Books Newspapers Quotes & Sayings

The digital revolution has disrupted most traditional media: newspapers, magazines, books, record companies, radio. — Ken Auletta

He had read books, newspapers and magazines. He knew that if you ran away you sometimes met bad people who did bad things to you; but he had also read fairy tales, so he knew that there were kind people out there, side by side with the monsters. — Neil Gaiman

Harriet, to hide her excitement, had turned to the bookshelves in the corner between the windows and the fireplace. The books, untidily arranged, some standing, some piled on their sides, with newspapers and magazines wedged among them, confused her. There were no sets and a great many were paper-backed. She saw friends - Mr. Dickens was present - and nodding acquaintances - Laurence Sterne, for instance, and Theodore Dreiser - but they were among strangers: Henry Miller, Norman Douglas, Saki, Ronald Firbank, strangers all. — Jack Iams

I wasn't one of those kids who grew up wanting to write or who read a particular book and thought: 'I want to do that!' I always told stories and wrote them down, but I never thought writing was a career path, even though, clearly, someone was writing the books and newspapers and magazines. — Gayle Forman

Books have survived television, radio, talking pictures, circulars (early magazines), dailies (early newspapers), Punch and Judy shows, and Shakespeare's plays. They have survived World War II, the Hundred Years' War, the Black Death, and the fall of the Roman Empire. They even survived the Dark Ages, when almost no one could read and each book had to be copied by hand. They aren't going to be killed off by the Internet. — Vicki Myron

In 1970, Americans spent about $6 billion on fast food; in 2000, they spent more than $110 billion. Americans now spend more money on fast food than on higher education, personal computers, computer software, or new cars. They spend more on fast food than on movies, books, magazines, newspapers, videos, and recorded music - combined. — Eric Schlosser

Adult novels are as ephemeral as newspapers. Children's books stay in print for decades. — Sid Fleischman

As anyone who regularly reads newspapers or true-crime books knows, a significant percentage of violent crime, from kidnappings to shooting sprees, is the result of the frustrated sexual impulses and desires of males. By socializing guys like Sasha, Mystery and I were making the world a safer place. — Neil Strauss

The difference between real material poison and intellectual poison is that most material poison is disgusting to the taste, but intellectual poison, which takes the form of cheap newspapers or bad books, can unfortunately sometimes be attractive. — Leo Tolstoy

Read a lot - poems, prose, stories, newspapers, anything. Read books and poems that you think you will like and some that you think might not be for you. You might be surprised. — Michael Morpurgo

Trends working at least marginally towards the implantation of a very narrow range of attitudes, memories and opinions include control of major television networks and newspapers by a small number of similarly motivated powerful corporations and individuals, the disappearance of competitive daily newspapers in many cities, the replacement of substantive debate by sleaze in political campaigns, and episodic erosion of the principle of the separation of powers. It is estimated (by the American media expert Ben Bagditrian) that fewer than two dozen corporations control more than half of the global business in daily newspapers, magazines, television, books and movies! — Carl Sagan

There's this magical place,' he says with mock solemnity, 'called a library--I don't know if you've heard of it, but they have books, and also newspaper, and back issues of newspapers... — Moira Fowley-Doyle

Cement in bold relief, - far underground. I lean my elbows on the table, and the lamp lights brightly the newspapers I am fool enough to re-read, and the absurd books. — Arthur Rimbaud

For life today in America is based on the premise of ever-widening circles of contact and communication. It involves not only family demands, but community demands, national demands, international demands on the good citizen, through social and cultural pressures, through newspapers, magazines, radio programs, political drives, charitable appeals, and so on. My mind reels in it, What a circus act we women perform every day of our lives. It puts the trapeze artist to shame. Look at us. We run a tight rope daily, balancing a pile of books on the head. Baby-carriage, parasol, kitchen chair, still under control. Steady now! — Anne Morrow Lindbergh

I don't read books. I like to read newspapers and magazines, but I've never learnt to enjoy books or novels. — Kid Rock

