Guess The Book Quotes & Sayings

The question 'Why poetry?' isn't asking what makes poetry unique among art forms; poetry may indeed share its origins with other forms of privileged utterance. A somewhat more interesting question would be: "What is the nature of experience, and especially the experience of using language, that calls poetic utterance into existence? What is there about experience that's unutterable?" You can't generalize very usefully about poetry; you can't reduce its nature down to a kernel that underlies all its various incarnations. I guess my internal conversation suggests that if you can't successfully answer the question of "Why poetry?," can't reduce it in the way I think you can't, then maybe that's the strongest evidence that poetry's doing its job; it's creating an essential need and then satisfying it. — Richard Ford

We're talking about the novel, right? But maybe we're not. We're talking about ourselves. And I guess that's what can start to happen when you talk about a book. — Meg Wolitzer

Ha! Don't you know that writers are control freaks? We make our characters dance to our own weird tunes. That's half the fun."

She angled his head ever so slowly to the right. "What's the other half?" Just as the position became uncomfortable, she reversed the motion.

"Rewriting," he said. "You know how you think of a brilliant response to an insult six hours later when it's utterly useless? A writer has a time machine. I can go back to the moment the insult was hurled and parry it with my slow but rapier-sharp wit."

"Relax. I've got you," she said, rotating his head gently to the right. "I guess us nonwriters think you just sit down at your computer and the book comes out the way we read it."

"We foster that myth. It makes us seem more like creative geniuses and less like mere craftsmen. — Nancy Herkness

Keats's odes are among my favorite poems ever. As are Neruda's. So yes, I think my poems are odes, though I really just see those titles as ways of more or less orienting the poem. I've never thought about this until now, but I guess you could say that one effect of all the titles, their pervasiveness in the book, might be to once again, as so many other things do, put into question the meaning of the word "for," which I suppose is one of the great human questions: what is all this for? Why, and for whom, are we doing whatever we are doing? — Matthew Zapruder

Objectifying your own novel while writing it never really helps. Instead, I guess while you're writing you need to think: This is the novel I want to write. And when you're done you need to think: This is what the novel I wanted to write feels like and reads like and looks like. Other people might call it sweeping or small, but it's the book you chose. — Meg Wolitzer

I love when I meet generous poets, and generous meaning nice people, who give to the poetry community, who do interviews, read other people's books, and talk about them, spread the ... love, I guess. That means a lot to me. — Victoria Chang

Look, if you're going to insist that I've taught you something, I guess I should give you a final exam." "Really?" "One question." "Sure." "Go look at an electron microscope photograph of an atom, okay? Don't just glance at it. It is very important that you examine it very closely. Think about what it means." "Okay." "And then answer this question. Does it make your heart flutter?" "Does it make my heart flutter?" "Yes or no. It's a yes or no question. No equations allowed." "All right, I'll let you know." "Don't be dense. I don't need to know. You need to know. This exam is self-graded. And it's not the answer that counts, it's what you do with the information." We locked eyes. His younger face flashed in my mind. The energetic, smiling bongo drum player I had seen pictured in the front of his book, The Feynman Lectures on Physics. A question popped from my lips. — Anonymous

Back in the day, Barry Crump not only had these stories that talked about that kind of rustic personality, but also, he spoke volumes, I guess, of the relationships in the stories that he told in these books. — Rhys Darby

The short answer to our question is that we are not entering a post-American world. It is not possible for this (or any) book to see "the future," because there are so many possible futures dependent on unpredictable events and they play a larger role the further out one tries to look. Thus it is important to specify a time horizon. For example, if the "American century" began in 1941, will the United States still have primacy in power resources and play the central role in the global balance of power among states in 2041? My guess is "yes." In that sense, the American century is not over, but because of transnational and non-state forces, it is definitely changing in important ways that are described below. But first, we must look at the charge that the United States is in decline. — Joseph S. Nye Jr.

Not long after the book came out I found myself being driven to a meeting
by a professor of electrical engineering in the graduate school I of MIT. He said that after reading the book he realized that his graduate students were using on him, and had used for the ten years and more he had been teaching there, all the evasive strategies I described in the book - mumble, guess-and-look, take a wild guess and see what happens, get the teacher to answer his own questions, etc.
But as I later realized, these are the games that all humans play when others
are sitting in judgment on them. — John Holt

Sometimes I think the cover of a book as a door to another world ... but other times I think of it as an escape hatch from this one. I guess it's the same thing. — Tom McNeal

Hey, guess who's gay? The Green Lantern from the comic books. Today Mitt Romney knocked him down and shaved his head. — David Letterman

Glimpses is dead-on about the high and tight nineties even as it reaches out for the sweet hereafter of the sixties. It longs for something better, and finds it, I guess, as much as anything is ever found anymore. It's a mean, sweet, wry, and disturbing book, in equal portions. — Frederick Barthelme

