Look Up Book Quotes & Sayings

Look," she said, opening it up, fanning its blank pages in his direction. "This is a book, too, and precious little is written in it. It's just as accurate as the Grimmerie, and maybe more so. Don't be chagrined by its blankness. Be liberated instead. Go on, it's yours. I have never written a word in it worth saving, so what I give you isn't magic or the benefit of my thinking, but my belief in the blankness of our futures. Charms only go so far. Here, take it. Whether you write your own story in it or not, that's your affair. — Gregory Maguire

Practice being fully present with something. Perhaps you may find something of God there. Go outside and look at the stars. Not for just a few seconds - lay a blanket in the yard, lie on your back and really look at the stars. Try to let your heart feel the incomprehensible size and grandeur of the universe. Take the time to really attend to a meal, a good book, a piece of music, or a sunrise. The point is to be fully present, to not be swept up into the distraction of a thousand voices, but to learn how to simply and fully attend to one. Then, when one enters back into the noisy world that we live in, even the million colors together are more vibrant because you have learned to better see color in its essence. To truly see is to find hope. — Michael Gungor

Shut up the door: who loves me must not look / Upon the withered world, but haste to bring / His lighted candle, and his story-book, / And live with me the poetry of spring. — Alice Cary

If you try to write 1,000 words a day, as I do, after 100 days you'll look up and have a book. It may be a mess, and you may have to revise it 50 times, but you can't revise it if you haven't written it. — Justin Cronin

It feels great to wake up feeling healthy, awake and alert. I love waking up in the morning, taking a
deep breath, reading the newspaper and going to the gym - as opposed to carrying a hangover right
until lunch. That's horrible. It is nice to let off steam once in a while, but I find myself less involved with
people in that sense. I like staying at home, reading a book, having a chat with my wife, a quiet dinner
and going to bed early. I don't want to drink half a bottle of whisky and look 50 the next day. I have
become an anti-drinking, anti-smoking agent. — Saif Ali Khan

The love of writing comes at a very early age. For me, for instance, comic books so affected me. And a lot of people who come up to me and start talking about writing, when I start talking to them about the "Fantastic Four," they look at me aghast. They say, "'The Fantastic Four?' That's not literature." I say, "Yeah, but it was when I was 11 years old." This was literature. — Walter Mosley

But then again, that's what the Book of Job was about to her, a cautionary tale about wanting there to be a God, wanting there to be someone who could enact what a God could enact, or who could sanction what the Devil would do. You want this, people? You want these kinds of powers? No, you don't, and here's why, and here's why it's sheer vanity to want them in any other entity. Look what sort of violence would rain down. Poor Job, sure, poor Job with his hives and his financial losses - though who needs three thousand camels? - and too bad about the kids, forgive me, they were delicious, so sweet and so cold, sure, too bad, but it's God who's the miserable bastard here. Look what he got himself up to! No good could come of that type of power; that's what the writer of the Book of Job was saying, and she knew the writer was right. — Michelle Latiolais

When you read a book, you generate beta waves irrespective of the book's content. But if you look up from it, and start watching TV - it doesn't matter what the content of the program is - the beta waves disappear and you start processing alpha and theta waves. These are the same waves that you generate during meditation. Reading is primarily left hemisphere and watching television is primarily right hemisphere. Now how could that not have a major effect on our culture? — Leonard Shlain

Sometimes when I pick up a book off the shelf, when I'm buying a new book to read, I'll look at all of them and they all have the exact same words inside, but I'll think that one is meant to go home with me. I'll never pick the first thing off the shelf, I'll always go one behind. — Jennifer Carpenter

Little clue: wasted on me." "What?" "I'm into girls." "Oh. Oh!" Chu said. "Right. Got it. That's cool. I've got a cousin who's gay. Amy Liu. Know her?" Jennifer laughed. "Oh, sure. I'll just look her up in the Big Book of Lesbians. We get a copy of that with the purchase of our first flannel shirt. — Libba Bray

Have you ever read any Hannah Arendt?" I must look lost, because he explains further. "She's a political theorist."
" Anyway, she wrote this book about the trial of a Nazi lieutenant named Adolf Eichmann in the 1960s. Arendt was a Jew who left Germany during Hitler's reign, and during the trial this guy had to face up to all the atrocities he committed. Things only a monster could conceive of. However, he was examined by psychologists, and it was determined that he wasn't a psychopath, that in fact he was entirely normal. This left Arendt to determine that perfectly ordinary, everyday people were capable of crimes normally associated with only the most depraved, wicked members of society. She called it the banality of evil. — L. H. Cosway

Lately I can't help wanting us
to be like other people.
For example, if I were a smoker,

you'd lift a match to the cigarette
just as I put it between my lips.
It's never been like that

between us: none of that
easy chemistry, no quick, half automatic
flares. Everything between us

had to be learned.
Saturday finds me brooding
behind my book, all my fantasies

of seduction run up
against the rocks.
Tell me again

why you don't like
sex in the afternoon?
No, don't tell me--

I'll never understand you
never understand us, America's strangest
loving couple: they never

drink a bottle of wine together
and rarely look at each other.
Into each other's eyes, I mean. — Deborah Garrison

