Quotes & Sayings About Books Over Movies

In a sense, comic books are frozen movies. If you look at a comic book, you are generally seeing the storyboard for a film. The great advantage of comic books, over the years, has been that, if they are frozen movies, they are not limited by budget. They are only limited by imagination. — Michael Uslan

If you give the government the right to determine the consumption of the human body, to determine whether one should smoke or not smoke, drink or not drink, there is no good reply you can give to people who say, More important than the body is the mind and the soul, and man hurts himself much more by reading bad books, by listening to bad music and looking at bad movies. Therefore it is the duty of the government to prevent people from committing those faults. And, as you know, for many hundreds of years governments and authorities velieved that it was their duty. — Ludwig Von Mises

I have spoken, and I was understood. It's not like I'm a tragic person who wasn't understood. All those books are in print, all those movies are still out there, the audience gets younger. So I don't have that "I've got to do one thing before I die." I did it. — John Waters

Just as movies, radio, and television evolved into new forms over time, the ebook will also become something more than just a way to read books. It will become its own specific and unique way of creating and sharing experience. — David Gerrold

I love the movies, and when I go to see a movie that's been made from one of my books, I know that it isn't going to be exactly like my novel because a lot of other people have interpreted it. But I also know it has an idea that I'll like because that idea occurred to me, and I spent a year, or a year and a half of my life working on it. — Stephen King

I wanted to escape Small Town U.S.A. To dismiss the boundaries, to explore. My life experience came from watching movies, TV, and reading books and magazines. When your culture comes from watching TV everyday, you're bombarded with images of things that seem cool, places that seem interesting, people who have jobs and careers and opportunities. — Trent Reznor

It is from the bystanders (who are in the vast majority) that we receive the propaganda that life is not worth living, that life is drudgery, that the ambitions of youth must he laid aside for a life which is but a painful wait for death. These are the ones who squeeze what excitement they can from life out of the imaginations and experiences of others through books and movies. These are the insignificant and forgotten men who preach conformity because it is all they know. These are the men who dream at night of what could have been, but who wake at dawn to take their places at the now-familiar rut and to merely exist through another day. For them, the romance of life is long dead and they are forced to go through the years on a treadmill, cursing their existence, yet afraid to die because of the unknown which faces them after death. They lacked the only true courage: the kind which enables men to face the unknown regardless of the consequences. — Hunter S. Thompson

I lived through those books, songs, television shows, and movies - the way the characters talked, looked, acted. I thought that could translate over into reality, that I could make their world my world. I wanted so badly to run away from my life. But you can't bury yourself in other people's pages and scenes. You aren't David Copperfield or Tom Sawyer. Those love songs on the radio might speak to you, but they're not about you or the person you pine for. Life is not a John Hughes film. — Jason Diamond

I cry in movies a lot, and over books. — Hayley Mills

Ever since I was a little child, I refused to see movies of books that I loved. Because you already know what Heidi looks like and she doesn't look like Shirley Temple. — Fran Lebowitz

It's amazing how, over the course of one's life, you collect so much music you don't like, so many movies you don't watch and so many books you have no intention of reading. If only regret stopped with the trivial things such as these. — Ellie Rose McKee

The way I create music is maybe like a painting, to compose in a more visual way. Basically it's the music that I want to hear- that's my inspiration and bottom line. I just try to get ideas from books, movies, paintings. — Ikue Mori

I love books, by the way, more than movies. Movies tell you what to think. A good book lets you choose a few thoughts for yourself. — Karen Marie Moning

It's ironic: In movies, the most successful films of all time have been sci-fi or fantasy. By far. But a lot of people won't even read science fiction books. — David S.Goyer

At the Foxhole Court "family" was a fantasy invented to make books and Hollywood movies more interesting. — Nora Sakavic

I think romance is maligned in large part because at first glance, love seems so pedestrian. It's all around us. It's in books and songs and movies and on billboards, so how could it really hold literary value? But what people tend to forget is that the search for love - for the simple idea that there is someone out there who will see us for who we are and accept us isn't trite. It's a huge part of our lives. And it's an enormous part of our dreams.
There are so many fabulous romances out there - there's something for everyone. I really believe that. And I believe that most of the people who look down their noses at the genre haven't ever read a romance novel. I think that if they did, they'd be really surprised by how good great romance can be. — Sarah MacLean