Listening to music, reading literature, writing, and extended periods of personal introspection provide four prongs of the incitements available to form a conscious and subconscious designation of self. Other potential incentives that contribute to self-identity include religion and cultural events as well as painting, sculpture, dance, films, newspapers, television, Internet surfing, web sites, and online message boards. — Kilroy J. Oldster

I don't read newspapers, and I've said I don't watch the news. I love books, but I don't read much. What I do is I get people to read to me, and I put the stories in my head. — Kate Bush

When I die there may be a paragraph or two in the newspapers. My name will linger in the British Museum Reading Room catalogue for a space at the head of a long list of books for which no one will ever ask. — C.S. Forester

I then completely gave up reading newspapers and watching television, which freed up a considerable amount of time (say one hour or more a day, enough time to read more than a hundred additional books per year, which, after a couple of decades, starts mounting). — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

You are welcome to your intellectual pastimes and books and art and newspapers; welcome, too, to your bars and your whisky that only makes me ill. Here am I in the forest, quite content. — Knut Hamsun

Whether it is television, radio, newspapers, magazines, books or the Internet, a few giant conglomerates are determining what we see, hear and read. — Bernie Sanders

Writing is for stories to be read, books to be published, poems to be recited, plays to be acted, songs to be sung, newspapers to be shared, letters to be mailed, jokes to be told, notes to be passed, recipes to be cooked, messages to be exchanged, memos to be circulated, announcements to be posted, bills to be collected, posters to be displayed and diaries to be concealed. Writing is for ideas, action, reflection, and experience. It is not for having your ignorance exposed, your sensitivity destroyed, or your ability assessed. — Frank Smith

I'm convinced the true history of our time isn't what we read in newspapers or books ... True history is almost invisible. It flows like an underground spring. It takes place in the shadows, and in silence, George. And only a chosen few know what that history is. — Felix J. Palma

Publishers have realized that, unlike the previous time period, American teenagers are both smarter and require more topical material than they had been giving them before that. For one thing, they'll read thicker books. Besides, has anybody looked at the news or read the newspapers recently? — Tamora Pierce

The Eating Guidelines
1. Eat when you are hungry.
2. Eat sitting down in a calm environment. This does not include the car.
3. Eat without distractions. Distractions include radio, television, newspapers, books, intense or anxiety-producing conversations or music.
4. Eat what your body wants.
5. Eat until you are satisfied.
6. Eat (with the intention of being) in full view of others.
7. Eat with enjoyment, gusto, and pleasure. — Geneen Roth

Alexis de Tocqueville took note of this fact in his Democracy in America, published in 1835: "In America," he wrote, "parties do not write books to combat each other's opinions, but pamphlets, which are circulated for a day with incredible rapidity and then expire."25 And he referred to both newspapers and pamphlets when he observed, "the invention of firearms equalized the vassal and the noble on the field of battle; the art of printing opened the same resources to the minds of all classes; the post brought knowledge alike to the door of the cottage and to the gate of the palace." 26 — Neil Postman

Books were everywhere in their large apartment. Histories, biographies, novels, studies on Quebec antiques, poetry. Placed in orderly bookcases. Just about every table had at least one book on it, and oftern several magazines. And the weekend newspapers were scattered on the coffee table in the living room, in front of the fireplace. If a visitor was the observant type, and made it further into the apartment to Gamache's study, he might see the story the books in there told. — Louise Penny

Books and newspapers assume a "common reader" that is, a person who knows the things known by other literate persons in the culture. Obviously, such assumptions are never identical from writer to writer, but they show a remarkable consistency — Edward Hirsch

The stories in books hate the stories in newspapers, David's mother would say. Newspaper stories were like newly caught fish, worthy of attention only for as long as they remained fresh, which was not very long at all. They were like the street urchins hawking the evening editions, all shouty and insistent, while stories- real stories, proper made-up stories-were like stern but helpful librarians in a well-stocked library. Newspaper stories were as insubstantial as smoke, as long-lived as mayflies. They did not take root but were instead like weeds that crawled along the ground, stealing the sunlight from more deserving tales. — John Connolly