I guess my most prized pop culture possession is a signed first edition of the book 'Fight Club' by Chuck Palahniuk. — Jen Lancaster

I still don't like the word agnostic. It's too fancy. I'm simply not a believer. But, as simple as this notion is, it confuses some people. Someone wrote a Wikipedia entry about me, identifying me as an atheist because I'd said in a book I wrote that I wasn't a believer. I guess in a world uncomfortable with uncertainty, an unbeliever must be an atheist, and possibly an infidel. This gets us back to that most pressing of human questions: why do people worry so much about other people's holding beliefs other than their own? — Alan Alda

You can be a member of all of the romance writers associations, take part in all of the networking available, or win the latest romance award ... but guess what? None of that makes a difference if you don't WRITE something people want to READ. The greatest editor in the world won't make your book a best seller if it isn't something people care about. So forget all of the fluff that clouds your purpose ... writing!! — Kathryn Le Veque

Okay, it's like this. You wake up, you watch TV, and you get in the car and you listen to the radio. You go to your little job or your little school, but you're not going to hear about that on the 6:00 news, since guess what. Nothing is really happening. You read the paper, or if you're into that sort of thing you read a book, which is just the same as watching only even more boring. You watch TV all night, or maybe you go out so you can watch a movie, and maybe you'll get a phone call so you can tell your friends what you've been watching. And you know, it's got so bad that I've started to notice, the people on TV? Inside the TV? Half the time they're watching TV. Or if you've got some romance in a movie? What to they do but go to a movie? All those people, Marlin," he invited the interviewer in with a nod. "What are they watching?"
After an awkward silence, Marlin filled in, "You tell us, Kevin."
"People like me. — Lionel Shriver

Scott Fetzer's letter of engagement with the banking firm provided it a $2.5 million fee upon sale, even if it had nothing to do with finding the buyer. I guess the lead banker felt he should do something for his payment, so he graciously offered us a copy of the book on Scott Fetzer that his firm had prepared. With his customary tact, Charlie responded: I'll pay $2.5 million not to read it. — Warren Buffett

The whole purpose of writing a book is to be understood - if other people write about you, they try to guess why you did things, or they hear things from other people. — Berry Gordy

There are details about your life I really do not want to know about. You told me he taught you how to fight with weapons, but I guess I never ... "
"Put two and two together?" Katie grinned. "That's not like you, detective Jules."
"I know. I guess I overlooked the gory details. Blood and guts have never been my forte. I like action. Give me Mission Impossible and CSI, but leave out the gruesome details."
They stopped upon reaching the entrance to the barn. "Roller skating disco lover turns FBI crime scene investigator. I think there's a book waiting to be written for you. — Mary Abshire

God's viewpoint is sometimes different from ours - so different that we could not even guess at it unless He had given us a Book which tells us such things ... In the Bible I learn that God values us not for our strenght or our brains but simply because He has made us. — Corrie Ten Boom

Okay. Now my skin is really prickling. I've read all the Harry Potter books, all five of them. I don't remember any half-blood prince.
"What's this?" Trying to sound casual, I point at the ad, "What's Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince?"
"That's the latest book," Garth the other trainee, says. "It came out ages ago."
I can't help gasping. "There's a sixth Harry Potter?"
"There's a seventh out soon!" Diana steps forward eagerly. "And guess what happens at the end of book six-"
"Shh!" exclaims Nicole, the other nurse. "Don't tell her! — Sophie Kinsella

It's somewhat of a contradiction, .. I guess the quieter the voice, the more necessary it is to push it. It's not going to leap out at you and scream. I also can't control how a book is marketed. To say the book marketing is aggressive, fine, I'm happy with that. Push the book. That doesn't mean that my personality or writing style changes. — David Bergen

Lila backed away toward the curtain. "Do you just... stand here until I need you?"
The woman smiled and dug a volume from a pocket. "I have a book."
"Let me guess, a religious text?"
"Actually," said Ister, perching on the low couch, "it's about pirates."
Lila smiled. — V.E Schwab

It's not just you ... I guess it's been a slow week for news." I laughed. "We're now the hottest story in town."
He smirked at me. "Oh, good, and I was worried that this would be awkward."
Stephens, S.C. (2012-08-16). Effortless (Thoughtless Book 2) (p. 282). Gallery Books. Kindle Edition. — S.C. Stephens

You know that frustrating feeling of losing the page in your book? You didn't want to go too far ahead and spoil the surprise, and you didn't want to go too far back, so you kind of stagnated and started from a page that didn't seem quite right, but you read it a few times just to convince yourself... That was how I felt about my life. A little lost, I guess you could say. — Rebecca Raisin