Personally, I like to think my brother is having a college experience like they do in the movies. I don't mean the big fraternity party kind of movie. More like the movie where the guy meets a smart girl who wears a lot of sweaters and drinks cocoa. They talk about books and issues and kiss in the rain. I think something like that would be very good for him, especially if the girl were unconventionally beautiful. They are the best kind of girls, I think. I personally find 'super models' strange. I don't know why this is. — Stephen Chbosky

In books and movies, the stories always end when the two people finally have their romantic kiss. The happily-ever-after part is just assumed — Gayle Forman

Outside there a lot of powerful stuff, starting from mind movies up to movies like drama, real life, horror, mysteries and many other. Music which makes your day interesting, quotes which change your thought, books which provoke and many other stuff... (So now you know what's everything about, Good Luck with the other Stuff!) — Deyth Banger

I wanted all my life to give my world into other arts - books, plays, movies - but I didn't want to sell out. — Philippe Petit

In books and movies, people were either whisked away to a magical land in the clothes they were standing up in, or they glossed over the packing part entirely. Simon now felt he had been robbed of critical information by the media. Should he be putting the kitchen knives in his bag? Should he bring the toaster and rig it up as a weapon? — Cassandra Clare

I was supposed to go to drama school and then go to New York and do theatre. But I grew up on all those fabulous movies and had read all the bold Hollywood books, and I thought I just had to take a look. — Delta Burke

It was an hour and a half plane ride, so I slept. I try to sleep because that's probably the only time I get to get my real sleep. When I can't sleep I read books or watch movies. — Keren Ann

Holiness begins in our minds and works out to our actions. This being true, what we allow to enter our minds is critically important.
The television programs we watch, the movies we may attend, the books and magazines we read, the music we listen to, and the conversations we have all affect our minds. — Jerry Bridges

The good thing of TV movies/books... TV series... audiobooks is that you can choose the genre and you have plenty of choice. — Deyth Banger

If you truly love film, I think the healthiest thing to do is not read books on the subject. I prefer the glossy film magazines with their big color photos and gossip columns, or the National Enquirer. Such vulgarity is healthy and safe. — Werner Herzog

One of the reasons I wanted to write this column, I think, is because I assumed that the cultural highlight of my month would arrive in book form, and that's true, for probably eleven months of the year. Books are, let's face it, better than everything else ... . Even if you love movies and music as much as you do books, it's still, in any given four week period, way, way more likely you'll find a great book that you haven't read than a great movie you haven't seen, or a great album you haven't heard: the assiduous consumer will eventually exhaust movies and music ... the feeling everyone has with literature: that we can't get through the good novels published in the last six months, let alone those published since publishing began. — Nick Hornby

I like the trail that the Internet created. For example, I was watching one of those Douglas Sirk movies, and I noticed that Rock Hudson towered over everyone, and I typed in "How tall was" and I saw "How tall was Jesus," and I'm like, "Sure," and half an hour later you're somewhere you didn't expect to be. It doesn't work that same way in books, does it? Even if you have an encyclopedia, the trail isn't that crazy. I like that aspect of it. — David Sedaris

In books or movies, people were either whisked away to a magical land in the clothes they were standing up in, or they glossed over the packing part entirely. Simon now felt he had been robbed of critical information by the media. Should he be putting the kitchen knives in his bag? Should he bring the toaster and rig it up as a weapon? Simon did neither of those things. Instead, he went with the safe option: clean underwear and hilarious T-shirts. Shadowhunters had to love hilarious T-shirts, right? Everyone loved hilarious T-shirts. — Cassandra Clare

But if love were convenient there wouldn't be millions of songs and movies and books obsessing over it, or therapists and doctors consoling all the people falling in and out of it. — Katie Kacvinsky