... the art of writing has for backbone some fierce attachment to an idea ... . It is on the back of an idea, something believed in with conviction or seen with precision and thus compelling words to a shape ... .
You have not finished with it because you have read it, any more than friendship is ended because it is time to part. Life wells up and alters and adds. Even things in a book-case change if they are alive; we find ourselves wanting to meet them again; we find them altered. So we look back upon essay after essay by Mr. Beerbohm, knowing that, come September or May, we shall sit down with them and talk. — Virginia Woolf

I lay the book on the floor, open to the middle. It's a lovely volume, green leather covers, engraved endpapers. I remove my shoes and step into it up to my ankles, knees, hips, chest, until only my head is showing and the pages spread around me and the words bob up and down and bump into my neck, and the punctuation sticks to my chin and cheeks so I look like I need a shave. — Lou Beach

Speaking of libraries: A big open-stack academic or public library is no small pleasure to work in. You're, say, trying to do a piece on something in Nevada, and you go down to C Floor, deep in the earth, and out to what a miner would call a remote working face. You find 10995.497S just where the card catalog and the online computer thought it would be, but that is only the initial nick. The book you knew about has led you to others you did not know about. To the ceiling the shelves are loaded with books about Nevada. You pull them down, one at a time, and sit on the floor and look them over until you are sitting on a pile five feet high, at which point you are late home for dinner and you get up and walk away. It's an incomparable boon to research, all that; but it is also a reason why there are almost no large open-stack libraries left in the world. — John McPhee

When I see Kate Moss out and about, I think she looks more beautiful than when her hairdresser and make-up artist try and make her look like something else. And I remember when Madonna first asked Versace to book me to shoot a campaign with her, she came to see me wearing hardly any make-up, and she looked incredible. — Mario Testino

One way [to recovery] would be by creating the best possible romance book or happy ending scenario for you ... out od your own experience. Another way would be to look at it as it is: a wake-up call to action to create a more humane world, without discrimination and sexism. — Elina Juusola

Sometimes you change to survive, and some things you don't give up, or you're too prideful, and then you think well, what's pride? Is it a good thing? Maybe it's a bad thing. That's what I look at in my life. It's always a question in my life I look at, and I never find the answer, because if I did, probably I wouldn't have books to write. — Amy Tan

The other gift - a book of poems, called, "The Cowardly Morning" - Waner put on Corinne's desk at the office, with a note saying, "This man is Coleridge and Blake and Rilke all in one, and more."
She didn't pick up the book again until she was in bed, late that night.
[...]
The first poem was the title poem. This time Corinne read it through aloud. But still she didn't hear it. She read it through a third time, and heard some of it. She read it through a fourth time, and heard all of it. It was the poem containing the lines:
'Not wasteland, but a great inverted forest
with all foliage underground.'
As though it might be best to look immediately for shelter, Corinne had to put the book down. At any moment the apartment building seemed liable to lose its balance and topple across Fifth Avenue into Central Park. She waited. Gradually the deluge of truth and beauty abated.
- The Inverted Forest (1947) — J.D. Salinger

I need a book that says 'Here's how to defeat Spring and restore power to your king, and while you're at it, here's how to prove you matter when no one else thinks you do - "

I stop. I'm staring at the bookshelves and not at Theron, and I don't think I'll ever be able to look at him again without shriveling up from embarrassment. ... I can still hear what I said hanging around me, my weak, weak admission, and I can't bring myself to breathe, let alone face him.

Theron doesn't give me a choice. He crawls up onto his knees and moves into my line of sight, his forehead wrinkled and his eyes darting over mine like he's trying to figure me out the same way he figured out that passage. After a moment of silence, he grimaces.

"You matter," is all he says. — Sara Raasch

I frowned up at him. "It hurts when I look at it?" Jax closed his eyes tightly and laid his head back against the chair. "Yeah, it does. Think of it like this. It wants you. It wants parts of you it can't have. But he doesn't know that so he is very ready to take that part of you, and I have to convince him to calm the fuck down. But you looking at him confuses him and he ignores me and stays ready."
Glines, Abbi (2013-06-04). Breathe (Sea Breeze Book 1) (p. 149). Simon Pulse. Kindle Edition. — Abbi Glines

the same way that you can easily switch the letters of a word around to see another hidden meaning, such is life. A life can be defined by its hardships or its blessings. It's all a matter of how you look at it. So, while this book was once setting up to be a tragic tale, it turned into a love story, an imperfect but unconventionally epic romance. — Penelope Ward

[To beginning readers (ages 4 to 8) at a reading of "Noelle's Treasure Tale"]: If you discover a word in my book that you don't understand, ask your parents so they can look it up in the dictionary for you. — Gloria Estefan

She walked down the basement steps. She saw an imaginary framed photo seep into the wall - a quiet-smiled secret. No more than a few meters, it was a long walk to the drop sheets and the assortment of paint cans that shielded Max Vandenburg. She removed the sheets closest to the wall until there was a small corridor to look through. The first part of him she saw was his shoulder, and through the slender gap, she slowly, painfully, inched her hand in until it rested there. His clothing was cool. He did not wake.
She could feel his breathing and his shoulder moving up and down ever so slightly. For a while, she watched him. Then she sat and leaned back.
Sleepy air seemed to have followed her.
The scrawled words of practice stood magnificently on the wall by the stairs, jagged and childlike and sweet. They looked on as both the hidden Jew and the girl slept, hand to shoulder.
They breathed.
German and Jewish lungs. — Markus Zusak

