Good About Us Pages Quotes & Sayings

I thought about the people I had met who were in pain but were pretending that everything was fine. And I thought, this is what books can do for us: they can acknowledge our experience and take the lid off our isolation and make us feel less alone. To me, books have always been a great source of comfort
not because they allow for escapism (though that's certainly one of their benefits) but because they offer recognition. Face to face with other people, we might give in to the impulse to pretend that everything is "fine"; but when we open the cover of a book
I'm talking mostly about novels here
there is no shame and no need to pretend. Good fiction has never lied to me. When I immerse myself in a book I feel recognized and therefore relieved. I turn the pages and think, yes, I have felt that too
that loneliness and joy and anxiety and confusion and fear. When I read, what once seemed meaningless gains meaning, and I am not alone. — Julie Schumacher

I bite my lip as I begin reading: She needs some sun! Her eyes are hard to see - they're too dark; her nose is thin; no cheek bones!; I think her lips are uneven; her chin is really square, and my favorite: is that a mole or a zit? Awesome. Twenty pages of these cryptic remarks sure do make a girl feel good about herself. The last page changes my sour mood completely. On it there is a sketch of my face - no, sketch is the wrong word. It's too common a word. This is more than a sketch. This is a portrait of my face. The image of the girl staring back at me is so stunning, that I actually gasp. The handwriting on the bottom of the page, which is small and elegant, holds only two words: You're perfect. — Danielle Bannister

Our idea of happiness, some of it, is very tied to the cult of celebrity: there is this golden, wonderful life that I want, and if I dress like that, I'm on my way there. — Amanda Harlech

She read absorbedly books found in boarding-house parlours, in hotels, in such public libraries as the times afforded. She was alone for hours a day, daily. Frequently her father, fearful of loneliness for her, brought her an armful of books and she had an orgy, dipping and swooping about among them in a sort of gourmand's ecstasy of indecision. In this way, at fifteen, she knew the writings of Byron, Jane Austen, Dickens, Charlotte Bronte, Felicia Hemans. Not to speak of Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth, Bertha M. Clay, and that good fairy of the scullery, the Fireside Companion, in whose pages factory girls and dukes were brought together as inevitably as steak and onions. These last were, of course, the result of Selina's mode of living, and were loaned to her by kind-hearted landladies, chambermaids, and waitresses all the way from California to New York. — Edna Ferber

So give yourself that chance to put together the 80, 90 pages of a draft and then read it very in a nice little ceremony, where you're comfortable, and you read it and make good notes on it, what you liked, what touched you, what moved you, what's a possible way, and then you go about on a rewrite. — Francis Ford Coppola

I think kids want the same thing from a book that adults want - a fast-paced story, characters worth caring about, humor, surprises, and mystery. A good book always keeps you asking questions, and makes you keep turning pages so you can find out the answers. — Rick Riordan

Ah, and then her beautiful face ... actually, the level and angle that she was holding the umbrella, the whole time as she passed within Suresh's view, only allowed him to see the bottom of her chin at most. Still, with a body as beautiful as hers, Suresh was quite certain that her face would be nothing less than positively stunning! — Andrew James Pritchard

So many good pages; so many good quotes. But please remember this: one single quote does not, cannot, and will not apply to all life experiences. — Charles F. Glassman

All that makes earlier times seem simpler is our ignorance of their complexities. — Thomas Sowell

Yet I'm making a book and I'm going to care immensely about what words get bound in the pages, and I want the object to look good. I won't believe in it and it won't be real to me until there's a finished book I can hold. — Jonathan Lethem

I wrote in my journal about how good I felt when I was not living under Ed's control. Then, when I really felt like giving up, I read these pages and realized that I was striving for in recovery was a real possibility. I thought about these experiences and used them as encouragement to keep moving forward. Even one minute of freedom was proof that I was getting better. At first, these times were few and far between. Now, these moments are connected; they are my life — Jenni Schaefer

It didn't take Celeste long to realize that this was going to be the sort of book club where the book was secondary to the proceedings. She felt a mild disappointment. She'd been looking forward to talking about the book. She'd even, embarrassingly, prepared for book club, like a good little lawyer, marking up a few pages with Post-it notes and writing a few pithy comments in the margins. — Liane Moriarty

How many pages have I produced? I don't care. Are they any good? I don't even think about it. All that matters is I've put in my time and hit it with all I've got. All that counts is that, for this day, for this session, I have overcome Resistance. — Steven Pressfield

You could use a moth like that as a symbol in a novel, but it was trite, wasn't it? The old moth-to-the-flame image had been used and used again. It was the stuff of amateur poetry. And she, having so little experience crafting a story, would be the most in danger of falling into trite approaches. If she wrote a novel, it probably would be about her father. And the male Luna moth would haunt its pages. Everyone would recognize the work as that of a first novelist. "She wrote about herself through the lens of her father."
The really good novelists, Laura thought, put their fathers, and maybe their mothers too, deeper into the stories. Which, she suddenly thought, might redeem Melville just the littlest bit. — L.L. Barkat

What I love about 'The Walking Dead' is it's a human story, which is to me what makes the comic book so good, but once you jump from the pages of the book to the screen, the gore and the zombies have to look great. — Scott Ian