We made a big fuss over the possibility of microbes on Mars. If orangutans were Martians we'd cherish them, we'd be so amazed at how they're like us but not like us, they'd be invited to tea and cigars at the White House. But they're apes, sad in zoos, funny in movies, useful in advertisements and in fantasy books, I'm almost ashamed to say, but at least the Discworld's Librarian has done his bit for the species and caused more than a few bob to flow their way. — Anonymous

From an early age I loved horror movies. I read books about horror, cops, firemen and military. Over the course of the years I started to see that there's a reality to this. The first movie I was really conscious of seeing was THE EXORCIST and I don't know if any of you have seen that but it scared the sh*t out of me. It really frightened me. — Ralph Sarchie

All these teachers and [screenwriting] books mean you see movies that have been worked over by more committees wielding more rules, that all originality and authorship is lost. That's why you're seeing superstars like Brad Pitt in THE FIGHT CLUB and Tom Cruise in MAGNOLIA. They're desperately searching for people writing and directing off-formula movies. — Paul Schrader

[M]y mother read a horror novel every night. She had read every one in the library. When birthdays and Christmas would come, I would consider buying her a new one, the latest Dean R. Koontz or Stephen King or whatever, but I couldn't. I didn't want to encourage her. I couldn't touch my father's cigarettes, couldn't look at the Pall Mall cartons in the pantry. I was the sort of child who couldn't even watch commercials for horror movies - the ad for Magic, the movie where marionette kills people. sent me into a six-month nightmare frenzy. So I couldn't look at her books, would turn them over so their covers wouldn't show, the raised lettering and splotches of blood - especially the V.C. Andrews oeuvre, those turgid pictures of those terrible kids, standing so still, all lit in blue. — Dave Eggers

I know it's highly unusual for people to get this excited over books. But if you're a reader, you get me . I don't need movies. I don't need TV. But books I can't live without books. To
me, a book is better than any movie. All I need is a good book, my imagination, and I am set free. I'm in literature heaven. And thank God, this may be the only thing that keeps me sane while we're here. — Belle Aurora

I think a lot of people have an idea of virtual reality from science fiction, books and movies that have been out over the last couple of decades. — Brendan Iribe

People come from all over the world to see this little place they've seen in movies and read about in history books: Soho. — Marc Almond

In literature, the reader standing at the threshold of the end of a book harbors no illusion that the end has not come - he or she can see where it finishes, the abyss the other side of the last chunk of text. Which means that the writer is never in danger of ending too soon - or if he does the reader has been so forewarned. This is the advantage a book has over a film - it is the brain that marshals forward the text and controls the precise moment of conclusion of the book, as the density of the pages thins. A film can end without you if you've fallen asleep or, because you can't wait any longer to use the bathroom, slipped out of the darkness of the theatre salon, and missed it. There will never be a form more perfect than the book, which always moves at your pace, that sits waiting for you exactly where you've left it and never goes on without you. — John M. Keller

A lot of talent, a lot of the currency that movies used to have, has spilled over into TV. People talk about TV the way they used to talk about movies and, as much as I hate to say it, the way they used to talk about books. — Matthew Specktor

American movies, English books - remember how they all end?" Gamini asked that night. "The American or the Englishman gets on a plane and leaves. That's it. The camera leaves with him. He looks out of the window at Mombasa or Vietnam or Jakarta, someplace now he can look at through the clouds. The tired hero. A couple of words to the girl beside him. He's going home. So the war, to all purposes, is over. That's enough reality for the West. It's probably the history of the last two hundred years of Western political writing. Go home. Write a book. Hit the circuit. — Michael Ondaatje

The problem with movies and books is they make evil look glamorous, exciting, when it's no such thing. It's boring and it's depressing and it's stupid. Criminals are all after cheap thrills and easy money, and when they get them, all they want is more of the same, over and over. They're shallow, empty, boring people who couldn't give you five minutes of interesting conversation if you had the piss-poor luck to be at a party full of them. Maybe some can be monkey-clever, some of the time, but they aren't hardly ever smart. — Dean Koontz

Growing up devouring horror comics and novels, and being inspired to become a writer because of horror novels, movies, and comic books, I always knew I was going to write a horror novel. — Colson Whitehead