Bad luck alone does not embitter us that badly . . . nor does the feeling that our affairs might have been better managed move us out of range of ordinary disappointment; it is when we recognize that the loss has been caused in great part by others; that it needn't have happened; that there is an enemy out there who has stolen our loaf, soured our wine, infected our book of splendid verse with filthy rhymes; then we are filled with resentment and would hang the villains from that bough we would have lounged in liquorous love beneath had the tree not been cut down by greedy and dim-witted loggers in the pay of the lumber interests. Watch out, then, watch out for us, be on your guard, look sharp, both ways, when we learn--we, in any numbers--when we find who is forcing us--wife, children, Commies, fat cats, Jews--to give up life in order to survive. It is this condition in men that makes them ideal candidates for the Party of the disappointed People. — William H Gass

Izzy was sitting cross-legged on the couch, a paper-back book in her hands. She didn't look up when we came in, and I wondered what she was reading that had her so absorbed. Monster Killing for Beginners, probably. — Rachel Hawkins

The ethic of ecstasy is the opposite of the trial's ethic; under its protection everybody does whatever he wants: now anyone can suck his thumb as he likes, from infancy to graduation, and it is a freedom no one will be willing to give up; look around you on the Metro; seated or standing, every single person has a finger in some orifice of his face-in the ear, in the mouth, in the nose; no one feels he's being observed, and everyone dreams of writing a book to tell about his unique and inimitable self, which is picking its nose; no one listens to anyone else, everyone writes, and each of them writes the way rock is danced to: alone, for himself, focused on himself yet making the same motions as all the others. In this situation of uniform egocentricity, the sense of guilt does not play the role it once did; the tribunals still operate, but they are fascinated exclusively by the past; they see only the core of the century; they see only the generations that are old or dead. — Milan Kundera

Never memorise what you can look up in a book. — Albert Einstein

Passionate and forcefully argued, Tar Sands is a wake-up call not just to Canadians but to the wider world to take a serious look at what is happening in northern Alberta. To call this book a polemic is a compliment. — Margaret MacMillan

May 4, 1985. I am packing for a short trip to New York to discuss the cat book with Brion. In the front room where the kittens are kept, Calico Jane is nursing one black kitten. I pick up my Tourister. It seems heavy. I look inside and there are her other four kittens.
Take care of my babies. Take them with you wherever you go. — William S. Burroughs

Our enemies had a tendency to take one look at Charlotte, with her short, slim figure and her pretty, delicate Asian features, and assume she was weak. A low level threat.
Ten seconds later, the look of surprise on his face as he lay on his back, winded, eyes rolled up and watching her support Kate towards the stairs, said he'd possibly learnt his lesson. Never judge a book by it's cover. — Violet Cross

During the course of the day, I write things down, things I don't do anything with. Then, when I get ready to start recording, I just look through my books and I see if I can find something that stands out. That's how I come up with the off-the-wall-kinda-strange-indirect-stuff. — Bootsy Collins

It always seemed to me that the herbaceous peony is the very epitome of June. Larger than any rose,
it has something of the cabbage rose's voluminous quality; and when it finally drops from the vase, it
sheds its petticoats with a bump on the table, all in an intact heap, much as a rose will suddenly fall,
making us look up from our book or conversation, to notice for one moment the death of what had
still appeared to be a living beauty. — Vita Sackville-West

I started to respond, but Bambi slithered up and placed its horse-sized head on my shoulder. Every muscle in my body locked up and I squeezed my eyes shut. There was a puff of air, stirring the hair along my temple. Bambi's forked tongue shot out, tickling the side of my neck.
"Hey, look, Bambi likes you."
I pried one eye open.
"And if she didn't?"
"Oh, you'd know, 'cause she would've eaten you by now."
Armentrout, Jennifer L. (2014-03-01). White Hot Kiss (The Dark Elements Book 1) (p. 255). Harlequin. Kindle Edition. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

Reading is merely a surrogate for thinking for yourself; it means letting someone else direct your thoughts. Many books, moreover, serve merely to show how many ways there are of being wrong, and how far astray you yourself would go if you followed their guidance. You should read only when your own thoughts dry up, which will of course happen frequently enough even to the best heads; but to banish your own thoughts so as to take up a book is a sin against the holy ghost; it is like deserting untrammeled nature to look at a herbarium or engravings of landscapes. — Arthur Schopenhauer

This is a book about fracture. About the experiences that make up a life. About the pieces of me.
Delving into naked emotion is a terrifying proposition. Digging into our souls to look for answers that may not be there is a ledge most of us avoid.
And yet, here I am. — Rachel Thompson

I can't wait to do the normal things. Like just doing your own groceries. Looking for your own tomatoes. I just can't wait to get up in the morning and look awful. I'm looking forward to getting bored. — Celine Dion

Ippolit Matveevich turned even redder, pulled out a tiny notebook, and wrote in a calligraphic hand:
25/4/1927 - rubles issued to Comrade Bender - 8.
Ostap took a look inside the little book.
'Oh-ho! If you've gone ahead and opened a personal account for me, then the least you could do is tally it right. Start up a debit column, start up a credit column. Don't forget to enter the sixty thousand rubles you owe me in the debits, and the vest can go in the credits. The balance is in my favor: 59,992 rubles. — Ilya Ilf

