More Than This Book Quotes & Sayings

Was there ever a more horrible blasphemy than the statement that all the knowledge of God is confined to this or that book? How dare men call God infinite, and yet try to compress Him within the covers of a little book! — Swami Vivekananda

This poetry is utilitarian - heavy-duty, industrial strength poetry. It is meant to be read aloud and, even better, memorized and recited. It is best used in the natural world where there are starlit skies, the warmth of blazing fires, and sounds and sights of open expanse. This book is meant to be carried with you in the glove box of a pickup truck, the back pocket of a worn pair of pants, even a saddlebag. It is not made to take up space on a library shelf, squeezed between other unread volumes. Take it along; you never know when the opportunity will be just right. Nothing pleases more than to see copies of the book twice as thick as the original from continued page turning, with turned-down corners marking favorite poems, or the whole shape curved to match the owner's posterior. — Hal Cannon

The fourth rule is: "Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules." You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity. — Saul Alinsky

Christianity is not only the revelation of truth, but also the fountain of holiness under the unceasing inspiration of the spotless example of its Founder, which is more powerful than all the systems of moral philosophy. It attests its divine origin as much by its moral workings as by its pure doctrines. By its own inherent energy, without noise and commotion, without the favor of circumstance - nay, in spite of all possible obstacles, it has gradually wrought the greatest moral reformation, we should rather say, regeneration of society which history has ever seen while its purifying, ennobling, and cheering effects upon the private life of countless individuals are beyond the reach of the historian, though recorded in God's book of life to be opened on the day of judgment. To appreciate this work, we must first review the moral condition of heathenism in its mightiest embodiment in history. — Philip Schaff

Our everyday "commonsense" knowledge as a human being is even greater; "street smarts" actually require substantially more of our neocortex than "book smarts." Including this brings our estimate to well over 100 million patterns, taking into account the redundancy factor of about 100. — Ray Kurzweil

You can either hold me up by my ass or we can put pillows under my hips to raise them."
"Let's go for the pillows."
"You think I'm too heavy to lift?" she asked with a wicked gleam in her eyes.
"No, I just want my hands free to play with your boobs."
"Good point. THIs position is supposed to help the man 'give the clit the attention it deserves'. That's me quoting the book, by the way."
"I like this book. It's nice and friendly and tells me to touch your clit. I appreciate that."
"So does my clit. Ready?"
Ben glanced down. HE was more than ready.
"God, yes."
"Alright," Beatriz said. "Let's do it. — Tiffany Reisz

Literary criticism can be no more than a reasoned account of the feeling produced upon the critic by the book he is criticizing. Criticism can never be a science: it is, in the first place, much too personal, and in the second, it is concerned with values that science ignores. The touchstone is emotion, not reason. We judge a work of art by its effect on our sincere and vital emotion, and nothing else. All the critical twiddle-twaddle about style and form, all this pseudoscientific classifying and analysing of books in an imitation-botanical fashion, is mere impertinence and mostly dull jargon. — D.H. Lawrence

She said being human is being a young child on Christmas Day who receives an absolutely magnificent castle. And there is a perfect photograph of this castle on the box and you want more than anything to play with the castle and the knights and the princesses because it looks like such a perfectly human world, but the only problem is that the castle isn't built. It's in tiny intricate pieces, and although there's a book of instructions you don't understand it. And nor can your parents or Aunt Sylvie. So you are just left, crying at the ideal castle on the box which no one would ever be able to build — Matt Haig

Amory wandered slowly up the avenue and thought of the night as inevitably his
the pageantry and carnival of rich dusk and dim streets ... it seemed that he had closed the book of fading harmonies at last and stepped into the sensuous vibrant walks of life. Everywhere these countless lights, this promise of a night of streets and singing
he moved in a half-dream through the crowd as if expecting to meet Rosalind hurrying toward him with eager feet from every corner ... How the unforgettable faces of dusk would blend to her, the myriad footsteps, a thousand overtures, would blend to her footsteps; and there would be more drunkenness than wine in the softness of her eyes on his. Even his dreams now were faint violins drifting like summer sounds upon the summer air. — F Scott Fitzgerald

The question may arise - how can credible Christian organizations justify and condone meditative practices that clearly resemble Eastern meditation? As pointed out earlier in this book, Christian terminology surrounds these practices. It only takes a few popular Christian leaders with national profiles to embrace a teaching that sounds Christian to bring about big changes in the church. Moreover, we have many trusting Christians who do not use the Scriptures to test the claims of others. Building an entire prayer method around an out-of-context verse or two is presumptuous, at best. Now more than ever, it is critical that Christians devote themselves to serious Bible study and discernment regarding this issue. — Ray Yungen

She herself was a victim of that lust for books which rages in the breast like a demon, and which cannot be stilled save by the frequent and plentiful acquisition of books. This passion is more common, and more powerful, than most people suppose. Book lovers are thought by unbookish people to be gentle and unworldly, and perhaps a few of them are so. But there are others who will lie and scheme and steal to get books as wildly and unconscionably as the dope-taker in pursuit of his drug. They may not want the books to read immediately, or at all; they want them to possess, to range on their shelves, to have at command. — Robertson Davies

