the rule and reign of massive, mighty empires, from the Egyptian Empire to the Babylonian Empire to the Persian Empire to the Assyrian Empire to the Roman Empire.
This can make the Bible a very difficult book to understand if you are reading it as a citizen of the the most powerful empire the world has ever seen. Without careful study and reflection, and humility, it may even be possible to miss central themes of the Scriptures. — Rob Bell

I'm not thinking much about overall themes or preoccupations or anything like that. Instead I'm just trusting that, if I'm working hard, various notions and riffs and motifs and so on are very naturally suffusing the stories and the resulting book. — George Saunders

I love outsider stories. And I also like a lot of genre fiction, too. So I wanted to write a literary book that flirted with thriller and fantasy and even science fiction. I wanted the coming-of-age story and the love story to be about "outsiderdom" - one of the themes I am most interested in. — Porochista Khakpour

Our life is a book that writes itself and whose principal themes sometimes escape us. We are like characters in a novel who do not always understand what the author wants of them. — Julien Green

ECCLESIASTES - NOTE ON 1:2 vanity of vanities! All is vanity. This extremely important thematic word (Hb. hebel, lit., "vapor," taken figuratively as "vanity"; see esv footnote) occurs frequently throughout the book; at this early point, however, the Preacher leaves it unexplained. It is only as the book progresses that its meaning becomes clear (for further discussion of its meaning, see Introduction: Key Themes — Anonymous

All morning I struggled with the sensation of stray wisps of one world seeping through the cracks of another. Do you know the feeling when you start reading a new book before the membrane of the last one has had time to close behind you? You leave the previous book with ideas and themes
characters even
caught in the fibers of your clothes, and when you open the new book, they are still with you. — Diane Setterfield

By now you may have concluded that the conversation was neither
about Descartes nor about philosophy, although it certainly was
about mind, brain, and body. My friend suggested it should take
place under the Sign of Descartes, since there was no way of approaching
such themes without evoking the emblematic figure who
shaped the most commonly held account of their relationship. At
this point I realized that, in a curious way, the book would be about
Descartes' Error. You will, of course, want to know what the Error
was, but for the moment I am sworn to secrecy. I promise, though,
that it will be revealed. — Antonio R. Damasio

Because kids are physically smaller, there's an assumption by people who haven't read a kids' book for a long time that their ideas and themes and problems and ambitions must be commensurately smaller and less important. I would venture that sometimes the opposite is true. — Morris Gleitzman

I had Paterson, and The Art Lover, to guide me for The Tales of Horror (written from 1988-'97 and published in 1999), but I still was so lost, back then, as I tried to understand what I was writing and how it went together. There was a draft of that manuscript that had all these brightly colored paper clips on the pages so I could visualize what I saw as the book's themes and threads - that was a long time ago. — Laura Mullen

I have a vision of artists putting into film, drama, literature, music, and paintings great themes and great characters from the Book of Mormon. — Ezra Taft Benson

So one of my core themes in The Myth of Male Power - that history's controlling force was not patriarchy, but survival - is still ignored. Instead, the leading universities' women's studies and "gender studies" courses still emanate from the Marxist and Civil Rights model of oppressor vs. oppressed. We'll see in this book exactly why the dichotomy of oppressor/oppressed is both inaccurate and, more important, undermines love and women's empowerment. In virtually every leading university this leads to a demonizing of men and masculinity that distorts the very essence of traditional masculinity - being socialized to be a hero by being willing to sacrifice oneself in war or in work. The possibility that being socialized to be disposable is not genuine power is, to this day, either considered radical, heretical, or, most frequently, not considered. — Warren Farrell

You can't write a book if you've never read a book. And if you've read five books and you try to write a book, your book will mainly encompass the themes and the context of the five books you've read. Now, the more books you read, the more you can bring to a book when you decide to write one. So the more rap I learned, the more I was able to bring to rap when I decided to rap. But this was all subconscious. — Bun B.

