Nytimes Book Review Quotes & Sayings

Be kind to an old man. — Walter Cronkite

Sometimes a spontaneous action can have all kinds of unforeseen consequences. — Leslie Hachtel

Really good 'hard' novels - say, Wolf Hall - yield, if you read them carefully, the information you need when you need it, in order to follow their paths. But there is a point at which subtle storytelling maneuvers outmaneuver their own intelligibility. — Daniel Menaker

What reason would grope for in vain, spontaneous impulse ofttimes achieves at a stroke, with light and pleasureful guidance. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

It is now 55 years since my last book report, which is a long time to live with a guilty conscience. So here it is: In the spring of 1956 I wrote a highly favorable review of the Bible without reading a word of it, and it was the last A I ever got in English. Why it has taken so long to come clean I'm not sure, except I have always been extremely sensitive about my academic reputation. — Pete Dexter

We know from the material that was recovered from the bin Laden compound that bin Laden was looking at the 10th anniversary of 9/11 as an opportunity to strike yet again at the U.S. homeland. — John O. Brennan

Come down and eat chicken with me beautiful. It's soooo dark. — Stephen King

I was called up in the war and sent to a hospital. I dressed wounds, applied iodine, gave enemas, did blood transfusions. If the doctor ordered: "Brecht, amputate a leg!", I would reply, "Certainly, Your Excellency!", and cut off the leg. If I was told, "Perform a trepanning!" I opened the man's skull and messed about with his brains. I saw how they patched fellows up, so as to cart them back to the Front as quickly as they could. — Bertolt Brecht

Alike for the nation and the individual, the one indispensable requisite is character. — Theodore Roosevelt

I swear, I have really tried to care about genres or categories, but I find myself sadly unable to do so. I will enjoy anything, anything, as long as it comes written in language that is personal to the point of idiosyncratic, euphonious, revealing and precise. I avoid any kind of writing that doesn't fill these requirements. I don't care which genre it belongs to. — Juan Gabriel Vasquez

When you kill time, you kill your opportunities for success. — Denis Waitley

I want to have an impact because I don't want anybody to have to go through what I went through. — Vince Staples

I would argue that it's almost better to do heroin than to watch TV. At least when you're doing heroin you're responsible for your own reveries and thought processes. When you're mainlining TV what is it but endless messages to fetishize products? — Terence McKenna

Loss isn't an absence after all. It is a presence. A strong presence right next to me. I look at it. It doesn't look like anything, that's what is so strange. It just fits in. — Jackie Kay

Before my autism diagnosis I
knew I struggled with life but thought it was
my fault that I found everything
so hard to cope with. I told
myself I must
try harder
to be like
everyone else.
I felt like a failure because I couldn't be like everyone else. Now I know,
I give myself
credit even for the small things I manage everyday.
I know why
I find some things overwhelming. — Tina J. Richardson

Close your eyes, cover your ears with your hands and open your soul. — Kurban Said

I'm going to approach it as trying to do my best, but you can't do everything yourself. That's asking for bad things to happen. — Mark Mulder

East DR Congo Faces Catastrophic Humanitarian Crisis 4,450 — Alain De Botton