She, of all people, knew the sacred trust that word
"librarian"
implied. Because a librarian was supposed to to be a spiritual, intellectual mentor who kept your secrets and didn't give you a funny look when you checked out a book on the care and feeding of pythons ... A librarian opened up new doors for you, intellectually, too, without shoving you through them.
A librarian was important. — Beth Fantaskey

I started my professional career before the blogosphere existed in any sort of meaningful way. I think that my approach as a writer was certainly freer because I wasn't worried, I didn't have commenters on me right from the get-go. I didn't have this instant-reaction culture that young writers have to deal with now. I had different things - I was listed in the phone book and people would look me up and call me and yell at me, but that was about as bad as it got. — Meghan Daum

When I look up from my book, the wind has gained its full voice. This storm is the mad child of Father Time and Mother Nature. Wailing away in no predictable rhythm, their monstrous offspring's throwing a hackle-raising temper tantrum. Underscoring the hideous howl, I detect another, quieter sound, a pitiable, weak whimper which has been all but completely drowned out by the epic volume of the screaming wind. With slowly dawning terror, I realize this cowardly voice is my own; escaping through the narrow opening of my barely parted lips. Where's my dad? Why is he taking so long?
The weather ignores my whining questions and continues to whip itself into a raging convulsion. The windows rattle and the wind screams. But the sounds are no longer random.
In the midst of the chaos, the howling begins to form an elongated word. Horrified, I recognize the stretched out syllables of my own name.
"Aaaaannaaaaabelle. — Alyson Larrabee

Christians remind me of schoolboys who want to look up the answers to their math problems in the back of the book rather than work them through. — Soren Kierkegaard

This way to the widge.
Edwin started. Heavens! Up till now, she realized, she had carefully avoided forming in her mind any word for that part of a man. Even the scientific word made her vaguely uneasy; her sensibilities veered away from it. Still, she'd known immediately what Mr. Tremore referred to when he'd said *that*. His word seemed friendlier. A fond name. Were men fond of that part of themselves? It was certainly not the best part of statues; she made a point not to look there. And it changed, it grew. She'd read that astounding piece of information in a book. That was the worst part, the horror - or it had been the worst until this very moment, when it occurred to her that, goodness, a man might have hair there too. She did. Oh, something that grew larger, up and out of a tangle of hair. How disgusting.
No, no, she mustn't think of it anymore. Enough. She must think of something else.
The mustache. — Judith Ivory

My ideal life is a quiet one. I like to read, to sit still in the same chair, with the lampshade at a certain angle, alone, or with Meagan nearby, and now and then, if I'm lucky, I'll come across a lovely phrase or fine sentiment, look up from my book, and feel the harmony of some notion, the justice of it, and know that everything is there. That's life to me, those privately discovered moments. — Charles D'Ambrosio

Want to make out?"
"With who?" she asks, not bothering to look up.
"Me."
She lifts her head from her book just long enough to give me a once-over. "No, thanks," she says, then goes back to her homework.
She's fuckin' with me. She's got to be fuckin' with me, right?
"Because of that pendejo Tuck?"
"No. Because I don't want Madison's leftovers."
Wait. Un. Momento. I've been called a lot of things before, but . . .
"You callin' me leftovers?"
"Yeah. Besides, Tuck is a great kisser. I wouldn't want you to feel bad when there's no way you can compete."
That guy hardly owns a pair of lips. "Wanna bet? — Simone Elkeles

Indeed, there is something about reading in a restaurant that is borderline romantic. Leaning back in that corner booth, an evocative title in our hands, a stale cup of java in front of us, every so often bolting forward to jot a phrase onto the napkin, we look like, well, poets-unknown belletrists scraping through the hardscrabble years and awaiting the distinction that is imminent. the waiter of waitress refills our cup, we drop a memorable apothegm or two, share a laugh fraught with meaning, scope out the joint, and return to our tome. Nonbiblioholics strain to espy our title; conversation is struck up on things Kafkaesque and Kierkegaardian; and we forge a genuine biblioholic simpatico with all around. — Tom Raabe

In the bazaar today I noticed a shopkeeper sitting cross-legged on the platform of his shop making up his ledger. A common sight - but there was something wrong, I could not at first see what. Then I understood: what was his heavy ledge resting on? It was lying open before him, on his stomach, but unsupported by his free hand, not resting against his knees. What on earth was propping it up?
The problem teased my mind so much that I had to retrace my steps for another look. There he was, comfortably scribbling away in the large ledger, which was standing up, apparently unsupported, in his lap. Then, as I stared, he closed it, and got to his feet - and the mystery was explained. He had elephantiasis of the scrotum, and had been utilising this huge football of tissue as a book-rest. — J.R. Ackerley

The snag in being married to a person who knows more or less everything is that one gets hopelessly lazy ... I never look things up in books because all I need to do is ask him, and when he gives me the answers I don't properly commit them to memory because I know if I forget all I have to do is to ask him again. It is rather like keeping one's brain in a suitcase. — Alice Thomas Ellis