I can hear some of you groaning as you read this section. "Great," you're saying. "I have to put a theme in my book? Themes are only for that 'high literature' stuff that gets taught in universities, not for my nice, entertaining genre fiction. — Libbie Hawker

I have an idea and a first line
and that suggests the rest of it. I have little concept of what I'm going to say, or where it's going. I have some idea of how long it's going to be
but not what will happen or what the themes will be. That's the intrigue of doing it
it's a process of discovery. You get to discover what you're going to say and what it's going to mean. — T.C. Boyle

A book isn't a single, static thing with one unarguable meaning. Each reader who comes to it brings his own special knowledge, habits and attitudes. Each reader reads a different book. Each reader imagines a different story.
A few years ago, for instance, a friend of my mother's sent me a copy of a test on Rite of Passage that she had given her students. The first question read: "True or False? The theme of Rite of Passage is ... " I can't tell you what the presumed themed was, but I can tell you that I didn't recognize it. Beads of sweat leaped out of my forehead. After two more questions, I had to put the test aside. I didn't know the "right" answers. — Alexei Panshin

The author "nails it" in terms of how to deal with a parent's dementia. Rather than browbeating the subject, the author "plays along" and tries to enter the subject's own dementia-challenged "reality." The book contains excellent coping strategies and methodology for dealing with someone suffering with and enduring the pain of dementia or Alzheimer's. It does so with sensitivity, candor and laugh-provoking humor. — Joel Kriofske

I never thought I would write about the Book of Revelation. It's so dense; it's so complex and puzzling. But then I found I was thinking about a number of themes, one of which has to do with politics and religion. — Elaine Pagels

Just as if Manetho's "Aegyptiaca" or the second book of Aristotle's "Poetics" reappeared, the simple fact that such a significant text as "The Gospel of Judas," believed to be lost forever, comes back to light, constitutes in itself an absolutely exceptional event. But in the present case, the impact of such a discovery takes on particular importance, since, through the rehabilitation of Judas, by presenting him as the closest disciple of Christ and as the one he chose to "betray" him in order to fulfill God's will, this text not only seriously challenges one of the most firmly rooted believes in Christian tradition, but also reduces one of the favorite themes of anti-Semitism to nothing — Francois Gaudard

In The Hunger Games, there's something for everyone.
A gripping adventure.
A political commentary.
A love story.
A cautionary tale.
Some call it science fiction, some call it potential reality.
Some say it's for teenagers, some say it's for adults.
The book--and now the film--captures themes and concerns that seem timely.
But its real strength, in the end, is that it's timeless. It speaks to us today, and it will speak--even more powerfully--tomorrow. — Kate Egan

Practicality requires that we stop somewhere in the process, but nothing actually says we can't keep on writing and revising. In fact, most writers continue to develop ideas and themes from one book to the next in what is essentially a lifelong evolution and revision. — Ralph L. Wahlstrom

She chirps the last bit as if that were all to say about a book: It's good or it's bad. I liked it or I didn't. No discussions of the writing, the themes, the nuances, the structure. Just good or bad. — Gillian Flynn

I think every writer has a book that haunts them, and on some level, every book you write is a reaction to it. 'Lolita' is that book for me. Nabokov's love of wordplay, descriptive detail, artfully complex plots, and his themes of obsession and lost love, are inspiring. — Marisha Pessl

Every writer has certain subjects that they write about again and again, and ... most people's books are just variations on certain themes. — Christopher Isherwood

In The Second Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories, Aickman elaborates further his ideas: The good ghost story gives form and symbol to themes from the enormous areas of our own minds which we cannot directly discern, but which totally govern us; and also to the parallel forces of the external universe, about which we know so little, much less than people tell us [8]. He sees that modern man has spent his time avoiding his true nature, the mystery within himself and in the universe that makes him human. — Gary William Crawford