If you want converts, surely one normal person is worth all the half-wits in the world!" "May I tell you the truth Lieutenant Rahms? The truth, Sir, is that God's viewpoint is sometimes different from ours. So different that we could not even guess at it unless He had given us a Book which tells us such things. In the scripture I learn that God values us not for our strength or our brains, but simply because He has made us. Who knows, in His eyes, a half-wit may be worth more than a watchmaker. Or a Lieutenant. — Corrie Ten Boom

Same first name as a president and an obscure comic book character. Half-Jewish. Excellent grammar. Easily nauseated. Likes Reese's and Oreos (i.e. not an idiot). Divorced parents. Big brother to a fetus. Dad lives in Savannah. Dad's an English teacher. Mom's an epidemiologist.
The problem is, I'm beginning to realize I hardly know anything about anyone. I mean I generally know who's a virgin. But I don't have a clue whether most people's parents are divorced, or what their parents do for a living. I mean, Nick's parents are doctors. But I don't know what Leah's mom does, and I don't even know what the deal is with her dad, because Leah never talks about him. I have no idea why Abby's dad and brother still live in DC. And these are my best friends. I've always thought of myself as nosy, but I guess I'm just nosy about stupid stuff.
It's actually really terrible, now that I think about it. — Becky Albertalli

I am afraid I am one of those people who continues to read in the hope of sometime discovering in a book a single - and singular - piece of wisdom so penetrating, so soul stirring, so utterly applicable to my own life as to make all the bad books I have read seem well worth the countless hours spent on them. My guess is that this wisdom, if it ever arrives, will do so in the form of a generalization. — Joseph Epstein

I find the lack of bees in this book disturbing. But I guess the gay unicorns were okay. — Sophie Peele

Well, cast your mind back to the books he wrote. What is the one theme that keeps recurring from book to book? It is that the woman doesn't fall in love with the man. The man may or may not love the woman; but the woman never loves the man. What do you think that theme reflects? My guess, my highly informed guess, is that it reflects his life experience. Women didn't fall for him - not women in their right senses. They inspected him, maybe they even tried him our. Then they moved on. — J.M. Coetzee

To me, the raveled sleeve of care is never more painlessly knitted up than in an evening alone in a chair snug yet copious, with a good light and an easily held little volume sloppily printed and bound in inexpensive paper. I do not ask much of it - which is just as well, for that is all I get. It does not matter if I guess the killer, and if I happen to discover, along around page 208, that I have read the work before, I attribute the fact not to the less than arresting powers of the author, but to my own lazy memory. I like best to have one book in my hand, and a stack of others on the floor beside me, so as to know the supply of poppy and mandragora will not run out before the small hours. In all reverence I say Heaven bless the Whodunit, the soothing balm on the wound, the cooling hand on the brow, the opiate of the people.
Book review Of Ellery Queen: The New York Murders, from Esquire, January 1959 — Dorothy Parker

I know you think I didn't know," he says, flipping through the pages and opening it to the middle of the book where there is a collage of all the X-Men, "but sometimes, you forget to shut the blinds."
( ... )
"Zo, I dont think I could ever hate you. You hurt me, but whenever I saw you grab one of those books and duck under here, I knew you were probably hurting too, and I'd let it go."
"Just like that?"
"I guess I make it sound easier than it was. But yeah, I'd let it go because I knew it wasn't the girl at school under this blanket. It was my friend. — Cassie Mae

I guess you could say that the Bible is a book that doesn't try to tell you what to think. Instead, it tries to teach you how to think. It stretches your thinking; it challenges you to think bigger and harder than you ever have. — Brian D. McLaren

I can only describe it as: the whole experience was imprinted on my body. And when I started to write it, it just came from such a very, In The Body of the Worldvery physical ... it just came from my body. I don't know how to explain it better than that. I guess my head was transmitting it. It was a very, very physical experience writing this book. — Eve Ensler

I always resist seeing my own personal motivation in my work, but I guess it must be there on some level. And I do feel very much that my life follows the kinds of things I talk about in my books. I've always thought of myself as an insanely lucky person, so perhaps the success of my first two books led me to want to examine this phenomenon on some unconscious level. — Malcolm Gladwell

Tegus, I'm leaving this book behind for you, so you will know the why of it all, and maybe you'll forgive me, or maybe you'll think me false and reprehensible. You'd be justified. I couldn't stand the thought of your reading all my words unless I knew for certain that I'd never have to face you again, so please don't look for me. If you read the book in its entirety, you'll know for truth who is Lady Saren. And I guess you'll also know that I'm a silly girl who writes down every word you said to me. — Shannon Hale

So one or both of them think I have this mark?" She closed the book with a thump. "That would be my guess, though I see a squid when I look at that picture, so who can say? — N.E. Conneely

I quit law in 1988 to start writing, and it took me 17 years from that point to get a book contract. I guess you can say I was on the slow train. — Ben Fountain