There has been a plan in effect since at least 1917 to create, an artificial Extraterrestrial threat to the planet Earth, so as to bring about a one-world, Luciferian Totalitarian socialist government. This Extraterrestrial propaganda has been promoted through movies, through books, in the newspapers; so as to create the idea in the public mind that this phenomena related to Extraterrestrials is real and that the threat is real. — Milton William Cooper

I have proven that being a perfectionist can be profitable and admirable when creating content across the board: in television, books, newspapers, radio, videos. — Martha Stewart

You could probably go all the way back to the first books. I bet people said 'why should you read when you could talk to other people?' The point of reading is that you get to deeply immerse yourself in a person's perspective. Right? Same thing with newspapers or phones or TVs. Soon it will be VR, I bet. — Mark Zuckerberg

It is difficult to give a recipe for successful conversation. But it would certainly include three fundamentals. Assemble good ingredients, mix and spice with your own thinking, and serve attractively.
To assemble the ingredients, read. Read lots of different things. Read newspapers that express a viewpoint contrary to your own; read periodicals that have thoughtful, provocative articles; read books that tell of places and persons of current interest; read fiction, of course, but not to the exclusion of all other things. — Helen Valentine

A man's bookseller should keep his confidence, like his physician. What can become of a world where every man knows what another man reads? Why, sir, books would become like quacks' potions, with every mountebank in the newspapers claiming one volume's superiority over another. — Philip Kerr

I'm in production year round. I work long hours. I have a dog and a wife. There's not a lot of available time for consuming any culture: T.V., movies, books. When I read, it's generally magazines, newspapers and web sites. — Ira Glass

Believing that the soldiers of the apartheid government really did use rubber bullets and carried batons only for decoration is seriously misguided, though understandable considering that newspapers were strictly censored, while history books abounded with Blatant Boer Bias. — Sumayya Lee

Can't you understand? That if you take a law like evolution and you make it a crime to teach it in the public schools, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools? And tomorrow you may make it a crime to read about it. And soon you may ban books and newspapers. And then you may turn Catholic against Protestant, and Protestant against Protestant, and try to foist your own religion upon the mind of man. If you can do one, you can do the other. Because fanaticism and ignorance is forever busy, and needs feeding. And soon, your Honor, with banners flying and with drums beating we'll be marching backward, BACKWARD, through the glorious ages of that Sixteenth Century when bigots burned the man who dared bring enlightenment and intelligence to the human mind
-Henry Drummond, a character in Inherit The Wind — Jerome Lawrence

And so among us this theory was devised: All that exists is reasonable. All that exists develops. And it all develops by means of Culture. And Culture is measured by the circulation of books and newspapers. And we are paid money and are respected because we write books and newspapers, and therefore we are the most useful and the best of men. — Leo Tolstoy

Political indoctrination was geared towards producing activists. The propaganda image of the ideal child was a precocious political orator mouthing agitprop. Communism could not be taught from books, educational thinkers maintained. It had to be instilled through the whole life of the school, which was in turn to be connected to the broader world of politics through extra-curricular activities, such as celebrating Soviet holidays, joining public marches, reading newspapers and organizing school debates and trials. The idea was to initiate the children into the practices, cults and rituals of the Soviet system so that they would grow up to become loyal and active Communists. — Orlando Figes

As a biographer, I try to uncover the adventures and personalities behind each character I research. Once my character and I have reached an understanding, then I begin the detective work reading old books, old letters, old newspapers, and visiting the places where my subject lived. Often I turn up surprises, and of course, I pass them on. — Jean Fritz

...they had succumbed to an impersonal and anonymous mode of consciousness which precluded personal feeling and which was devoid of a secure sense of self-identity. Everything tended to be seen in 'abstract' terms, as theoretical possibilities which could be contemplated and compared but to the concrete realization of which people were unwilling to commit themselves. If they attended to their own attitudes or emotions it was through a thick haze of pseudo-scientific expressions or cliche-ridden phrases which they had picked up from books or newspapers rather than in the direct light of their own inner experience. Living had become a matter of knowing rather than doing; accumulating information and learning things by rote as opposed to taking decisions that bore the stamp of individual passion or conviction. — Patrick L. Gardiner