And even though he's the father of capitalism and wrote the most famous and maybe the best book ever on why some nations are rich and others are poor, Adam Smith in The Theory of Moral Sentiments wrote as eloquently as anyone ever has on the futility of pursuing money with the hope of finding happiness. How do you reconcile that with the fact that no one did more than Adam Smith to make capitalism and self-interest respectable? That is a puzzle I try to unravel toward the end of this book. Besides the emptiness of excessive materialism, Smith understood the potential we have for self-deception, the danger of unintended consequences, the seductive lure of fame and power, the limitations of human reason, and the unseen sources of what makes our lives both so complex and yet at times so orderly. The Theory of Moral Sentiments is a book of observations about what makes us tick. As a bonus, almost in passing, Smith tells us how to lead the good life in the fullest sense of that phrase. — Russ Roberts

How does the saying go? When two locusts fight, it is always the crow that feasts.'
Is that a Luo expression?' I asked. Sayid's face broke into a bashful smile.
We have a similar expression in Luo,' he said, 'but actually I must admit that I read this particular expression in a book by Chinua Achebe. The Nigerian writer. I like his books very much. He speaks the truth about Africa's predicament. the Nigerian, the Kenya - it is the same. We share more than divides us. — Barack Obama

I had gradually come, by this time [1839-01], to see that the Old Testament from its manifestly false history of the world, with the Tower of Babel, the rainbow as a sign, etc., etc. and from its attributing to God the feelings of a revengeful tyrant, was no more to be trusted than the sacred books of the Hindoos, or the beliefs of any barbarian. — Charles Darwin

To whomever is writing this book, what do you want
from me? I need to know my calling. Why was I chosen? Why
not Lee? Why not Susan March? Why me? What is my
purpose? Please let it be more than to destroy a life and
embarrass another. I need to know. I am suffering. You are a
constant headache. Anywhere I go, I can hear you, I can feel
you. I want to be like the others, ignorant of this. — Kevin Jared Hosein

A good book deserves an active reading. The activity of reading does not stop with the work of understanding what a book says. It must be completed by the work of criticism, the work of judging. The undemanding reader fails to satisfy this requirement, probably even more than he fails to analyze and interpret. He not only makes no effort to understand; he also dismisses a book simply by putting it aside and forgetting it. Worse than faintly praising it, he damns it by giving it no critical consideration whatever. — Mortimer J. Adler

In reading, one should notice and fondle details. There is nothing wrong about the moonshine of generalization when it comes after the sunny trifles of the book have been lovingly collected. If one begins with a readymade generalization, one begins at the wrong end and travels away from the book before one has started to understand it. Nothing is more boring or more unfair to the author than starting to read, say, Madame Bovary, with the preconceived notion that it is a denunciation of the bourgeoisie. We should always remember that the work of art is invariably the creation of a new world, so that the first thing we should do is to study that new world as closely as possible, approaching it as something brand new, having no obvious connection with the worlds we already know. When this new world has been closely studied, then and only then let us examine its links with other worlds, other branches of knowledge. — Vladimir Nabokov

She is, above all else, tired; she wants more than anything to return to her bed and her book. The world, this world, feels suddenly stunned and stunted, far from everything. — Michael Cunningham

Mindfulness is about focusing on the magic of the present moment. Rather than fretting about the past or worrying about the future, the aim is to experience life as it unfolds moment by moment. This simple practice is immensely powerful. As we rush through our lives, mindfulness encourages us to stop constantly striving for something new or better and to embrace acceptance and gratitude. This allows us to tap into the joy and wonder in our lives, and to listen to the wisdom of our hearts. This book will show you how to experience small but beautiful moments of mindfulness every day and so guide you along the path to finding more peace and contentment in your life. — Anna Barnes

I do write long, long character notes - family background, history, details of appearance - much more than will ever appear in the novel. I think this is what lifts a book from that early calculated, artificial stage. — Anne Tyler

Without the witty, potent dialogue and the puzzling shape of the story, the movie would have been merely an American version of the kind of brooding, shadow-filled, Ufa-style expressionist stuff that Joe had grown up watching in Prague. Without the brooding shadows and cold adventurings of the camera, without the theatrical lighting and queasy angles, it would have been merely a clever movie about a rich bastard. It was much, much more, than any movie really needed to be. In this one crucial regard--its inextricable braiding of image and narrative--Citizen Kane was like a comic book. — Michael Chabon

I felt tired, but I pitched the ball back at her. You want me to talk about myself, right? Let me tell you what 'self' means to me. The self, myself, the self as I see it, is composed mainly of selected memories from my history. I am not what I am doing now. I am what I have done, and the edited version of my past seems more real to me than what I am at this moment. I don't know who or what I really am. The present is fleeting and intangible. No one in China wants to talk about his past, because nobody wants to paint his face black. Our past is not a flattering picture, and no one wants to look at it for long. Yet what we were in fixed and final. It is the basis for predictions of what we will be in the future. To tell you truth, I identify with what no longer exists more than what actually is. We have lied about what we actually are, and that, unfortunately, will be your book. So would you still like me to talk about myself? — Anchee Min