I never really set out to research any of these stories. I try to lead an interesting life though. I guess the closest I came to research was when I applied to work at the state mental institution in Austin, TX. I wanted to work the night shift like Ken Kesey did when he wrote One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. I thought that might inspire me to write a book that great. — Arthur Bradford

I guess it really didn't even dawn on me that you could be a rock critic as a job until I was maybe almost out of college. I knew criticism existed. I read Rolling Stone and Spin. Siskel and Ebert were on television. But I had absolutely no idea how to get that kind of life. And moreover, it didn't interest me that much. I just sort of read normal books growing up. I wasn't that media-conscious. I felt like the one thing I was able to do was to listen to a record and decide whether I liked it. — Chuck Klosterman

I've also never written about home in this way before. I guess a lot of it is subconscious and I am intuitively making these decisions when I'm writing. I wanted to communicate in the book that on one hand, being at home - both in our homes and in DeLisle - gives us a sense of belonging and family and safety, but at the same time, being in those places makes us less safe. — Jesmyn Ward

I thought that deserved a book and feel like the door needs to be open so people can say, "Ok, here we go, let's deal with this" because we're not dealing with it. I'm waiting for somebody to write another book but it hasn't happened yet, though I guess mine's only been out for a year and a half. — Brad Warner

She turned her attention back to the book, and reread the sentence one more time, but this time she simply skipped the words she did not know. As often happens when one reads in this way, Violet's brain made a little humming noise as she encountered each word - or each part of a word - she did not know. So inside her head, the opening sentence of chapter twelve read as follows: "'Hypnosis is an hmmm yet hmmm method hmmm and should not be hmmmed by hmmms,'" and although she could not tell exactly what it meant, she could guess. "It could mean," she guessed to herself, "that hypnosis is a difficult method and should not be learned by amateurs," and the interesting thing is that she was not too far off. — Lemony Snicket

I don't know,' Del said. 'I read this book. I guess you could say we were looking for a better life.'
'Did you find it?' the Fish Stick Girl asked.
'No, it was just a goddamn book. I ain't read one since. — Donald Ray Pollock

A. I want my readers to remember a book of mine after they've turned the last page, partly so they will want to read more from me, but also because I want them to feel that reading it was well worth their time. I guess I want a book that I write to be more than entertainment that is enjoyable for the moment but forgettable as the months go by. I don't make a conscious effort to craft quotable prose when I write, but I do endeavor to pose questions and suggest insights that speak across the pages into a reader's life. For me, that translates into a good reason for having read the book. I always remember a book more fully and longer if I've been so emotionally tugged that I find myself highlighting phrases I don't want to forget. And I usually can't wait for that author's next book! Khaled Hosseini's books are always like that for me. Q. — Susan Meissner

You know how my first few minutes in a new Minecraft world are usually spent screaming, running for my life, and hiding from scary monsters - sometimes even GIANT ones! Well, not this time! Instead of a giant monster, I was plopped down in front of a giant MANSION! (Yay, Minecraft: Peaceful Paradise floating book!) And the best part was that it wasn't all dark and creepy like the Haunted House! It was an awesome modern mansion made of white stone and glass. Even better, it was built on a hillside overlooking an ocean! Actually, it reminded me of Tony Stark's house in one of my favorite movies, Iron Man. I guess you could say it's a MARVEL-ous mansion! (Heh, heh.) Anyway, — Minecrafty Family

Okay? Now you know all this stuff about me, and I still don't know anything about you. I don't even know if you're still there. Are you? And if you are, can I trust you with the rest? I still want to know - are you a good person? Maybe that's not fair of me to ask, since I haven't even figured out whether I'm a good person or not. I guess you can be the judge. Here's the deal. If you're okay with me so far, then keep reading. But if you've gotten this far and you think I'm the lowest of the low and I don't deserve to have my own book, then maybe you should stop right now. Because it only gets worse from here. (Or better, depending on how you look at it.) Signed, your friend (?), RK — James Patterson

Rebecca, always Rebecca. Wherever I walked in Manderley, wherever I sat, even in my thoughts and in my dreams, I met Rebecca. I knew her figure now, the long slim legs, the small and narrow feet. Her shoulders, broader than mine, the capable clever hands. Hands that could steer a boat, could hold a horse. Hands that arranged flowers, made the models of ships, and wrote 'Max from Rebecca' on the fly-leaf of a book. I knew her face too, small and oval, the clear white skin, the cloud of dark hair. I knew the scent she wore, I could guess her laughter and her smile. If I heard it, even among a thousand others, I should recognize her voice. Rebecca, always Rebecca. I should never be rid of Rebecca. — Daphne Du Maurier

The plot is so tired that even this reviewer, who in infancy was let drop by a nurse with the result that she has ever since been mystified by amateur coin tricks, was able to guess the identity of the murderer from the middle of the book. — Dorothy Parker