If you have a golf-ball-sized consciousness, when you read a book, you'll have a golf-ball-sized understanding; when you look out a window, a golf-ball-sized awareness, when you wake up in the morning, a golf-ball-sized wakefulness; and as you go about your day, a golf-ball-sized inner happiness. But if you can expand that consciousness, make it grow, then when you read about that book, you'll have more understanding; when you look out, more awareness; when you wake up, more wakefulness; as you go about your day, more inner happiness. — David Lynch

Look. (Grow-ups skip this paragraph.) I'm not about to tell you this book has a tragic ending. I already said in the very first line how it is my favorite in all the world. But there's a lot of bad stuff coming up, torture you've already been prepared for, but there's worse. There's death coming up, and you better understand this: Some of the wrong people die. Be ready for it. This isn't Curious George Uses the Potty. Nobody warned me and it was my own fault (you'll see what I mean in a little) and that was my mistake, so I'm not letting it happen to you. The wrong people die, some of them, and the reason is this: life is not fair. Forget all the garbage your parents put out. — William Goldman

...the book typographer's job was building a window between the reader inside a room and that landscape which is the author's words. He may put up a stained glass window of marvelous beauty, but a failure as a window; that is he may use some rich superb type like text gothic that is something to be look at, not through. — Simon Garfield

Sometimes you will need to leap from one end of this paradoxical spectrum to the other in a matter of minutes, and then back again. As I write this book, for instance, I approach each sentence as if the future of humanity depends upon my getting that sentence just right. I care, because I want it to be lovely. Therefore, anything less than a full commitment to that sentence is lazy and dishonorable. But as I edit my sentence - sometimes immediately after writing it - I have to be willing to throw it to the dogs and never look back. (Unless, of course, I decide that I need that sentence again after all, in which case I must dig up its bones, bring it back to life, and once again regard it as sacred.) It matters./It doesn't matter. — Elizabeth Gilbert

We've inherited many ideas about writing that emerged in the eighteenth century, especially an interest in literature as both an expression and an exploration of the self. This development - part of what distinguishes the "modern" from the "early modern" - has shaped the work of many of our most celebrated authors, whose personal experiences indelibly and visibly mark their writing. It's fair to say that the fiction and poetry of many of the finest writers of the past century or so - and I'm thinking here of Conrad, Proust, Lawrence, Joyce, Woolf, Kafka, Plath, Ellison, Lowell, Sexton, Roth, and Coetzee, to name but a few - have been deeply autobiographical. The link between the life and the work is one of the things we're curious about and look for when we pick up the latest book by a favorite author. — James Shapiro

Kaz reached into his coat pocket. "Here," he said and handed Jesper a slender book with an elaborate cover.
"Are we going to read to each other?"
"Just flip it open to the back."
Jesper opened the book and peered at the last page, puzzled. "So?"
"Hold it up so we don't have to look at your ugly face."
"My face has character. Besides - oh!"
"An excellent read, isn't it?"
"Who knew I had a taste for literature? — Leigh Bardugo

Do not sag with exhaustion. There is no mandate; only opportunity. Our culture fosters inattention; we are all creatures of that culture. But by making your way through this book - by merely picking it up, perhaps - you, reader, are in a new culture, one that values looking. The unbelievable strata of trifling, tremendous things to observe are there for the observing. Look! — Alexandra Horowitz

Find anything about the Blade?" Billy let out an explosive sigh and creaked back in his chair, hands folded behind his head.
"Comic book references. Stuff about some swordsman named Bob Anderson. Wesley Snipes pictures."
"Really?" I perked up, edging around his desk to try to get a look at the screen. "Any half-naked ones?" "Joanie!"
I drooped. "I didn't think so. There wasn't nearly enough half-naked Wesley in those movies, anyway. — C.E. Murphy

Was it possible, she wondered, to have solitude together? She tried to imagine what he would do if after dinner she went to his study back home with her book or her laptop, and sat on the couch there instead of in the living room as they had in the early years. He might glance over the top of his computer with a look of surprise and then a smile of welcome. Hey there. Or there might be a moment's hesitation. She'd sit quietly nearby, each of them feeling the weight of the other int he room and a dampening of his or her own thoughts, each looking up expectantly when the other shifted in a chair or looked off into the middle distance. She might offer a snippet of commentary about something she was reading, but it would not be easily understood out of context. After an hour or so she would stand and stretch, murmur that sh though she'd call it a night, and the following night she'd go back to the living room. It was a gift, solitude. But solitude with another person, that was an art. — Nichole Bernier

He was like an addict before a fix. Book freaks are like that, and not just old guys. Look at kids lining up for the latest installment of their favorite books. Stories, they're addictive." Gamache — Louise Penny

If mothers are told to do this or that or the other, ... they lose touch with their own ability to act ... Only too easily they feel incompetent. If they must look up everything in a book, they are always too late even when they do the right things, because the right things have to be done immediately. It is only possible to act at exactly the right point when the action is intuitive or by instinct, as we say. The mind can be brought to bear on the problem afterwards. — Donald Woods Winnicott