This book offers another, more serious alternative to material success. It's not so much an alternative as an expansion of the meaning of "success" to something larger than just getting a good job and staying out of trouble. And also something larger than mere freedom. It gives a positive goal to work toward that does not confine. — Robert M. Pirsig

PRAISE FOR WALTER ISAACSON'S Steve Jobs "This biography is essential reading." - The New York Times, Holiday Gift Guide "A superbly told story of a superbly lived life." - The Wall Street Journal "Enthralling." - The New Yorker "A frank, smart and wholly unsentimental biography . . . a remarkably sharp, hi-res portrait . . . Steve Jobs is more than a good book; it's an urgently necessary one." - Time "An encyclopedic survey of all that Mr. Jobs accomplished, replete with the passion and excitement that it deserves." - Janet Maslin, The — Walter Isaacson

There is a sort of knowledge beyond the power of learning to bestow, and this is to be had in conversation; so necessary is this to the understanding the characters of men, that none are more ignorant of them than those learned pedants whose lives have been entirely consumed in colleges and among books; for however exquisitely human nature may have been described by writers the true practical system can be learned only in the world. — Henry Fielding

When I write, I go to live inside the book. By which I mean, mentally I can experience everything I'm writing about. I can see it, hear its sounds, feel its heat or rain. The characters become better known to me than the closest family or friends. This makes the writing-down part very simple most of the time. I only need to describe what's already there in front of me. That said, it won't be a surprise if I add that the imagined worlds quickly become entangled with the so-called reality of this one.
Since I write almost every day, and I think (and dream) constantly about my work, it occurs to me I must spend more time in all these places than here. — Tanith Lee

Finally, I must acknowledge the role my lovely wife Annie, to whom I have dedicated the book, played in its production. I had the good luck to have married a woman who is incredibly smart and whose sound intuitions are untainted by philosophy. The price she pays for this is that she is subjected to calls interrupting her own work in which I ask her things like: 'What's an example of a gesture that gives an instruction?' or 'Is the following sentence intuitively true: 'Jeff owns more surfboards than Napoleon'?' She handles this with remarkable grace and humor, while providing excellent answers. In addition, while I was working on the book, she bent over backwards to do things for me that would allow me more time to write at crucial junctures. This even before we were married! And finally, the love and support she gave me while I worked on this book were of incalculable value to me. My friends say she is too good for me. They're right — Anonymous

There are no Demonic incantations in this book. I am not an expert on the subject, so if you were hoping to read this and be able to conjure up some demon, I can't give you the knowledge on how to do it while on this plane of existence, or to send it back, which believe me, you WILL WANT TO KNOW A LOT MORE THAN HOW TO GET ONE TO SHOW UP. — Ivan D'Amico

In this book, you will learn more about: The difference between synthetic and natural antibiotics The health risks associated with synthetic antibiotics The top 15 herbal antibiotics which can be used as a safer and healthier alternative to the synthetic antibiotics How herbal antibiotics work The top 10 benefits of using herbal antibiotics rather than the synthetic kinds Which illnesses can be treated with herbal antibiotics, and; How to use these natural antibiotics as treatment or prevention — Sanford Evans

Anyway, a man who buys a woman a book this nice is looking to be more than just an acquaintance. — Charlie Lovett

Phil Cousineau has created a fine companion book to accompany the important film he and Gary Rhine have made in defense of the religious traditions of Native Americans. [Native Americans] are recognized the world over as keepers of a vital piece of the Creator's original orders, and yet they are regarded as little more than squatters at home. This book features impressive interviews, beautiful illustrations, and gives a voice to the voiceless. — Peter Coyote

I used to feel guilty about spending morning hours working on a book; about fleeing to the brook in the afternoon. It took several summers of being totally frazzled by September to make me realize that this was a false guilt. I'm much more use to family and friends when I'm not physically and spiritually depleted than when I spend my energies as though they were unlimited. They are not. The time at the typewriter and the time at the brook refresh me and put me into a more workable perspective. — Madeleine L'Engle

This book is dedicated to all good teachers everywhere, most particularly those of the William Levering School and Central High School in Philadelphia, to whom more is owed than can ever be repaid. — Michael Swanwick

This world is a place of business. What an infinite bustle! I am awaked almost every night by the panting of the locomotive. It interrupts my dreams. There is no sabbath. It would be glorious to see mankind at leisure for once. It is nothing but work, work, work. I cannot easily buy a blank-book to write thoughts in; they are commonly ruled for dollars and cents. An Irishman, seeing me making a minute in the fields, took it for granted that I was calculating my wages. If a man was tossed out of a window when an infant, and so made a cripple for life, or scared out of his wits by the Indians, it is regretted chiefly because he was thus incapacitated for - business! I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself, than this incessant business. — Henry David Thoreau

