Steal This Book Quotes & Sayings

The perfect Librarian is calm, cool, collected, intelligent, multilingual, a crack shot, a martial artist, an Olympic-level runner (at both the sprint and marathon), a good swimmer, an expert thief, and a genius con artist. They can steal a dozen books from a top-security strongbox in the morning, discuss literature all afternoon, have dinner with the cream of society in the evening, and then stay up until midnight dancing, before stealing some more interesting tomes at three a.m. That's what a perfect Librarian would do. In practice, most Librarians would rather spend their time reading a good book. — Genevieve Cogman

Basically the message is: Steal It! Art, music, culture, the odd book and the slab of cheese ... the new will be built upon the ruins of the old. — Buenaventura Durruti

I suppose I could collect my books and get on back to school, or steal my Daddy's cue and make a living out of playing pool. — Rod Stewart

Books and drafts mean something quite different for different thinkers. One collects in a book the lights he was able to steal and carry home swiftly out of the rays of some insight that suddenly dawned on him, while another thinker offers us nothing but shadows - images in black and grey of what had built up in his soul the day before. — Friedrich Nietzsche

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

They have our bundles split open in museums / our dresses & shirts at auctions / our languages on tape / our stories in locked rare book libraries / our dances on film / The only part of us they can't steal / is what we know. — Chrystos

When you steal from the library, you are preventing anyone else from reading that book, and the very notion makes me want to drop you in the Void. — Piers Anthony

Love is like a cherry blossoms ... they bloom at the first promise of the spring, they beautify even and the most grey landscape, they scatter at the first gust of the wind ...
But as they hold, when you look at them, you steal a little vew of paradise ... — Georgia Kakalopoulou

When you steal a book, you steal from the world. the Library propaganda said — Rachel Caine

P.O. Box Love is a wonderfully engrossing and romantic novel that takes the reader from Milan to New York and back again through the letters Federico and Emma mail to each other. Paola Calvetti's book will captivate your mind and steal your heart."

Isabella Rossellini — Paola Calvetti

If you steal from one book you are condemned as a plagiarist, but if you steal from ten books you are considered a scholar, and if you steal from thirty or forty books, a distinguished scholar. — Amos Oz

Fame may pass over my head; money may escape me; my one friend may fail me; every hope may fold its tent and steal away; Happiness may remain a sealed book; every remnant of human ties may vanish; I may find myself an outcast; good things held out to me may suddenly be withdrawn; the stars may go out, one by one; the sun may go dark; yet still I may hold upright my head, if I have but my steak - and my onions. — Mary MacLane

I feel strongly against professionalism, against someone's feeling he has to write a book every year to keep his name before the public. I see people processing themselves, torturing themselves, for that, rather than writing out of a compulsion some story from their own experience, their own feelings. That's the way you should write, unless you are just practicing. I tell young writers to steal a plot or an idea or whatever, just to get going. See how a character comes out, how you fit it into your life . . . You see great writers doing it too. — Peter Taylor

It's a fair-sized job to write a book that people can be bothered just to read; when they begin to steal copies, you are really getting some place. — Ruth Stout

[On libraries] What's great about them is that anybody can go into them and find a book and borrow it free of charge and read it. They don't have to steal it from a bookshop ... You know when you're young, you're growing up, they're almost sexually exciting places because books are powerhouses of knowledge, and therefore they're kind of slightly dark and dangerous. You see books that kind of make you go 'Oh! — Stephen Fry

Careful, Miss Cavanaugh," he whispered. "You don't know what you're asking." He lowered his face to her neck, dragging his lips along her skin up to her ear. "If I steal more from you, if I give you more, I'll want it all and won't let up for a very, very long time. — Madison Thorne Grey

Why is it that people who wouldn't dream of stealing anything else think it's perfectly all right to steal books? — Helene Hanff

I have no imagination; I just steal from life and change the color. Then it's a comic book. — Brian K. Vaughan

If you have the indecency to steal my book, at least have the decency to write a review. — Grea Alexander

Steal not this book for fear of shame
For on it is the owners name
And when you die the Lord will say
Where is the book you stole away
And when you say you do not know
The Lord will say go down below. — L.M. Montgomery