In lots of books I read, the writer seems to go haywire every time he reaches a high point. He'll start leaving out punctuation and running his words together and babble about stars flashing and sinking into a deep dreamless sea. And you can't figure out whether the hero's laying his girl or a cornerstone. I guess that kind of crap is supposed to be pretty deep stuff - a lot of the book reviewers eat it up, I notice. But the way I see it is, the writer is just too goddam lazy to do his job. And I'm not lazy, whatever else I am. I'll tell you everything. — Jim Thompson

Language is a theme in the whole book, no? I mean it ends with the title poem about words are all we have. I guess midrash makes sense. How does it change in the course of the sequence? Well, God is into No and into Stasis/Nouns. Adam and Eve, in order to be in this world (and get this world going) must choose verbs. Which is to gain sex but also to choose death and all else that goes with change. To choose becoming over being. — Gregory Orr

Personally I don't think there's any real intrinsic difference between comic books, movies, theatre, novels. I know there's sure to be some differences of some sorts. I've worked on novels, films, and video games, and in an adaptation, I guess one of the issues is that I have to be in love with the thing I'm adapting before I do it. So that can cause a problem. You can be too scared of it. You could be too reverential. But at the same time you want to try to capture this thing that you're obsessed by. You're fixated for a reason. What's the reason? You try to get ahold of it. — Alex Garland

For me, there are two different things that make Sherlock Sherlock. One is, you know, within the books: obviously he's a genius with an attention to detail, his ravenous hunger for all aspects of knowledge that might feed into his work. But the major thing that makes him Sherlock is his relationship with Watson - their friendship. For me, that, I guess, is the biggest side, the more interesting side than the genius. — Jonny Lee Miller

Interesting that the book used the word define.
That's just what I've been thinking about.
This business of defining who you are
and what you are
and where you are headed-
it's all harder than I thought it would be.
I thought that this stuff
just ...
happened,
I thought that life
just happened,
and I guess I thought
I'd drift right along,
like a leaf on a river,
flowing with the current
to wherever the river wanted to go. — Kelly Bingham

I was in Nashville, Tennessee last year. After the show I went to a Waffle House. I'm not proud of it, I was hungry. And I'm alone, I'm eating and I'm reading a book, right? Waitress walks over to me: 'Hey, whatcha readin' for?' Isn't that the weirdest fuckin' question you've ever heard? Not what am I reading, but what am I reading FOR? Well, goddamnit, ya stumped me! Why do I read? Well ... hmmm ... I dunno ... I guess I read for a lot of reasons and the main one is so I don't end up being a fuckin' waffle waitress. — Bill Hicks

One of the nice things about moving from acting to writing is that your work can be in the public eye without having to be in the public eye yourself. I guess that's not completely true. If you're lucky - and I have been - there are book tours and lectures. I don't have stage fright, and I enjoy meeting people, so that's easy and enjoyable, but it's not a constant, and it's not celebrity. — Debra Dean

In a place like Israel, they're very concerned with Iran, so there's a lot of interest. So they want to see what this Iranian from France has to say in her comics. I guess that's good. My the books are coming out in other countries. And each time, they discover something different to be interested in. — Marjane Satrapi

I'm not writing a book of Western history,' I tell him. 'I've written enough history books to know this isn't one. I'm writing about something else. A marriage, I guess. Deadwood was just a blank space in the marriage. Why waste time on it?'
Rodman is surprised. So am I, actually - I have never formulated precisely what it is I have been doing, but the minute I say it I know I have said it right. What interests me in all these papers is not Susan Burling Ward, the novelist and illustrator, and not Oliver Ward the engineer, and not the West they spend their lives in. What really interests me is how two such unlike particles clung together, and under what strains, rolling downhill into their future until they reached the angle of repose where I knew them. That's where the interest is. That's where the meaning will be if I find any. — Wallace Stegner

Harvard was also a little bit of a villain in my first book, 'The Dante Club.' I guess there might be a way to make Harvard more of a sympathetic presence, but it's such a powerful institution that it more naturally lends itself toward not necessarily a negative but an obstructionist element in a story. — Matthew Pearl

I guess none of the sides of my hyphen are particularly subtle cultures. But perhaps there is also a sense that these characters are all parentless - every character in this book is feral in some way - without any guidance in their upbringing. They find no choice but to seek refuge in extreme behaviors. — Porochista Khakpour

Hey, gorgeous ... Guess where I woke up today?"
I smiled as Kellan's sultry voice met my ear.
"I have no idea." And I really didn't, I'd lost track of his exact location ages ago. Kellan chuckled , and I glanced over at Denny; his eyes were back on the road. It gave me a weird sort of guilt to be back in a situation that was eerily similar to last year. Different, though, since Denny and I weren't doing anything inappropriate.
"Kansas ... Know what's in Kansas?"
I leaned back in my seat and shook my head. "No."
"Nothing," he dryly said. "Miles and miles of nothing."
Stephens, S.C. (2012-08-16). Effortless (Thoughtless Book 2) (pp. 299-300). Gallery Books. Kindle Edition. — S.C. Stephens