As Christians, I feel those of us in the creative community must seek to be more than scribes. If Diarmaid MacColloch is right in his immense history, The Reformation, we had plenty of Christian scribes on the eve of that enormous and painful upheaval. But it was the printing press that enabled the great thinkers of that time, both Reformer and Catholic, to transform our "assumptions about knowledge and originality of thought." I suggest now that we must seize the revolutionary media of our age in the way that those earlier Christians and Catholics seized the printed book. We must truly use the realistic novel, the television drama, and the motion picture to tell the Christian story anew. It is our obligation to tell that story over and over and to use the best means that we have. In that spirit this novel was written - with the hope of exploring and celebrating the mystery of the Hypostatic Union as well as the mystery of the Incarnation - in a wholly fresh way. — Anne Rice

I've been thinking." Ben stopped Nikolas trying to straighten his wayward tie. Nikolas shook Ben's hands off and continued what he was doing with a frown. "This is hardly the time to start a new hobby. — John Wiltshire

You meaner beauties of the night, That poorly satisfy our eyes More by your number than your light; You common people of the skies, What are you when the sun shall rise? This was printed with music as early as 1624, in East's Sixth Set of Books, and is found in many manuscripts. — Henry Wotton

Whether you realize it or not, you are a theologian. You come to a book like this with a working theology, an existing understanding of God. Whether you are an agnostic or a fundamentalist - or something in between - you have a working theology that shapes and informs the way you think and live. However, I suspect that you are reading this book because you're interested in examining your theology more closely. You are open to having it challenged and strengthened. You know that theology - the study of God - is more than an intellectual hobby. It's a matter of life and death, something that affects the way you think, the decisions you make each day, the way you relate to God and other people, and the way you see yourself and the world around you. — Michael S. Horton

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

Each morning at Holy Mass, the Bread of Life will help the body as well as the soul, if we have faith. If we but touch the hem of His garment ... and how much more have we than that! We can find Him, at every moment, on the altar. Be with Him there. Better than all books! Thank the Trinity over and over again for this Gift. Rest in His presence, and my guardian angel will adore Him for me. Silence. — Edel Quinn

Good writing, in my opinion, is writing that looks really easy, so easy that a person who has never written more than a grocery list might convince themself that they could also write a book. That being said, it's always a lot of work, as you know. And then there's this: you have no idea how many failed stories and novels I've attempted. I have files full of stories that didn't work for whatever reason. — Mary J. Miller

(This Side Idolatry), but it was a merely personal attack, concerned for the most part with Dickens's treatment of his wife. It dealt with incidents which not one in a thousand of Dickens's readers would ever hear about, and which no more invalidate his work than the second-best bed invalidates Hamlet. All that the book really demonstrated was that a writer's literary personality has little — George Orwell

In The Highland Book of Platitudes, Marlais, there's an entry that reads, "Not all ghosts earn our memory in equal measure." I think about this sometimes. I think especially about the word "earn," because it implies an ongoing willful effort on the part of the dead, so that if you believe the platitude, you have to believe in the afterlife, don't you? Following that line of thought, there seem to be certain people - call them ghosts - with the ability to insinuate themselves into your life with more belligerence and exactitude than others - it's their employment and expertise. — Howard Norman

The central idea of the present book is very simple. It is that education is not primarily about the acquisition of information. It is not even about the acquisition of 'skills' in the conventional sense, to equip us for particular roles in society. It is about how we become more human (and therefore more free, in the truest sense of that word). This is a broader and a deeper question, but no less practical. Too often we have not been educating our humanity. We have been educating ourselves for doing rather than for being. — Stratford Caldecott

One of the most important hopes we have for this book is to provoke the sorts of conversations that make it easier for couples to make their way across this difficult emotional terrain together, with a deeper, less judgmental understanding of the ancient roots of these inconvenient feelings and a more informed, mature approach to dealing with them. Other than that, we really have little helpful advice to offer. — Christopher Ryan

Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book
or
How you can survive in the Cosmos about which you know more and more while knowing less and less about yourself, this despite 10,000 self-help books, 100,000 psychotherapists, and 100 million fundamentalist Christians
or
Why is it that of all the billions and billions of strange objects in the Cosmos - novas, quasars, pulsars, black holes - you are beyond doubt the strangest
or
Why is it possible to learn more in ten minutes about the Crab Nebula in Taurus, which is 6,000 light-years away, than you presently know about yourself, even though you've been stuck with yourself all your life — Walker Percy

I loved it so much I was sorry to finish it. I closed the book and shocked myself by thinking, This is better than life. I didn't mean or want to think this, but I'm afraid I did. Certainly this feeling about a book is the one that makes people want to write. I don't know why I feel more alive when I write, but I do. — Siri Hustvedt