I try to write 1,000 words a day - about three pages. When I reach 1,000 words I feel good. Less than that: a failure. More than that: tired. — Tracy Chevalier

I personally like the idea of newspapers. It's a good format. You can read it in whatever order you want. You can glance at it. There is something about a single screen and scrolling through pages that just doesn't have the same appeal. — Matt Groening

Begin to see yourself as a soul with a body rather than a body with a soul. — Wayne W. Dyer

The good thing about books is that they remain themselves. What happens in their pages stays there. Harriet does not like the idea of the story bleeding through into real life. She trusts a story, and doesn't trust real life. But what makes her trust a story is the knowledge that it will stay where it is, that she can visit it but that there is no chance it will visit her. — Helen Humphreys

Journeys become very good metaphors. They always have the character put into circumstances that reveal him. If I had based my characters in New York and had them just sitting and thinking about life, it would be like what contemporary U.S. fiction is about. That is very heavy, literally, for me. It doesn't become mainstream enough because the pages don't turn themselves. — Karan Bajaj

In addition to what has been already said of Catherine Morland's personal and mental endowments, when about to be launched into all the difficulties and dangers of a six weeks' residence in Bath, it may be stated, for the reader's more certain information, lest the following pages should otherwise fail of giving any idea of what her character is meant to be; that her heart was affectionate, her disposition cheerful and open, without conceit or affectation of any kind - her manners just removed from the awkwardness and shyness of a girl; her person pleasing, and, when in good looks, pretty - and her mind about as ignorant and uninformed as the female mind at seventeen usually is. — Jane Austen

You're radiant, Charlotte. They said that about you on our wedding day, and now again that you're pregnant, but you've always been radiant. And the first time I saw that beauty under my hands, I felt how I feel when opening a brand new book. Do you know how that is? Where you only need to read the first few pages and you're already thinking, 'This might be a good one. One of the best ones. One of the rare finds that stays with you forever — Emma Scott

In most books, the I, or first person, is omitted; in this it will be retained; that, in respect to egotism, is the main difference. We commonly do not remember that it is, after all, always the first person that is speaking. I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well. Unfortunately, I am confined to this theme by the narrowness of my experience. Moreover, I, on my side, require of every writer, first or last, a simple and sincere account of his own life, and not merely what he has heard of other men's lives; some such account as he would send to his kindred from a distant land; for if he has lived sincerely, it must have been in a distant land to me. Perhaps these pages are more particularly addressed to poor students. As for the rest of my readers, they will accept such portions as apply to them. I trust that none will stretch the seams in putting on the coat, for it may do good service to him whom it fits. — Henry David Thoreau

The experience of watching Leonard get better was like reading certain difficult books. It was plowing through late James, or the pages about agrarian reform in Anna Karinina, until you suddenly got to a good part again, which kept on getting better and better until you were almost grateful for the previous dull stretch because it increased your eventual pleasure. All of a sudden, Leonard was his old self again, extroverted, energetic, charismatic, and spontaneous. — Jeffrey Eugenides

Money is a living entity, and it responds to energy exactly the same way you do. It is drawn to those who welcome it, those who respect it. Wouldn't you rather be with people who respect you and who don't want you to be something you're not? Your money feels the same way. — Suze Orman

On the other side of that big-ass mirror, a video camera was watching us. In about ten seconds, it was going to start spitting static at itself, and everything it saw was going to break up into a fuzzy, gray-white wash, rolling up and down, that wouldn't be admissible as evidence on Judge Judy. Those missing frames would last a little less than a quarter of a minute, consolidate themselves back
into a semblance of reality, and then I would theoretically go walking right back out of here.
Between now and that moment, there stretched an infinite ocean of potential
time. Time enough to walk around the world. Time enough to fall in love, get
married on a white beach under purple stars, write a book of poems about
truest passion, have a few good and bloody screaming matches, get divorced in a court of autumn elves and gypsy moths, then set the ink-stained, tear-streaked pages of your text ablaze. — Clinton Boomer

The linkage of passion to dominance/subordination is the prototype of the heterosexual image of male-female relationships, one which justifies pornography. Women are supposed to love being brutalized. This is also the prototypical justification of all relationships of oppression - that the subordinate one who is "different" enjoys the inferior position. — Audre Lorde

Take that absurd fool Elipas Levi who was supposed to be the Grand High Whatnot in Victorian times. Did you ever read his book, The Doctrine and Ritual of Magic? In his introduction he professes that he is going to tell you all about the game and that he's written a really practical book, by the aid of which anybody who likes can raise the devil, and perform all sorts of monkey tricks. He drools on for hundreds of pages about fiery swords and tetragrams and the terrible aqua poffana, but does he tell you anything? Not a blessed thing. Once it comes to a showdown he hedges like the crook he was and tells you that such mysteries are far too terrible and dangerous to be entrusted to the profane. Mysterious balderdash my friend. I'm going to have a good strong nightcap and go to bed. — Dennis Wheatley

Bill by bill, and letter by letter, his scientific imagination was slowly choked by administrative work. — Siddhartha Mukherjee

Often when you get a really good script, and you receive the new pages, you see that the entire thing has been dumbed down. Films in the '30s and '40s, that were huge blockbusters, were very sophisticated in their language, and the ideas they brought. There were no questions about whether the audience would get it or not. — Connie Nielsen