I have known men to hazard their fortunes, go long journeys halfway about the world, forget friendships, even lie, cheat, and steal, all for the gain of a book. — A. S. W. Rosenbach

Stephanie: "I have a list of Kenny's friends. I'm going to run through it."
Morelli: "Where'd you get this list?"
Stephanie: "Privileged information."
Morelli: "You broke into his apartment and stole his little black book."
Stephanie: "I didn't steal it. I copied it."
Morelli: "I don't want to here any of this. You're not carrying concealed, are you?"
Stephanie: "Who, me?"
Morelli: "Shit, I must be crazy to work with you — Janet Evanovich

There were pencil scrawls and ink stains, dried blood, snack crumbs; and the leather binding itself was secured to the lectern by a chain. Here was a book that contained the collected knowledge of the past while giving evidence of present social conditions ... The dictionary contained every word in the English language but the chain knew only a few. It knew thief and steal and, maybe, purloined. The chain spoke of poverty and mistrust and inequality and decadence. — Jeffrey Eugenides

To steal book seems like stealing the soul out of someone. — James Oliver Curwood

Sometimes I just wonder,like,how could anyone else possibly be this lost,too?!Sometimes the words are so beautiful and true and unsettling I just want to hug my book and make sure nobody else in the world ever reads those words,because they are mine,Goddamnit,and they apply to me, and damn it if anyone else is going to steal my words and plug them into their lives! — Seth King

The only book Knight didn't steal was the one he most often saw. 'I had no need for a Bible,' he said. — Michael Finkel

I don't really collect the mementos. I do steal books off of sets. If there's a library on the set, you can bet that I'll steal away with a book or two. — Billy Campbell

If it weren't for the law, I would steal books; if it weren't for my purse, I would buy them. — Harold Laski

Reading is not as insignificant as we claim. First we must steal the key to the library. Reading is a provocation, a rebellion: we open the book's door, pretending it is a simple paperback cover, and in broad daylight escape! We are no longer there: this is what real reading is. If we haven't left the room, if we haven't gone over the wall, we're not reading. — Helene Cixous

My mullet was an insecurity shield. My mullet was an ethnic hatchet. My mullet was an arrow on fire.
My mullet said to the literary world, Hello, you privileged prep-school assholes, I'm here to steal your thunder, lightning, and book sales. — Sherman Alexie

Either you're lying again or you're as stupid as you look. You ditch me first year for him when you were a girl. You ditch me second year for him when you were a boy. You lie and cheat and steal for him while he treats you like crap, and I help you and care for you and worship you like a queen while you treat me like crap! What does that guy have that I don't? What makes him so lovable and me so unworthy? Know how many times I've asked myself that question, Sophie? How many times I've studied him like a book or sat in the dark picturing every last shred of him, trying to understand why he's more of a person than me? Or why the moment he's gone, you take a ring from the School Master - or Raphael or Michelangelo or Donatello or whatever you want to call him to make yourself feel better - just because he looks like you want him to look and says what you want to hear? When you could have had someone who's honest and kind and real? — Soman Chainani

I know a lot of other actors that don't like to look at other references to their characters and things. But I like it. I always look at everything, I read all the books. I read Dieter's "Escape from Laos." I watched the documentary again and again and again. I recorded it just to listen to him a lot. I just don't suffer from feeling like I'm getting caught into an imitation. I just feel like I want to steal some good stuff if it's in there. — Christian Bale

Buy this book or I'll take it personally, and I will have my revenge. I'll steal your girlfriend or make out with your dad. It doesn't matter to me. Whichever will hurt worse. My vengeance knows no sexuality. You don't want this. Your dad does though. Yeah, like you didn't know your parents' marriage was a sham. Come on. Open your fucking eyes. — Paul Neilan

What pages did I write?
What bellicosity!
What words did I bite?
What ferocity!
This ink, in magnanimity, as I took,
Find me a humble name in your stale book,
This hour, from shrewdness, as I steal
My scars heal, my imaginations kneel;
These musings around your benevolent brook
Find me a humble name in your stale book,
Find me a humble name in your stale book. — Ashfaq Saraf