Don't be amazed if you see my eyes always wandering. In fact, this is my way of reading, and it is only in this way that reading proves fruitful to me. If a book truly interests me, I cannot follow it for more than a few lines before my mind, having seized on a thought that the text suggests to it, or a feeling, or a question, or an image, goes off on a tangent and springs from thought to thought, from image to image, in an itinerary of reasonings and fantasies that I feel the need to pursue to the end, moving away from the book until I have lost sight of it. The stimulus of reading is indispensable to me, and of meaty reading, even if, of every book, I manage to read no more than a few pages. But those few pages already enclose for me whole universes, which I can never exhaust. — Italo Calvino

I feel it right to warn the reader that he can very well skip this chapter without losing the thread of such story as I have to tell, since for the most part it is nothing more than the account of a conversation that I had with Larry. I should add, however, that except for this conversation I should perhaps not have thought it worth while to write this book. — W. Somerset Maugham

How I Shed My Skin is, simply put, a brilliant book. While I was reading, I kept thinking two things. One, this is totally shocking. Two, it's not at all shocking, but a familiar part of my life and memory. Grimsley's narrative is straightforward and plain-spoken while at the same time achingly moving and intimately honest, and it does more to explain the South than anything I've read in a long, long time. — Josephine Humphreys

I more seriously considered publishing it under a pseudonym than I considered publishing it as fiction. I think the decision to write it as nonfiction happened at the very outset of the process, because the overwhelming impetus for writing this book was to understand what the experience meant, and to override my own reductions and rationalizations, whatever story I had that was not true. It didn't sit well with me and I needed to answer that. That's sort of the reason I write everything. — Melissa Febos

What we all share in common - what I've spent the past several years talking to leaders, parents, and educators about - is the truth that forms the very core of this book: What we know matters, but who we are matters more. Being rather than knowing requires showing up and letting ourselves be seen. It requires us to dare greatly, to be vulnerable. The first step of that journey is understanding where we are, — Brene Brown

The Big Book's chapter We Agnostics draws a line in the sand: God either is or He isn't. What was our choice to be (Alcoholics Anonymous, 53)? Nature abhors a vacuum and a state of nothing can't exist in either the material or spiritual world. This kind of binary thinking made sense in the autocratic world of 1939. But in a democratic, pluralist society, all-or-nothing thinking is a cognitive distortion - a philosophical assumption that everything is right or wrong, good or evil, superior or inferior. In this millennium, people can hold opposing views and be equals in the same community. Our Traditions, lovingly and tolerantly, make room for more than one truth. That's a good thing, because the only problem with the truth is that there are so many versions of it. — Joe C.

I have written this book quicker than any other," she notes in her diary, "[and] it is all a joke; & yet gay & quick reading I think; a writers holiday. I feel more and more sure that I will never write a novel again — Virginia Woolf

The book will be a demonstration that children, without being coerced or manipulated, or being put in exotic, specially prepared environments, or having their thinking planned and ordered for them, can, will and do pick up from the world around them important information about what we call the Basics. It will also demonstrate that "ordinary" people, without special schooling themselves, can give their children whatever slight assistance may be needed to help them in their exploration of the world, and that to do this requires no more than a little tact, patience, attention and readily available information. — John Holt

There was nothing so dangerous to a king or an emperor as a book. Yes, a great library - a library as magnificent as this one - was a dangerous arsenal, one that kings and emperors feared more than the greatest army or magazine. — Ross King

The journey that 'In Praise of Slowness' has made since publication shows how far this message resonates. The book has been translated into more than 30 languages. It appears on reading lists from business schools to yoga retreats. Rabbis, priests and imams have quoted from it in their sermons. — Carl Honore

This book is full of empty love quotes. If you are looking for the meaning of life and love, then this book is for you. You won't find the answers here, of course, but you'll be more encouraged than ever to keep on looking. Or maybe you'll be discouraged. Either way, I'll have your money, and you'll have no answers. Sounds like a fair deal to me. — Dora J. Arod

It is in the light of the unparalleled presumption of respect for religion* that I make my own disclaimer for this book. I shall not go out of my way to offend, but nor shall I don kid gloves to handle religion any more gently than I would handle anything else. — Richard Dawkins

The extra time and trouble required to follow Dr. Bob's alternative schedule are hard to justify unless the dangers of contracting infectious diseases early in life are minimized and the dangers of vaccinating early in life are exaggerated. Much of The Vaccine Book is devoted to this minimization and exaggeration. Tetanus is not a disease that affects infants, according to Dr. Bob, Hib disease is rare, and measles is not that bad. He does not mention that tetanus kills hundreds of thousands of babies in the developing world every year, that most children will encounter the bacteria that causes Hib disease within the first two years of their lives, and that measles has killed more children than any other disease in history. — Eula Biss

I could not help but notice that in this regard the book, inanimate though it was, cared more for my welfare than any human in the castle. — Catherine Gilbert Murdock

Karpov, Kasparov, Korchnoi have absolutely destroyed chess by their immoral, unethical, prearranged games. These guys are really the lowest dogs around, and if people knew the truth about them, they would be held in more contempt than Ben Johnson, the runner, and they're going to know the truth when I do this book! — Bobby Fischer