When couples start to get stale, instead of looking to books or movies or other people for their support or romance, they should be coming to each other, ramping things up, making things fun. — Shelly Crane

Books were better than movies, — Eric Hobbs

Radio did not kill books and television did not kill radio or movies - what television did kill was cinema newsreel. TV does it much better because it can deliver it instantly. Who wants last week's news? — Douglas Adams

Movies are not scripts - movies are films; they're not books, they're not the theatre. — Nicolas Roeg

For all the talk about the merging of film and video game, and for all its inevitability, perhaps the secret of true convergence lies not in an external reality , but in an internal truth: What kids seek from video games is what we all seek from our own distractions--be they movies, radio, comic books, literature, or art: an escape from the mundane to the sublime, where our imaginations make of us heroes, lovers, warriors, and gods. — Devin C. Griffiths

It was a weird thing for me, because I don't read vampire books. I don't watch vampire movies. I'm not into the horror genre. I'm a wuss, I'm a scaredy cat. — Stephenie Meyer

But aliens? There are TV shows about them. There are books and movies and more. The media indoctrinates you to them until people are so desensitized they don't flinch at seeing aliens on TV or having their children buy plastic versions for a quarter. — Thomm Quackenbush

The guys in my band are great-we watch movies, we eat pizza, take walks, read books. Everybody has a really great sense of humor. And my boyfriend comes and visits me on the road. — Lisa Loeb

Oddly enough, it's - most of the books written about the subject aren't very good because they just focus in on the more hateful movies that they did very early, early on when they were trying to, you know, get Germany into the war, whether it be anti-Semitic movies like "Jud Suss," or "The Eternal Jew," or movies made against the Polish to help, you know, create sympathy for them to invade Poland - you know, there'd be movies where there would be some German girl living in Poland who's raped by the Polish or something. — Quentin Tarantino

I am no expert on tax; I'm a film producer. I read books and think about which ones would make good movies, and then I work with directors in order to make them. — Alison Owen

I've done a lot of movies based on real people, real situations, non-fiction books, magazine articles, life rights. — Scott Rudin

In that six months, so much happened that death seemed, primarily, inconvenient. The trial period was extended. I seem to keep extending it. There are many things to do. There are books to write and naps to take. There are movies to see and scrambled eggs to eat. Life is essentially trivial. You either decide you will take the trite business of life and give yourself the option of doing something really cool, or you decide you will opt for the Grand Epic of eating disorders and dedicate your life to being seriously trivial. — Marya Hornbacher

What he'd never understood about men in his position, in all the books he'd read and movies he'd seen about them, was clearer to him now: you couldn't keep expecting wholehearted love without, at some point, requiting it. There was no credit to be earned for simply being good. — Jonathan Franzen

I wonder if games are maybe a terminus for ideas. Things can be books or movies or operas or plays, but once they're a game, that's where they should end. Things shouldn't start as games and be taken to movies. — Rich Sommer

I enjoy about 1 out of 100 movies, it's about the same proportion to books published that I care to read. — Jim Harrison

Sally was on the first floor reading a book, one that she normally wouldn't read, and she felt quite guilty. Twilight. She knew the series was ridiculous but everyone was going crazy over the books and the movies. She'd finally given in and decided that it wouldn't hurt to just read a little bit. — Anjela Renee

In books and movies, all the loose ends are tired, things are resolved, mysteries are solved, they catch the killer, the boy gets the girl, a sick baby is miraculously healed. In reality it doesn't always work that way. The killer gets away, the girl is in love with another boy, things just get buried under new dramas and don't get resolved. Life is far more complicated than the life depicted in a book or a movie. — Cindy Vine

Well, I know," she said. "You'll pretend you were men instead of babies, and you'll be played in the movies by Frank Sinatra and John Wayne or some of those other glamorous, war-loving, dirty old men. And war will look just wonderful, so we'll have a lot more of them. And they'll be fought by babies like the babies upstairs."
So then I understood. It was war that made her so angry. She didn't want her babies or anybody else's babies killed in wars. And she thought wars were partly encouraged by books and movies.
So I held up my right hand and I made her a promise: "Mary," I said, "I don't think this book of mine will ever be finished. I must have written five thousand pages by now, and thrown them all away. If I ever do finish it, though, I give you my word of honor: there won't be a part for Frank Sinatra or John Wayne.
"I tell you what," I said, "I'll call it 'The Children's Crusade.'"
She was my friend after that. — Kurt Vonnegut