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

Best of all, Galignani's, the English bookstore and reading room, a favorite gathering place, stood across the street from the hotel. There one could pass long, comfortable hours with a great array of English and even American newspapers. Parisians were as avid readers of newspapers as any people on earth. Some thirty-four daily papers were published in Paris, and many of these, too, were to be found spread across several large tables. The favorite English-language paper was Galignani's own Messenger, with morning and evening editions Monday through Friday. For the newly arrived Americans, after more than a month with no news of any kind, these and the American papers were pure gold. Of the several circulating libraries in Paris, only Galignani's carried books in English, and indispensable was Galignani's New Paris Guide in English. Few Americans went without this thick little leather-bound volume, fully 839 pages of invaluable insights and information, plus maps. — David McCullough

Deprived of their newspapers or a novel, reading-addicts will fall back onto cookery books, on the literature which is wrapped around bottles of patent medicine, on those instructions for keeping the contents crisp which are printed on the outside of boxes of breakfast cereals. On anything. — Aldous Huxley

This process of con-
tinuous alteration was applied not only to newspapers, but
to books, periodicals, pamphlets, posters, leaflets, films,
sound-tracks, cartoons, photographs - to every kind of lit-
erature or documentation which might conceivably hold
any political or ideological significance. Day by day and
almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. — George Orwell

The American mind, unlike the English, is not formed by books, but, as Carl Sandburg once said to me ... by newspapers and the Bible. — Van Wyck Brooks

We'll soon buy books and newspapers straight over the Internet. Uh, sure. — Clifford Stoll

Simply put, I love books, physical books. I own so many--many of which I have not read (yet). I just need to have them . On shelves. In piles. In random conference tote bags. Paper magazines and newspapers too. Some call it clutter. I call it cozy. It's comforting to know I am surrounded by pages of stories. And, thus, by storytellers. — Donna Talarico

The invariable question, asked only half-mockingly of reporters by editors at the Post (and then up the hierarchical line of editors) was 'What have you done for me today?' Yesterday was for the history books, not newspapers.
Carl Bernstein, Bob Woodward — Carl Bernstein

The fact that we don't read more books in America can be traced squarely to the fact that we have newspapers that are about a hundred times as big as the newspapers anywhere else. — Bennett Cerf

I would tell young journalists to be brave and go against the tide. When everyone else is relying on the internet, you should not; when nobody's walking, you should walk; when few people are reading profound books, you should read ... rather than seeking a plusher life you should pursue some hardship. Eat simple food. When everyone's going for quick results, pursue things of lasting value. Don't follow the crowd; go in the opposite direction. If others are fast, be slow.
Jin Yongquan — Judy Polumbaum

There is no literature anymore, there are just single books that arrive in bookstores, just as letters, newspapers, advertising pamphlets arrive in mailboxes. — Tonu Onnepalu

Somebody who only reads newspapers and at best books of contemporary authors looks to me like an extremely near-sighted person who scorns eyeglasses. He is completely dependent on the prejudices and fashions of his times, since he never gets to see or hear anything else. — Albert Einstein

Most people don't have the money to spend on advertising to create awareness among readers, nor do they have the contacts at newspapers or magazines to get their books reviewed. — Sara Paretsky

Spend 80 percent of your time on books and 20 percent on articles and newspapers. And by books, I don't mean just any book. I mean hardcovers. A paperback is made to be read. A hardcover is made to be studied. There's a huge difference. — Tim Sanders

I'd been involved in journalism for a long time - my dad's a journalist, he's written many books, and when I was twelve years old I wrote reports on local football matches for the newspapers. — Colum McCann

What I enjoy about reviewing and writing for newspapers and periodicals is simply the chance to talk about all kinds of books and lots of them. — Michael Dirda