This book is for you. Getting the "most possible lifetime" dollars from Social Security is likely a significant objective of yours. Saving taxes in retirement is likely a worthy ambition. Nobody wants to pay more taxes than they have to. Perhaps leaving a legacy might be another goal. Certainly coordinating your Social Security benefits with your investment and other income to combat 20-25 years of inflation is of prime importance. — Mark J. Orr

Almost everyone can remember losing his or her virginity, and most writers can remember the first book he/she put down thinking: I can do better than this. Hell, I am doing better than this! What could be more encouraging to the struggling writer than to realize his/her work is unquestionably better than that of someone who actually got paid for his/her stuff? — Stephen King

But this book is about something else: what goes on in the lives of real people when the industrial economy goes south. It's about reacting to bad circumstances in the worst way possible. It's about a culture that increasingly encourages social decay instead of counteracting it. The problems that I saw at the tile warehouse run far deeper than macroeconomic trends and policy. too many young men immune to hard work. Good jobs impossible to fill for any length of time. And a young man [one of Vance's co-workers] with every reason to work - a wife-to-be to support and a baby on the way - carelessly tossing aside a good job with excellent health insurance. More troublingly, when it was all over, he thought something had been done to him. There is a lack of agency here - a feeling that you have little control over your life and a willingness to blame everyone but yourself. This is distinct from the larger economic landscape of modern America. — J.D. Vance

those who are weak enough to think this a degrading task, and the time and labour which have been devoted to it misemployed, I shall content myself with opposing the authority of the greatest man of any age, JULIUS CAeSAR, of whom Bacon observes, that 'in his book of Apothegms which he collected, we see that he esteemed it more honour to make himself but a pair of tables, to take the wise and pithy words of others, than to have every word of his own to be made an apothegm or an oracle.' Having said thus much by way of introduction, I commit the following pages to the candour of the Publick. — Anonymous

Conversely, every moderate seems to believe that his interpretation and selective reading of scripture is more accurate than God's literal words. Presumably, God could have written these books any way He wanted. And if He wanted them to be understood in the spirit of twenty-first-century secular rationality, He could have left out all those bits about stoning people to death for adultery or witchcraft. It really isn't hard to write a book that prohibits sexual slavery - you just put in a few lines like "Don't take sex slaves!" and "When you fight a war and take prisoners, as you inevitably will, don't rape any of them!" And yet God couldn't seem to manage it. This is why the approach of a group like the Islamic State holds a certain intellectual appeal (which, admittedly, sounds strange to say) because the most straightforward reading of scripture suggests that Allah advises jihadists to take sex slaves from among the conquered, decapitate their enemies, and so forth. — Sam Harris

It may be said of some very old places, as of some very old books, that they are destined to be forever new. The nearer we approach them, the more remote they seem: the more we study them, the more we have yet to learn. Time augments rather than diminishes their everlasting novelty; and to our descendants of a thousand years hence it may safely be predicted that they will be even more fascinating than to ourselves. This is true of many ancient lands, but of no place is it. so true as of Egypt. — Amelia B. Edwards

A happy birthday this evening, I sat by an open window and read till the light was gone and the book was no more than a part of the darkness. I could easily have switched on a lamp, but I wanted to ride the day down into night, to sit alone, and smooth the unreadable page with the pale gray ghost of my hand — Ted Kooser

One of the things I hear a lot from people is how they found my book, or how they've shared it with other people.
This always warms my bitter old heart, not just because I like selling more books, (though I do) but because reccomending a book to a friend is one of the most sincere forms of flattery there is. If you read someone I wrote and like it enough to tell a friend, that means I've done something right. That means more to me than any sort of professional review ... . — Patrick Rothfuss

The perfectly natural thing to do with an unreadable book is to give it away; and the publication, for more than a quarter of a century, of volumes which fulfilled this one purpose and no other is a pleasant proof, if proof were needed, of the business principles which underlay the enlightened activity of publishers. — Agnes Repplier

Or consider a story in the Jewish Talmud left out of the Book of Genesis. (It is in doubtful accord with the account of the apple, the Tree of Knowledge, the Fall, and the expulsion from Eden.) In The Garden, God tells Eve and Adam that He has intentionally left the Universe unfinished. It is the responsibility of humans, over countless generations, to participate with God in a "glorious" experiment - the "completing of the Creation."
The burden of such a responsibility is heavy, especially on so weak and imperfect a species as ours, one with so unhappy a history. Nothing remotely like "completion" can be attempted without vastly more knowledge than we have today. But, perhaps, if our very existence is at stake, we will find ourselves able to rise to this supreme challenge. — Carl Sagan

For once, I agree with Blake." Daemon met my shocked stare. "We can't, Kitten. Not now."
I wasn't okay with this, but I couldn't run down the hall, letting people free. We didn't plan for that and we only had a set amount of time. It sucked-sucked worse than people who pirated books, sucked more than a year for the next book in a beloved series, and sucked more than a brutal cliffhanger ending. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