Tell me, have you done much circus work in your life?' [asked Mulder].
Nutt drew himself up to his full height. 'And what makes you think I've ever even gone to a circus, let alone been a slave in one?' he demanded ...
Finally Mulder managed to say, 'I didn't mean any offense.'
'Offended? Why should I be offended?' Nutt demanded. 'It's human nature to make quick judgements of people based only on their looks. Why, I have done the same thing to you.'
'Have you?' said Mulder. 'And what have you concluded?'
'I have taken in your all-American face, your unsmiling expression, your boring necktie. I have decided you work for the government,' Nutt said. 'You are- an FBI agent.'
'Am I really?' Mulder said.
'I hope you get my point,' Nutt said. 'I want to show how stupid it would be to look at you as a type, rather than as an individual.'
'But I am an FBI agent,' Mulder said, showing Nutt his badge.
There was a loud silence.
Then Nutt said, 'Sign the book please. — Les Martin

But the truth is that I don't want to simply offer others a fleeting moment of "inspiration." I want my story to spark real change. An aha moment becomes most meaningful when it leads us to do more. Dream bigger. Move past our so-called limitations. Defy expectations. Bounce back with the resilience that every single one of us was born with. I didn't write this book because I want you to say, "Wow, look at what that girl overcame - good for her." I'm sharing my story because I want you to see what's possible in your own life. Right here. Right now. Starting the second you pick up your pen and create your own amazing narrative. The words of the Chinese philosopher Lao-tzu have always resonated with me: "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." What follows is my first step. My first stumble. My first dance. My first dream. — Amy Purdy

There is pressure when you have a very big book like 'Shadow Divers' to follow up with something big. But you can't let that pressure determine what you do. You just look for the best stories, and when you find a great one, you tell it. — Robert Kurson

But even with respect to the most insignificant things in life, none of us constitutes a material whole, identical for everyone, which a person has only to go look up as though we were a book of specifications or a last testament; our social personality is a creation of the minds of others. — Marcel Proust

Books are like people. Some look deceptively attractive from a distance, some deceptively unappealing; some are easy company, some demand hard work that isn't guaranteed to pay off. Some become friends and say friends for life. Some change in our absence - or perhaps it is we who change in theirs - and we meet up again only to find that we don't get along any more. — Mark Haddon

I hope you're not planning on kicking me," he said,
not even bothering to look up from his book, "as hard
as you did those doors."
"I will," I said, "if the next words out of your mouth
are Pierce, you just need to relax. — Meg Cabot

Cam starts laughing, "Oh, I love it when she reads." He turns to Lucy who's face is starting to contort and turn to a bright shade of red, "She reads these smutty books, like full on dirty shit, full of sex and like ... bdsm shit."
"I'm not joking boys, they're like full on pornographic. Talking about silky shafts and veiny dicks and shit," Logan is now on the ground holding his side from the pain of laughing too hard.
"Sometimes she'll be reading, then all of sudden she'll put her book down and look at me like she wants to eat me, literally eat me!" he yells, laughing harder, still swatting away her hands that are trying to shut him up, "I mean I don't mind it, not at all. It's hot as fuck. And she wants to try everything she reads in these books. Like ... everything. She learns everything from these books ... so I don't give a shit when, of how much she reads, I get rewards. — Jay McLean

When I do a workshop, there is always at least one author who comes up afterward and asks if I'll take a look at his or her book and consider blurbing it. For some reason, I can turn someone down in e-mail, but when he or she is looking me in the eye, I cave. — M.J. Rose

I'm crazy about Steven Spielberg. Another inspiration for me, and I don't know where it came from, is children. If I'm down, I'll take a book with children's pictures and look at it and it will just lift me up. Being around children is magic. — Michael Jackson

Look. The world is full of liars, and it's time someone admitted it, shed a light on it, and lightened up about it. — Lauren Handel Zander

was speaking to hospitality associates at the Four Seasons Hotel in Miami, Florida, when one very young, very skinny, and very brave associate stood up. He said, "I didn't have a father, so I don't know how to properly button my jacket. Do I leave the last button open? When I need help with things like this, I don't know where to look for answers." After that tug at my heart, I wrote this career reference book specifically directed at hospitality associates globally. Hospitality Management: People Skills and Manners On and Off the Job covers just about every area of the hospitality associate's professional and personal life. — Lyn Pont

I was walking up and down the rows of books at the antiquarian bookseller's in Karlova Street. Now and then I would take a look out the shop window. It started to snow heavily; holding a book in my hand I watched the snowflakes swirling in front of the wall of St Savior's Church. I returned to my book, savoring its aroma and allowing my eyes to flit over its pages, reading here and there the fragment of a sentence that suddenly sparkled mysteriously because it was taken out of context. I was in no hurry; I was happy to be in a room that smelled pleasantly of old books, where it was warm and quiet, where the pages rustled as they were turned, as if the books were sighing in their sleep. I was glad I didn't have to go out into the darkness and the snowstorm. — Wieslaw Mysliwski

I think comics will always be around. I think there's something nice about a comic book. People love to hold 'em, turn the pages, fold 'em up, roll 'em up, stick 'em in their back pocket, show 'em to a friend, and say, "Hey, look at this." — Stan Lee

When I was growing up the publishing world seemed so far away. When my mother wrote a book, she would look up the address of publishers on the backs of the books she owned and send off her manuscript. — Kiran Desai

Look under the passenger seat in a black plastic bin. There should be a book."
Raphael hopped out, dug under the seat, and pulled out a dog-eared copy of The Almanac of Mystical Creatures.
"Got it," I said into the phone.
"Page seventy-six."
Raphael flipped the book open and held it up. On the left page a lithograph showed a three-headed dog with a serpent for a tail. The caption under the picture said CERBERUS.
"Is that your dog?" Kate asked.
"Could be. How the heck did you know the exact page?"
"I have perfect memory!"
I snorted.
She sighed into the phone.
"I spilled coffee on that page and had to leave the book open to dry it out. It always opens to that entry now. — Ilona Andrews

If you have children, trust them completely, all the time, no matter what. If you don't trust them, pretend that you do. Listen to everything they say and take their advice. Believe them.