It wasn't conscious, but I guess that one book is the reaction to the other. The first is so imprisoned in a male point-of-view, and the second is a point-of-view that can go anywhere it wants. — Jeffrey Eugenides

Addie believes in books. They are more interesting than real life and easier to understand. Sometimes you can guess the ending. Things usually work out, and if they don't, you can always tell yourself it was only a book. — Kim Church

I happened to write a book about the stuff I've been involved in over the years. It just so happened that my profession is that I was a cop in the New York City Police Department. I guess people thought it was pretty interesting to have these two things meshed together. My life is pretty boring, I don't know why they're doing this. It's fun. — Ralph Sarchie

I never had a plan, except to write. I love what I do, and have from the beginning. Loving what you do makes it a lot easier to work, every day, to face the tough spots and heel in for the long haul. Nothing against plans; they work for some people. But for me, if I'd been planning, worrying about numbers, trying to micro-manage my career, I wouldn't have focused on the writing. If you don't write, you're not read. If you're not read, you don't sell. So that's my Master Plan, I guess. Write the books, let the agent agent, the editor edit, the publisher publish. — Nora Roberts

Whatever." I shrug. "It's good, I guess, but if given the choice, I'd still pick, like, a Kristen Ashley book any day of the week. — Julie Johnson

Falco wagged her journal in front of her. "This is yours, I presume." A slow smile spread across his face. "Let's find out exactly what you've been doing, shall we?"
"Give it back!" Cass reached for the journal, but Falco easily dodged her. He opened the leather-bound book to a random page and cleared his throat. Clutching a hand to his chest, he pretended to read aloud in a high-pitched voice. "Oh, how I love the way his fingers explore my soft flesh. The way his eyes see into my very soul."
This time, Cass managed to snatch the book out of his hands. "That is not what it says."
"I guess that means you won't be keeping me warm tonight? — Fiona Paul

Book publishers needed only to listen to Jeff Bezos himself to have their fears stoked. Amazon's founder repeatedly suggested he had little reverence for the old "gatekeepers" of the media, whose business models were forged during the analogue age and whose function it was to review content and then subjectively decide what the public got to consume. This was to be a new age of creative surplus, where it was easy for anyone to create something, find an audience, and allow the market to determine the proper economic reward. "Even well meaning gatekeepers slow innovation," Bezos wrote in his 2011 letter to shareholders. "When a platform is self-service, even the improbable ideas can get tried, because there's no expert gatekeeper ready to say 'that will never work!' And guess what - many of those improbable ideas do work, and society is the beneficiary of that diversity. — Brad Stone

I could have asked my father lots of questions. I could have. But there was something in his face and eyes and in his crooked smile that prevented me from asking. I guess I didn't believe he wanted me to know who he was. So I just collected clues. Watching my father read that book was another clue in my collection. Some day all the clues would come together. And I would solve the mystery of my father. — Benjamin Alire Saenz

One morning while drinking coffee with Amos, Daniel Haws looked up suddenly, as if feeling the boy's eyes on him, and said:
"Tryin' to burn holes starin' like that?"
"Guess I was just resting my eyes on you so as not to look at your wallpaper," Amos gave a sour apology.
Daniel closed the book he was reading, a volume of Rhodes's history of the United States, and took a careful look at the kitchen wallpaper.
"Yes," he admitted, "that wallpaper is goddam ancient. — James Purdy

Obviously, I love superheroes; I love comic book characters, but I ... I guess I've had a lifelong affection for comics, and while I love the characters so much, I also love the medium. — Marc Guggenheim

I always thought the name of Utah's major newspaper was some sort of weird misspelling of the word "desert." But no, Deseret is the "land of the honeybee," according to the Book of Mormon. I guess I should have figured they would have caught a typo in the masthead after 154 years. — A. J. Jacobs

Love?" Michael smiled down at his hands. "Love, real love, is being seen. Being known. Knowing the ugliest part of someone, and loving them anyway. And . . . I guess I think two people in love become something else, something more than the sum of their parts, you know? That it must be like you're creating a new world that exists just for the two of you. You're gods of your own pocket universe." He laughed a little then, as if he felt foolish. "That must sound ridiculous."
"No," Robert said, the truth dawning over him. Michael didn't talk like someone who was guessing - he talked like someone who knew. — Cassandra Clare

In the book, you lost your powers. In the movie, you chose not to use them as much. I guess I did a little of both. — Mara Wilson