Quiet. But when no one was looking I would slip into Ella's room and steal a book and take it back of the barn and try to read it. Usually I could not decipher enough words to make the story have meaning. I burned to learn to read novels and I tortured my mother into telling me the meaning of every strange word I saw, not because the word itself had any value, but because it was the gateway to a forbidden and enchanting land. One — Richard Wright

To err is to wander and wandering is the way we discover the world and lost in thought it is the also the way we discover ourselves. Being right might be gratifying but in the end it is static a mere statement. Being wrong is hard and humbling and sometimes even dangerous but in the end it is a journey and a story. Who really wants to stay at home and be right when you can don your armor spring up on your steed and go forth to explore the world True you might get lost along get stranded in a swamp have a scare at the edge of a cliff thieves might steal your gold brigands might imprison you in a cave sorcerers might turn you into a toad but what of what To fuck up is to find adventure: it is in the spirit that this book is written. — Kathryn Schulz

The better part of the man is soon ploughed into the soil for compost. By a seeming fate, commonly called necessity, they are employed, as it says in an old book, laying up treasures which moth and rust will corrupt and thieves break through and steal. It is a fool's life, as they will find when they get to the end of it, if not before. — Henry David Thoreau

Steal not this book, my worthy friend,
For fear the gallows will be your end;
Up the ladder, and down the rope,
There you'll hang until you choke;
Then I'll come along and say -
'Where's that book you stole away? — Jen Campbell

She held him at arms' length, looked at the pipe still gripped inn his hand, then looked at his face and read him like a book. She ran the tip of her red tongue slowly across her full cushiony, sensuous lips, making them wet-red and looked him straight in the eyes with her own glassy, speckled bedroom eyes.

The man drowned.

When he came up, he stared back, passion cocked, his whole black being on a live-wire edge. Ready! Solid ready to cut throats, crack skulls, dodge police, steal hearses, drink muddy water, live in a hollow log, and take any rape-fiend chance to be once more in the arms of his high-yellow heart. — Chester Himes

I struggled to kick the habit - I would make a decision to give up smoking, but it was hard. I couldn't resist the urge to steal a smoke. It was at that time that I was gifted Allen Carr's book 'The Easy Way to Stop Smoking.' After I read that book, I didn't touch a fag again. — Mahesh Babu

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

This spicy historical will steal your breath, and capture your heart.
-Susan Sigler, Love Romance Passion — Terry Spear

By a seeming fate, commonly called necessity, they are employed, as it says in an old book, laying up treasures which moth and rust will corrupt and thieves break through and steal. It is a fool's life, as they will find when they get to the end of it, if not before. It — Henry David Thoreau

Excellence is THE trend of the '80s. Walk into any shopping mall bookstore, go to the rack where they keep the best-sellers such as Garfield Gets Spayed, and you'll see a half-dozen books telling you how to be excellent: In Search of Excellence, Finding Excellence, Grasping Hold of Excellence, Where to Hide Your Excellence at Night So the Cleaning Personnel Don't Steal It, etc. — Dave Barry

Don't sell yourself short. No one will value you. Set a fair price for you, your book, your services, whatever it is that you have to offer. Most of us set way too low a price. Put it a little higher than you would normally be inclined to do. The worst that can happen is someone will come along and steal it. — John Kremer

The good people who are publishing this book have a concern that they have expressed to me. The concern is that readers like yourself will read my history of the Baudelaire orphans and attempt to imitate some of the things they do. So at this point in the story, in order to mollify the publishers - the word 'mollify' here means 'get them to stop tearing their hair out in worry' - please allow me to give you a piece of advice, even though I don't know anything about you. The piece of advice is as follows: If you ever need to get to Curdled Cave in a hurry, do not, under any circumstances, steal a boat and attempt to sail across Lake Lachrymose during a hurricane, because it is very dangerous and the chance of your survival are practically zero. — Lemony Snicket

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. They want books as a Turk is thought to want concubines - not to be hastily deflowered, but to be kept at their master's call, and enjoyed more often in thought than in reality. — Robertson Davies

Although the point of blogging is that it doesn't pay, I often steal from my blog for paid publication. I've based several magazine essays on blog posts, as well as an entire book. — Kate Christensen