Trust everyone. Everyone behaves better when they feel they're trusted. Nobody wins a fight; the trick is to behave decently no matter what. The trick is to make love a lot. And think of it as making love. Always be making love.

Read lots of books. Read books from foreign countries. Forget yourself. Get lost in it. Give yourself over. Look up from your book and see that it is dark now and everything has changed. — Lisa Moore

For the benefit of those half-dozen people who will see a name like Gwillim and put this book down in order to go look it up to see where it comes from - it is the Welsh version of William — Ammon Shea

In the past 20 years alone, it adds up to more death than were caused by all the civil and international wars adn government repression of the entire twentieth century, the century of Hitler and Stalin. How much would we give to prevent those horrors? Yet how little are we doing to prevent today's even larger toll and all the misery that it involves? I believe that if you read this book to the end, and look honestly and carefully at our situation, assessing both the facts and the ethical arguments, you will agree that we must act. — Peter Singer

I knew a sudden shyness. There was a look on his face, a stillness to his body that had never been there before. Though I couldn't give the emotion a name, I felt it, too. We had something special. Something hard to define. Something past friendship.

"I must go now," I said and rose up on tiptoe to kiss his cheek, marveling at its velvet skin. "Thank you for the book."

He drew me into his embrace and sighed. "Thank you for the stars. — Elizabeth Langston

The face that greeted me, however, was far from welcoming, it was a miniature stick insect of a woman with wiry white hair and enormous glasses that emphasized her heavily wrinkled face. She blinked twice and looked me up and down. By the look on her face, she wasn't that impressed with what she saw. "Who is it, Ethel?"
She responded, "It's some homeless woman. She looks like she needs money and a good wash."
And I thought I'd already reached the lowest point of my day. — Suzanne Kelman

How do you say 'bring me sausage and eggs or I'll slit your throat' in Italian?"
"Look it up in the phrase book. — Regina Doman

What makes it worth it though, is I love drawing. I LOVE IT. I love making comics. I love starting a new page and buying new paper, ink and brushes. I love telling stories! I love the people I work with, I love the people I meet. I love thinking about the syntax and language of comics. I love esoteric discussions about the comic book industry. I love the opportunities I've had in life because of comics. The second I stop loving it I will find something else to do.
Comics are hard work. Comics are relentless. Comics will break your heart. Comics are monetarily unsatisfying. Comics don't offer much in terms of fortune and glory, but comics will give you complete freedom to tell the stories you want to tell, in ways unlike any other medium. Comics will pick you up after it knocks you down. Comics will dust you off and tell you it loves you. And you will look into it's eyes and know it's true, that you love comics back. — Becky Cloonan

You don't look up truthiness in a book, you look it up in your gut. — Stephen Colbert

I grew up with a mother who, every time she saw something, would say, I'm going to look that up. And I've become that person - I've become the reference-book person. — Jennifer Saunders

Consider this book, then, a feminist anatomy of the trainwreck. It's an effort to figure out who she is: why she's making us so angry; what, in general, she hath done to offend us. These are questions of more immediate and personal relevance than you may think: When women look hard enough at the trainwreck, we almost invariably end up looking at ourselves. — Sady Doyle

I like to watch his hands as he works, making a blank page bloom with strokes of ink, adding touches of color to our previously black and yellowish book. His face takes on a special look when he concentrates. His usual easy expression is replaced by something more intense and removed that suggests an entire world locked away inside him. I've seen flashes of this before: in the arena, or when he speaks to a crowd, or that time he shoved the Peacekeepers' guns away from me in District 11. I don't know quite what to make of it. I also become a little fixated on his eyelashes, which ordinarily you don't notice much because they're so blond. But up close, in the sunlight slanting in from the window, they're a light golden color and so long I don't see how they keep from getting all tangled up when he blinks. — Suzanne Collins

She looked up and smiled. "I'm glad you found some books that interest you. Would you like a glass of lemonade?"
Though I was hoping to thank her for the books and be on my way, I didn't want to seem rude. I nodded and set the stack of books on the counter. While Miz Goodpepper pulled a pitcher from the refrigerator, I asked, "Is the Kama Sutra a volcano?"
She gasped and splashed lemonade across the kitchen counter. The strangest look streaked across her face as she sopped up the mess with a wad of paper towels. "Well, I suppose some might think it's a volcano of sorts, but I can say with absolute assurance you wouldn't enjoy that book."
"That's what I thought," I said, feeling pleased with myself, so I put it back on the shelf.
She let out a barely audible sigh. "Good. — Beth Hoffman

For every age there is a popular idea about what madness is, what causes it, and how a mad person should look and behave; and it's usually these popular ideas, rather than those of medical professionals, that turn up in songs and stories and plays and books. — Margaret Atwood