Don't read any more into the book than is intended. I am not a crook. Seriously. This is fiction and I'm sticking to that statement. Dedication — Timothy Freriks

The book of nature is like the Bible: Everyone reads into it what they want, from tolerance to intolerance, and from altruism to greed. It's good to realize, though, that if biologists never stop talking of competition, this doesn't mean they advocate it, and if they call genes selfish, this doesn't mean that genes actually are. Genes can't be any more "selfish" than a river can be "angry," or sun rays "loving." Genes are little chunks of DNA. At most, they are "self-promoting," because successful genes help their carriers spread more copies of themselves. — Frans De Waal

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

This evening, I sat by an open window and read till the light was gone and the book was no more than a part of the darkness ... — Ted Kooser

Well, I'd like to think I am, and I'd also like to think that we're all having a lot more fun getting older than we pretend. It was interesting to me when I first started working on this book that I'd mentioned that I was writing a memoir about aging and everybody would moan and groan and carry on. — Anna Quindlen

Every libromancer had a first book. Etched more sharply into my memory than my first kiss, this book had been my magical awakening. — Jim C. Hines

I hope I helped, but I have to tell you this sort of thing is a lot more exciting, and a lot less emotionally wearing, in a book than it is in real life." "You got that right. — J.D. Robb

Dapps are just now gaining media coverage but will, I believe, someday become more widely used than the world's most popular web apps. They are more flexible, transparent, distributed, resilient, and have a better incentivized structure than current software models. This is the first book that will help you to understand them and create your own. — Siraj Raval

In most cases a favorite writer is more with us in his book than he ever could have been in the flesh; since, being a writer, he is one who has studied and perfected this particular mode of personal incarnation, very likely to the detriment of any other. I should like as a matter of curiosity to see and hear for a moment the men whose works I admire; but I should hardly expect to find further intercourse particularly profitable. — Charles Horton Cooley

Anyone buying this book is going to be out a tidy sum if he is sucked in by the title. I wish I could write a real sexy book that would be barred from the mails. Apparently nothing whets a reader's appetite for literature more than the news that the author has been thrown into a federal pokey for disturbing the libido of millions of Americans. — Groucho Marx

It is my hope that this book helps those who know and love people with DID: family members, lovers, coworkers, and friends. It is also my hope that those charged with intervening in families in which there is violence will take away a more nuanced approach to their important work, informed by a deeper understanding of trauma.
Most of all, I hope that those of you who have DID know that the disorder itself is an incredible survival technique. You should feel proud to have survived. Trauma has had a major impact on my life, as it has on yours, but I've learned that my life extends beyond the pain and darkness. Survivors of trauma are full of life, creativity, courage, and love. We are more than the sum of our parts. — Olga Trujillo

To compensate a little for the treachery and weakness of my memory, so extreme that it has happened to me more than once to pick up again ... books which I have read carefully a few years before. I have adopted the habit for some time now of adding at the end of each book the time I finished reading it and the judgment I have derived of it as a whole, so that this may represent to me at least the sense and general idea I had conceived of the author in reading it. — Michel De Montaigne

But, as the results presented in this book (and others) show, we are all far less rational in our decision making than standard economic theory assumes. Our irrational behaviors are neither random nor senseless-they are systematic and predictable. We all make the same types of mistakes over and over, because of the basic wiring of our brains. So wouldn't it make sense to modify standard economics and move away from naive psychology, which often fails the tests of reason, introspection, and-most important-empirical scrutiny?

Wouldn't economics make a lot more sense if it were based on how people actually behave, instead of how they should behave? As I said in the Introduction, that simple idea is the basis of behavioral economics, an emerging field focused on the (quite intrusive) idea that people do not always behave rationally and that they often make mistakes in their decisions. — Dan Ariely

The good news (for writers) is that this means that ebooks on computers are more likely to be an enticement to buy the printed book (which is, after all, cheap, easily had, and easy to use) than a substitute for it. You can probably read just enough of the book off the screen to realize you want to be reading it on paper. — Cory Doctorow

This morning I woke up before the alarm clock went off and the sky outside was a big red ocean. You're beautiful when you're sleeping so I spent an hour observing the way you breathe. Inhale, exhale, without a thought of tomorrow. The window was open and the air was so crisp and I couldn't imagine how to ever ask for more than this. — Charlotte Eriksson

The Angel Of Almost Then I was somewhere else, and it was bright. A voice said "If you'd carried on practicing that song you almost got right, you would've been great. Bigger than the Beatles." It continued "If you'd carried on working on that book you almost finished, it would've changed the lives of many, many people." Then it said "If you'd tried to reach the one you loved just a little bit more, when you almost had them, your life would've been completely different." And I asked "Is this what happens when I die?" And the voice said "Almost. — Pleasefindthis