We're bombarded with liberal propaganda 24/7, from the early morning shows, Hollywood movies, documentaries and sitcoms, all major newspapers, fashion magazines, the sports pages, public schools, college professors and administrators, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Unless liberals specifically seek out Ann Coulter books and columns, which I highly recommend, or tune into Fox News or conservative talk radio, they have no idea what conservatives are thinking. — Ann Coulter

That bookshops will one day disappear altogether and be replaced by mail order, that eventually books themselves would be finally and fully buried by that awful foe, so much cheaper and easier to carry: newspapers. — Matthew Pearl

They were growing up in the golden age of comic books. Comic strips, or "funnies," had begun appearing in the pages of newspapers in the 1890s. But comic books date only to the 1930s. They'd been more or less invented by Maxwell Charles Gaines (everyone called him Charlie), a former elementary school principal who was working as a salesman for the Eastern Color Printing Company, in Waterbury, Connecticut, when he got the idea that the pages of funnies that appeared in the Sunday papers could be printed cheaply, stapled together, and sold as magazines, or "comic books." In 1933, Gaines started selling the first comic book on newsstands; it was called Funnies on Parade. — Jill Lepore

What will become of us in twenty years' time?" we asked ourselves one evening. Thirty years have passed now. Raymond was guillotined: "Anarchist gangster" (so the newspapers). I came across Jean again in Brussels, a worker and a trade-union organizer, still a fighter for liberty after ten years in jail. Luce has died of tuberculosis, naturally. For my part, I have undergone a little over ten years of various forms of captivity, agitated in seven countries, and written twenty books. I own nothing. On several occasions a Press with a vast circulation has hurled filth at me because I spoke the truth. Behind us lies a victorious revolution gone astray, several abortive attempts at revolution, and massacres in so great a number as to inspire a certain dizziness. And to think that it is not over yet. — Victor Serge

[T]his free and easy old-bachelor sort of life is quite full of fun and jollity. Pease and myself room together; and everything like order and neatness is banished from our presence as a nuisance
old letters and old boots and shoes, duds clean and duds dirty, books and newspapers, tooth-brushes, shoe-brushes, and clothes-brushes, all heaped together on chairs, settees, etc., in dusty and "most admired confusion." Now, what is there imaginable in clean, tidy private life equal to this? — Rutherford B. Hayes

When reading a book, you are sold what some writer thought. When reading a newspaper, you are sold what someone did, and, what some advertiser made. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

An extraterrestrial being, newly arrived on Earth - scrutinizing what we mainly present to our children in television, radio, movies, newspapers, magazines, the comics, and many books - might easily conclude that we are intent on teaching them murder, rape, cruelty, superstition, credulity, and consumerism. We keep at it, and through constant repetition many of them finally get it. — Carl Sagan

There are a few critics overseas, and occasionally a critic will write an astute analysis of the movie. There is value in reading critics that actually have something intelligent to say, but the journalistic community lives in a world of sound bites and literary commerce: selling newspapers, selling books, and they do that simply by trashing things. They don't criticize or analyze them. They simply trash them for the sake of a headline, or to shock people to get them to buy whatever it is they're selling. — George Lucas

I've been drawing authors and politicians for newspapers for many years. I try to read up on the person; in the case of authors, read one of their books. I watch interviews via YouTube and collect pictures via the Internet. — Siegfried Woldhek

Dig a trench through a landfill and you will see layers of phone books like geographical strata or layers of cake ... During a recent landfill dig in Phoenix, I found newspapers dating from 1952 that looked so fresh you might read one over breakfast. — William Rathje

As a four-year-old, my mother told me I was climbing the fence, jumping off and calling myself an 'eppyplane' ... I bought books on aeroplanes, I followed everything in the newspapers about aeroplanes. Amy Johnson flew to Australia in 1930 - why couldn't I do something like that? — Nancy Bird Walton