Oh, wait, okay, you need my help. What do you need? Do you need practice kissing girls? That's totally fine. I can do that. Come here, I'll kiss you right now.
The creak of the door made Kami look away from Holly and Holly look up from the book.
Ash looked as if he seriously wondered why it was always him. — Sarah Rees Brennan

No, but I do read a lot. I love to read. I could read for days and never stop. I use to be such a bookworm. I would barely look up to notice much of anything. — Jennifer Loren

People save their strong opinions for women. Why don't they look at men? If I have to read another book or see another movie about a woman being courageous, I'll throw up. Where are the books and movies about the men who do this stuff? But no, it's always about the women. They not only have to get through it, they're supposed to stand up, become a symbol, allow their whole lives to become derailed and defined by it. What if you don't want to? People bang on about women having the right to make choices - well, they need to realise women have the right to choose in these matters, too. — Kirsty Eagar

Why do movies make this look so simple?" He leaned back and looked her straight in the eye, the smile winning. "One-handed bra removal is not easy. I call false reality."
"Teen boys all over the world are going to hate themselves for not being able to do it."
"Grown men, too."
"Don't forget Irish men." Melody readjusted herself and sat up straighter. "Declan?" she whispered, tipping her face toward his. Then she ran her tongue over his mouth and pinned his other hand against his side. "I don't want you to hate yourself. Don't give up. You've got this. — Brooklyn Skye

"God, you're a good kisser," he said. "Where'd you learn to do that?"
I sat up and flashed him a deadpan look. "Books," I said. — Eve Marie Mont

I looked to the sitting room then and gaped at Alec's body lying across my sofa making it look smaller than it was. He was reading something.
A book.
"What are you readin'?" I curiously asked.
"That porn book we were talking about earlier at my house. This dude is my God! He just fucked this Ana chick while she was on her period."
"Stop it!" I screeched. "Stop readin' and put the bloody book down!"
He was reading Fifty Shades of Grey.
I was both horrified and mortified.
Alec got up from the sofa, placed the book on the coffee table and turned in my direction.
"Why are you blushing?"
Him noticing my embarrassment only caused my already red cheeks to heat up even more.
"Oh damn, your cheeks are so flushed," Alec said and took a step towards me. — L.A. Casey

When I take up a book I have read before, I know what to expect; the satisfaction is not lessened by being anticipated. I shake hands with, and look our old tried and valued friend in the face,
compare notes and chat the hour away. — William Hazlitt

Ghislaine didn't look up from the book she was poring over. There was a stack of them on the desk before her, and another beside the narrow bed. Where the eldest and cleverest of her Thirteen had gotten them from, who she'd likely gutted to steal them, Manon didn't care. "Hello, and come right in, why don't you" was the response. Manon leaned against the door and crossed her arms. Only with books, only when reading, was Ghislaine so snappish. On the battlefield, in the air, the dark-skinned witch was quiet, easy to command. A solid soldier, made more valuable by her razor-sharp intelligence, which had earned her the spot among the Thirteen. — Sarah J. Maas

Looking out on the second day of our mission, I became aware that in the far distance, there was a distinctive-looking star. It stood out because, while all the other stars stayed exactly the same size and shape, this one got bigger and bigger as we got closer to it. At some point it stopped being a point of light and started becoming something three-dimensional, morphing into a strange bug-like thing with all kinds of appendages. And then, isolated against this inky background, it started to look like a small town.
Which is in fact what it is: an outpost that humans have built, far from Earth. The International Space Station. It's every science fiction book come true, every little kid's dream realized: a large, capable, fully human creation orbiting up in the universe.
And it felt miraculous that soon we'd be docked there, and the next phase of our expedition would begin. — Chris Hadfield

La Leche League and the What to Expect books are even explicit about this fear: the pacifier, they warn, cannot substitute for a mother. This is the rare piece of parenting wisdom that manages to be both condescending and confusing. Condescending because it seems unlikely that parents who were considering using a pacifier - parents diligent enough to look it up in a book - were also considering abandoning their child altogether. Confusing because, well - what? How would a pacifier substitute for a mother - how exactly? Are there pacifiers on the market that cuddle and feed and rock and dote on a child? Is a mother nothing more than a nipple? — Nicholas Day

TV monsters and movie monsters and comic-book monsters were not real. Not until you went to bed and couldn't sleep; Not until the last four pieces of candy, wrapped in tissues and kept under your pillow against the evils of the night, were gobbled up; not until the bed itself turned into a lake of rancid dreams and the wind screamed outside and you were afraid to look out the window because there might be a face there... — Stephen King

A definition is death. A definition is the answer to which you must look up the question in the back of your book. — Peter Hammill

Funny business, a woman's career. The things you drop on your way up the ladder
so you can move faster
you forget you'll need them when you go back to being a woman. That's one career all females have in common whether we like it or not. Being a woman. Sooner or later, we've got to work at it, no matter what other careers we've had or wanted. And in the last analysis nothing is any good unless you can look up just before dinner
or turn around in bed
and there he is. Without that you're not a woman. You're someone with a French provincial office
or a book full of clippings. But you're not a woman. Slow curtain. The end. (from "All About Eve") — Bette Davis