The way I look at it, movies are a different medium for storytelling than books. — Josh Hutcherson

But what I've also really liked about it is that it not only has Marvel set about ... if they just were slavishly trying to bring the comic books to life, literally, I don't the movies would work, because it's different to see something on screen in three dimensions with actors, and they kind of, I believe, are constantly trying to find a way to absolutely respect the source material and at the same time, transform it into something that works and that you believe on screen. — Clark Gregg

One of the nice things about books as opposed to television and movies to some extent is it's not a passive entertainment. People really do get involved, and they do create, and they do have their own visions of what different characters look like and what should happen. It's great - it means their brains are working. — James Patterson

If every book was judged by its cover, very few would be read; education would be limited, and fewer movies would be made. — Ellen J. Barrier

Experiencing connecting with someone in a way so meaningful, it shared just how connected all we beings were through a variety of sources. Music. Books. Art. Movies. The tragedy was, most didn't recognize it and there were some of us with hate in their hearts about things they didn't understand who would refuse to acknowledge it. I — Kristen Ashley

But age is a state of mind that runs the gamut from fashion to catchphrases to books and music and movies. — Suzanne Munshower

I was a semiotics major at Brown, and there's this idea that stories are better, books are better, and movies are better if they cocked you off your axis and you were completely disoriented and you'd really have to rethink everything. Nobody has that experience, actually. — Ira Glass

Dolls, perhaps more than any other object, demonstrate just how thin the line between love and fear, comfort and horror, can be. They are objects of love and sources of reassurance for children, coveted prizes for collectors, sources of terror and horror in numerous movies, television shows, books, and stories. — Ellen Datlow

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

In the sense that Watchmen references movies, comic books, pop culture in general. It knows it's a movie. I really do like movies that ride that fine line, the razor's edge between parody and supporting the fake movie part of the movie. — Zack Snyder

I was seven," she answered. "In my room, under the bed, I heard something like fingernails dragging across the floor. I got up the courage, hung my head over the side, and looked under."

"You're never supposed to do that," Mila gasped. "Seriously, don't you pay attention to the horror movies? — Lani Brown

Most of the books, music and movies ever released are not available for sale, anywhere in the world. In the brief time that P2P nets have flourished, the ad-hoc masses of the Internet have managed to put just about everything online. What's more, they've done it far cheaper than any other archiving/revival effort ever. — Cory Doctorow

I want him to be my Edward -- taking care of me, always. Watching over me, day or night, unsleeping. Keeping me safe, by his side. Caring for me with a passion so pure it can't be corrupted by time or distance or seduction. I know Edward is only fiction. But that doesn't have to mean love like his can only be found in books and movies or rooted in the misty world of dreams. — Ellen Hopkins

They might watch American movies, wear American clothes, even read American books but Bush and the Iraq War have made actual American people social lepers; she only has to open her mouth in some places to feel a wave of loathing directed at her. Katie is weary of pointing out that at least half her countrymen detest their President even more than Europe does, but it's no good. — Amanda Craig

A couple of days after the last time I saw him, I got a typically well-written postcard. He said that after he kissed me goodbye at LAX he was driving away and turned on the radio. Elvis was singing "It's Now or Never." In my personal religion, a faith cobbled together out of pop songs and books and movies, there is nothing closer to a sign from God than Elvis Presley telling you "tomorrow will be too late" at precisely the moment you drop off a girl you're not sure you want to drop off. Sitting on the stairs to my apartment, I read that card and wept. It said he heard the song and thought about running after me. But he didn't. And just as well
those mixed-faith marriages hardly ever work. An Elvis song coming out of the radio wasn't a sign from God to him, it was just another one of those corny pop tunes he could live without. — Sarah Vowell

Happy endings are popular. Do you not watch movies?"
"Yeah, but that's movies," Darcy groaned. "Books are above all that! — Scott Westerfeld