A sensation rose in him, a high tingling of his blood. There came a wave, a wind that recognized him, that did not love him or hate him. He felt what he knew as the rising of his self, the shifting innerness that yearned and feared, that was more familiar to him than anything could ever be. He knew that an answering substance gathered around him, emanating from the trees and the stars.
He stood staring at the constellations. Walt had sent him here, to find this, and he understood. He thought he understood. This was his heaven. It was not Broadway or the horse on wheels. It was grass and silence; it was a field of stars. It was what the book told him, night after night. When he died he would leave his defective body and turn into grass. He would be here like this, forever. There was no reason to fear it, because it was part of him. What he'd thought of as his emptiness, his absence of soul, was only a yearning for this. — Michael Cunningham

As in most obituaries, the author said little about the man; they rarely do. But the reticence here was greater than usual. It mentioned that Ravenscliff left a wife, but did not say when they married. It said nothing at all about his life, nor where he lived. There were not even any of the usual phrases to give a slight hint: 'a natural raconteur' (loved the sound of his own voice); 'Noted for his generosity to friends' (profligate); 'a formidable enemy . . .' (a brute); 'a severe but fair employer . . .' (a slave-driver); 'devoted to the turf' (never read a book in his life); 'a life-long bachelor' (vice); 'a collector of flowers' (this meant a great womaniser. Why it came to mean such a thing I do not know.) More browsing — Iain Pears

If you're reading this book, it means you're more fortunate than the nearly one billion people in the world who can't read, many of whom will be stuck in a life of poverty. — Anonymous

Seriously, I do not know what to say of this book [ Absalom, Absalom!] except that it seem to point to the final blowup of what was once a remarkable, if minor, talent ... this is a penny dreadful tricked up in fancy language and given a specious depth by the expert manipulation of a series of eccentric technical tricks. The characters have no magnitude and no meaning because they have no more reality than a mince-pie nightmare. — Clifton Fadiman

The notion that evil is non-rational is a more significant claim for Eagleton than at first appears, because he is (in this book [On Evil] as in others of his recent 'late period' prolific burst) anxious to rewrite theology: God (whom he elsewhere tells us is nonexistent, but this is no barrier to his being lots of other things for Eagleton too, among them Important) is not to be regarded as rational: with reference to the Book of Job Eagleton says, 'To ask after God's reasons for allowing evil, so [some theologians] claim, is to imagine him as some kind of rational or moral being, which is the last thing he is.' This is priceless: with one bound God is free of responsibility for 'natural evil' - childhood cancers, tsunamis that kill tens of thousands - and for moral evil also even though 'he' is CEO of the company that purposely manufactured its perpetrators; and 'he' is incidentally exculpated from blame for the hideous treatment meted out to Job. — A.C. Grayling

Magical, yes, but THE SNOW CHILD is also satisfyingly realistic in its depiction of 1920s homestead-era Alaska and the people who settled there, including an older couple bound together by resilient love. Eowyn Ivey's poignant debut novel grabbed me from the very first pages and made me wish we had more genre-defying Alaska novels like this one. Inspired by a fairy tale, it nonetheless contains more depth and truth than so many books set in this land of extremes. — Andromeda Romano-Lax

So whether you're participating in an online conversation or reading a book by yourself, your experience is a readerly one and a responsive one. The most significant difference is that reading a book is dialogically asymmetrical: you learn about the book, about its characters and perhaps its author, but none of them learns anything about you. I'm not convinced that this is necessarily regrettable: many of us should probably spend more time just listening, rather than insisting on being heard. — Alan Jacobs

We put on a pot of tea, a necessity between these two writing friends. We
could no more imagine writing without this hot sustenance than we could
without pen and paper. We sat at the table to talk shop, sort through our
notes, and make plans for the book. Then we settled down in the sunroom,
giggling a little at the unexpected absurdity of our activity, editing
within arm's reach of each other, like toddlers at parallel play. — Mary Potter Kenyon

And once the novelist has brought us to this state, in which, as in all purely mental states, every emotion is multiplied ten-fold, into which his book comes disturb us as might a dream, but a dream more lucid and more abiding than those that come to us in sleep, why then, for the space of an hour he sets free within us all the joys and sorrows in the world. — Marcel Proust

I freely admit that I took great license in writing 'The Dark Queen,' more so than my other historical romance novels. This is largely because I viewed the book as a fantasy novel as much as an historical. I do feel that writers should strive for as much accuracy as possible but, in the end, remember that we are writing fiction. — Susan Carroll

And Edward was staring at me curiously, that same, familiar edge of frustation even more distinct now in his black eyes.
I stared back, surprised, expecting him to look quickly away. But instead he continued to gaze with probing intensity into my eyes. There was no question of me looking away. My hands started to shake.
"Mr. Cullen?" the teacher called, seeking the answer to a question that I haden't heard.
"The Krebs Circle," Edward answered, seeming relucant as he turned to look at Mr. Banner.
I looked down at my book as soon as his eyes released me, trying to find my place. Cowardly as ever, I shifted my hair over my right shoulder to hide my face. I couldn't believe the rush of emotion pulsing through me - just because he'd happened to look at me for the first time in a half-dozen weeks. I couldn't allow him to have this level of influence over me. It was pathetic. More than pathetic, it was unhealthy. — Stephenie Meyer