The millionaire says to a thousand people, 'I read this book and it started me on the road to wealth.' Guess how many go out and get the book? Very few. Isn't that incredible? Why wouldn't everyone get the book?! — Jim Rohn

And God was like, "It's not a tumor. That's your appendix. Appendixes go at the end. Read a book, dude." Then Adam was all, "Really? Because I don't want to second-guess you but it seems like a design flaw. Also that snake in the garden told me it doesn't even do anything." And God shook his head and muttered, "Jesus, that fucking snake is like TMZ." And then Adam was like, "Who's Jesus?" and God said, "No one yet. It's just an idea I'm throwing around." And — Jenny Lawson

I guess there's a sort of cycle with writing books. There's all the researching and then the imagining and writing - which is the real job - and then there's always a period when the book comes out and you have to lift your head and venture out. — Monica Ali

I wasn't perfect, and I made mistakes; but I learned from them and became a better person for it. I always followed my heart. And most of all, I loved - with every ounce of my being. I guess you could say the greatest love story ever written isn't confined to the pages of a book. It's in our lives; and we're the ones who write it. So that's what life's all about, isn't it? Why we're here. It has nothing to do with dollars. In fact, it's totally free. Life's greatest gift. And the best part is, the best part, this gift we give to others ... we get it back. It's what makes the journey so worthwhile ... it's LOVE. — Sebastian Cole

I know what you're thinking. 'How the hell does this broke ass piece of trailer trash know words like caveat,' right? Well guess what? I've read every single book on the New York Times list of 'Top 100 Literary Classics,' not to mention every Jane Austen, Sylvia Plath or Bronte sisters' book ever written. And fuck you very much for judging me, by the way. — Isobel Irons

After years of practice, I can walk into a bookstore and understand its layout in a few seconds. I can glance at the spine of a book and make a good guess at its content from a number of signs. — Umberto Eco

Besides, she likes my stories. They are like fairy tales, I suppose, full of kings and queens and adventures. Ma says people think fairy tales are simple stories but they are not. I guess I agree. My trouble is I have no talent for thinking up plots. The best I can do is come up with a good beginning. My book of story ideas is really just a book of story beginnings. Still and all, that is something. — Kristin Kladstrup

Maybe physical intimacy isn't always about touching. Maybe it's also about being able to sit next to someone at dinner and not care if he takes something off your plate or reaches across you for the salt. Maybe it's about being able to sprawl out on the floor and read a book in the same room with someone who's grading papers and muttering about 'incompetent boobs who couldn't write a good paper if their lives depended on it.' Maybe it's about sharing the same space with another person and not going fucking crazy because you can't get away from them.

That's it, I guess: true intimacy is really just the run of the mill, day to day stuff that happens without thinking - thousands of simple, meaningless, comfortable ways you can be close to someone, never dreaming how shitty you'll feel when you wake up one morning with all of it gone. — Bart Yates

I keep feeling that there isn't one poem being written by any one of us - or a book or anything like that. The whole life of us writers, the whole product I guess I mean, is the one long poem - a community effort if you will. It's all the same poem. It doesn't belong to any one writer - it's God's poem perhaps. Or God's people's poem. — Anne Sexton

I guess you can call me "old fashioned". I prefer the book with the pages that you can actually turn. Sure, I may have to lick the tip of my fingers so that the pages don't stick together when I'm enraptured in a story that I can't wait to get to the next page. But nothing beats the sound that an actual, physical book makes when you first crack it open or the smell of new, fresh printed words on the creamy white paper of a page turner. — Felicia Johnson

Consider, for example, the following puzzle. I give you a large piece of paper, and I ask you to fold it over once, and then take that folded paper and fold it over again, and then again, and again, until you have refolded the original paper 50 times. How tall do you think the final stack is going to be? In answer to that question, most people will fold the sheet in their mind's eye, and guess that the pile would be as thick as a phone book or, if they're really courageous, they'll say that it would be as tall as a refrigerator. But the real answer is that the height of the stack would approximate the distance to the sun. And if you folded it over one more time, the stack would be as high as the distance to the sun and back. — Malcolm Gladwell

Well, right now I'm not dead. But when I am, it's like ... I don't know, I guess it's like being inside a book that nobody's reading. [ ... ] An old one. It's up on a library shelf, so you're safe and everything, but the book hasn't been checked out for a long, long time. All you can do is wait. Just hope somebody'll pick it up and start reading. — Tim O'Brien

I once gave my friend his braille book to him upside down and I got a punch in the shoulder. He was aiming for my face but I guess him being blind makes his accuracy terrible. — Haresh Daswani

I don't read books. I read 'On the Road' in high school, and that was awesome, so I guess that's my favorite book. 'To Kill a Mockingbird,' even though I didn't read it, that's the greatest story. SparkNotes came in when I was in high school, and that was the greatest invention. — Meghan Trainor

And then there is the black cat. Who has no other name than the Black Cat and who turned up almost a month ago. We did not realize he was going to be living here at first: he looked too well fed to be a stray, too old and jaunty to have been abandoned. He looked like a small panther, and he moved like a patch of night.