No newspapers, magazines, audiobooks, or nonmusic radio. Music is permitted at all times. No news websites whatsoever (cnn, drudgereport, msn,10 etc.). No television at all, except for one hour of pleasure viewing each evening. No reading books, except for this book and one hour of fiction11 pleasure reading prior to bed. No web surfing at the desk unless it is necessary to complete a work task for that day. Necessary means necessary, not nice to have. — Timothy Ferriss

[My characters are] conglomerations of past and present stages of civilization, bits from books and newspapers, scraps of humanity, rags and tatters of fine clothing, patched together as is the human soul — August Strindberg

Many people find their calling very early in their lives. These are the kind of people we read about in school books and newspapers. Then there are some who don't have a clue of what they want to do in their lives; I am belong to the latter category. — Dhanush

Some of our newspapers and magazines are more concerned with the welfare of their advertisers than they are with the dissemination of news and the discussion of matters of lasting importance ... Radio, television, motion pictures, popular books - all contribute ... to ... the stifling of dissent on all but the most banal levels ... a renunciation of the most basic and precious of democratic principles. — J. Paul Getty

He looked around at the others ... They were all staring at their computers, or reading books or newspapers. Not one of them has noticed the weather. Maybe that's how the world was now ... Everyone was so wrapped up in his or her own little world that no one ever really saw anything anymore. — David Baldacci

I already read everything. I read poems and plays and novels and newspapers and comic books and magazines. I read tins in supermarkets and leaflets that come through the door, unsolicited mail. None of it lasts long and it doesn't give me answers. Reading too fast is not soothing. — Janice Galloway

The men who are not interested in philosophy need it most urgently: they are most helplessly in its power. The men who are not interested in philosophy absorb its principles from the cultural atmosphere around them-from schools, colleges, books, magazines, newspapers, movies, television, etc. Who sets the tone of a culture? A small handful of men: the philosophers. Others follow their lead, either by conviction or by default. — Ayn Rand

The attention for bad literature is symptomatic: they pretends its the most normal thing in the world to fill an entire newspaper page with talk about a bad book, and good books are silenced to death. This mechanism is exactly the same formula as used in the Eurovision Songfestival: to present monoculture, and the proverbial hatred for that monoculture is only ritualistic, intended to give the reader the impression that the newspaper is on their side. Its the formula of entertainment: present things the reader can feel superior to. — Martijn Benders

People sometimes think that I bring home all these old books because I'm addicted, that I'm no better than a hoarder with a houseful of crumbling newspapers. — Michael Dirda

Reading was a big thing, yes. Books were a big thing. But the things that stick out were the newspapers. — James Earl Jones

You reach a certain age when reality grabs you by the scruff of the neck and shouts in your face:"Hey, look, this is what life is." And you have to open your eyes and look at it, listen to it, smell it: people who don't like you, things you don't want to do, things that hurt, things that scare you, questions without answers, feelings you don't understand, feelings you don't want but have no control over.
Reality.
When you gradually come to realise that all that stuff in books, films, television, magazines, newspapers, comics - it's all rubbish. It's got nothing to do with anything. It's all made up. It doesn't happen like that. It's not real. It means nothing. Reality is what you see when you look out of the window of a bus: dour faces, sad and temporary lives, millions of cars, metal, bricks, glass, rain, cruel laughter, ugliness, dirt, bad teeth, crippled pigeons, little kids in pushchairs who've already forgotten how to smile ... — Kevin Brooks

What is to prevent a daily newspaper from being made the greatest organ of social life? Books have had their day-the theaters have had their day-the temple of religion has had its day. A newspaper can be made to take the lead of all these in the great heaven , and save more from Hell, than all the churches and chapels in New York-besides making money at the same time" "Shakespeare is the great genius of the drama, Scott of the novel, Milton and Byron of the poem, and I mean to be the genius of the newspaper press." James Gordon Bennett, editor ot he New York Herald in 1841 — Daniel Stashower