One day, in the summer, he was lurking about our ramshackle porch: eight or nine years old, at a guess, male, greenish-yellow of eye, very friendly, quite unperturbable. I assumed he belonged to a neighboring farmer or household.

I went away for a few weeks, to finish writing a book, and when I came home he was still on our porch, living in an old cat ben one of the children had found for him. He was, however, almost unrecognizable. Patches of fur had gone, and there were deep scratches on his gray skin. The tip of one ear was chewed away. There was a gash beneath one eye, s lice gone from one lip. He looked tired and thin. — Neil Gaiman

A library is but the soul's burial ground; it is the land of shadows. Yet one is impressed with the thought, the labor, and the struggle, represented in this vast catacomb of books. Who could dream, by the placid waters that issue from the level mouths of brooks into the lake, all the plunges, the whirls, the divisions, and foaming rushes that had brought them down to the tranquil exit? And who can guess through what channels of disturbance, and experiences of sorrow, the heart passed that has emptied into this Dead Sea of books? — Henry Ward Beecher

With the Book hitching rides, hiding on people, guess we're all going to be dressing like skanks for a while, huh? Skintight or skin. Dude, everybody's everything's gonna be hanging out, and some o' those fat chicks at the abbey are gonna gross my eyeballs right outta my head. Muffin tops and camel toes, gah! — Karen Marie Moning

When I got out of the movie, I had four text messages from Augustus.
Tell me my copy is missing the last twenty pages or something.
Hazel Grace, tell me I have not reached the end of this book.
OH MY GOD DO THEY GET MARRIED OR NOT OH MY GOD WHAT IS THIS
I guess Anna died and so it just ends? CRUEL. Call me when you can. Hope all's okay. — John Green

Vampires used to be the Dracula types, but in the last ten years most of them have become weak, brooding androgynes that only go after teenagers. A friend of mine took the opportunity to rid his whole city of them after the forth Mormon Vamps book hit and the sparkle meme was at its strongest."

"So does that make Ms. Mormon Sparkle Vamp a hero?"

"Of a sort. Before they started to sparkle, there were a lot of vamps who were tortured antiheroes, thanks to Rice and Whedon."

Ree grimaced. "Do you know if she was clued in?"

Eastwood shrugged. "She's very secretive, no one in the Underground has been able to say for sure. It's all rumor. My guess is she lost someone to a vampire and decided the greatest revenge she could inflict was to turn them into a laughing stock. — Michael R. Underwood

I guess I'm interested in the behind-the-surface feelings of the human condition, in my own way. I was always struck by the gap - at least in the books I was reading - between what people tell stories about and what I actually feel. I started thinking about a gap between fantasy and reality. — Signe Baumane

Being in front of an audience makes me feel alive. Being with friends makes me feel alive. I've done some crazy stuff in my time and yet I can feel infinitely alive curled up on a sofa reading a book. So, what makes me feel alive? I guess it's realizing I am part of the world around me. — Benedict Cumberbatch

[I]f he had to guess, he would say that the reason he doesn't want to loan the book out, to Ethan or anyone else, is because of the part of his personality that is one gigantic record-keeping system, a complex sifting and filing scheme that dictates what goes here and what goes there, turning his life into so many marks on a tablet. His mind would busy itself with the book's whereabouts every second it was away. He knows it would. — Kevin Brockmeier

I guess what I'm trying to say is that this book doesn't play by the feminist rules we've come to know and accept. But what is feminism if it isn't refusing to play by the rules? — Emily May

Some writers are writing one great, big book and just taking all these different avenues towards it. They might seem on the outside to be different, but they're really not. And that's a different kind of mindset. I don't know why it is, but I just feel like I really want to escape myself as much as I can - myself as the artist, or as the writer, or as the thinker - with each new project, because one, it's just boredom, but also, I guess I just feel most comfortable starting a new book if I just feel a little in the dark about it. — Chang-rae Lee

Umm, why is it that we don't have any of this in a book? So we could study?" There was a hint of irritation in her voice. Silvia shook her head. "Dear girls, history isn't something you study. It's something you should just know." Marlee turned to me and whispered, "But clearly we don't." She smiled at her own joke, and then focused again on Silvia. I thought about that, how we all knew different things or had to guess at the truth. Why weren't we given history books? I remembered a few years ago when I went into Mom and Dad's room, since Mom said I could choose what I wanted to read for English. As I went through my options, I spotted a thick, ratty book in the back corner and pulled it out. It was a U.S. history book. Dad came in a few minutes later, saw what I was reading, and said it was okay, so long as I never told anyone about it. When — Kiera Cass