Still, it strikes me that, taken together, they do make an argument, and it is this: the rise of American democracy is bound up with the history of reading and writing, which is one of the reasons the study of American history is inseparable from the study of American literature. In the early United States, literacy rates rose and the price of books and magazines and newspapers fell during the same decades that suffrage was being extended. With everything from constitutions and ballots to almanacs and novels, American wrote and read their way into a political culture inked and stamped and pressed in print. — Jill Lepore

I've always found old bookstores exciting. Whenever I'm in a city that's new to me, I immedicately look through the telephone directory for BOOKS, USED AND RARE. Book dealers send me their catalogs, and I read them as carefully as I would a letter from an old friend, never knowing what treasure I might find. Sometimes the catalogs contain printed material other than books, such as old photographs, newspapers, pamphlets, postcards, and letters. — Walter Dean Myers

It was 1966 by the time I started taking pictures seriously and books, newspapers and magazines of the time were full of great pictures that helped to inspire me. — Fay Godwin

At 1.30 she left the hospital to do some shopping. Both men were sound asleep. Gentle afternoon sunlight flooded the room, and I felt as though I might drift off at any moment perching on my stool. Yellow and white chrysanthemums in a vase on the table by the window reminded people it was autumn. In the air floated the sweet smell of boiled fish left over from lunch. The nurses continued to clip-clop up and down the hall, talking to each other in clear, penetrating voices. They would peep into the room now and then and flash me a smile when they saw that both patients were sleeping. I wished I had something to read, but there were no books or magazines or newspapers in the room, just a calendar on the wall. — Haruki Murakami

The sad truth is, S - , most people are not writers. This has nothing to do with literacy - or intelligence, or general culture. There are people who can correct the grammar, spelling, diction, and style of a college English paper with the best of them - who are still not writers. Indeed, most of what gets published in books, magazines, and newspapers is not written by real writers - which is one reason why so much of it is so bad. — Samuel R. Delany

I would like [the working man] to give me back books and newspapers and theories. And I would like to give him back, in return, his old insouciance, and rich, original spontaneity and fullness of life. — D.H. Lawrence

Quite a few people still listen to vinyl records, use film cameras to take photographs, and look up phone numbers in the printed Yellow Pages. But the old technologies lose their economic and cultural force. They become progress's dead ends. It's the new technologies that govern production and consumption, that guide people's behavior and shape their perceptions. That's why the future of knowledge and culture no longer lies in books or newspapers or TV shows or radio programs or records or CDs. It lies in digital files shot through our universal medium at the speed of light. — Nicholas Carr

Some people think that evolutionary psychology claims to have discovered that human nature is selfish and wicked. But they are flattering the researchers and anyone who would claim to have discovered the opposite. No one needs a scientist to measure whether humans are prone to knavery. The question has been answered in the history books, the newspapers, the ethnographic record, and the letters to Ann Landers. But people treat it like an open question, as if someday science might discover that it's all a bad dream and we will wake up to find that it is human nature to love one another. — Steven Pinker

Even if he was happier in Asia than he'd been in Latin America, the wanderlust still worked on my father's insides like a disease. One of the most recurrent memories of my childhood is of him sitting in his armchair in the evenings, poring over atlases the way other fathers read newspapers or books. — Scott Anderson

This is a life you do not understand. Yes, your home is in the city, and you have furnished it with vanities, with pictures and books; but you have a wife and a servant and a hundred expenses. Asleep or awake you must keep pace with the world and are never at peace. I have peace. You are welcome to your intellectual pastimes and books and art and newspapers; welcome, too, to your bars and your whisky that only makes me ill. Here am I in the forest, quite content. If you ask me intellectual questions and try to trip me up, then I will reply, for example, that God is the origin of all things and that truly men are mere specks and atoms in the universe. You are no wiser than I. But if you should go so far as to ask me what is eternity, then I know quite as much in this matter, too, and reply thus: Eternity is merely unborn time, nothing but unborn time. — Knut Hamsun

I grew up in a very British family who had been transplanted to Canada, and my grandmother's house was filled with English books. I was a very early reader, so I was really brought up being surrounded with piles of British books and British newspapers, British magazines. I developed a really great love of England. — Alan Bradley