The Burn Book Quotes & Sayings

Life is like a bad haircut. At first it looks awful, then you kind of get used to it, and before you know it, it it grows out and you gotta get another haircut that maybe won't be so bad, unless of course you keep going to SuperClips, where the hairstylists are so terrible they oughta be using safety scissors, and when they're done you look like your head got caught in a ceiling fan. So life goes on, good haircut, bad haircut, until finally you go bald, and it don't matter no more.
I told this wisdom to my mother, and she said I oughta put it in a book, then burn it. Some people just can't appreciate the profound. — Neal Shusterman

My men are my references. They're waiting outside for the books. They're dangerous."
"Men like that always are. — Ray Bradbury

A candle is a living, flickering light. It can easily be blown out. As we watch a candle burn we see the wax diminish. It melts away - a symbol for life. [ ... ]
Candles have long been central to worship.
By lighting them we announce that we are entering into a different sense of time.
Not the usual ticktock time of daily living, but sacred time, a timeless time. — Gunilla Brodde Norris

Nobody has the right to not be offended. That right doesn't exist in any declaration I have ever read.
If you are offended it is your problem, and frankly lots of things offend lots of people.
I can walk into a bookshop and point out a number of books that I find very unattractive in what they say. But it doesn't occur to me to burn the bookshop down. If you don't like a book, read another book. If you start reading a book and you decide you don't like it, nobody is telling you to finish it.
To read a 600-page novel and then say that it has deeply offended you: well, you have done a lot of work to be offended. — Salman Rushdie

This book was written by a traitor to his class. It is dedicated to bigots everywhere. Ladies and gentlemen of the black shirts, I call upon you to unite, to strike with claws and kitchen pokers, to burn the grub-worms of equality's brood with sulfur and oil, to huddle together whispering about the silverfish in your basements, to make decrees in your great solemn rotten assemblies concerning what is proper, for you have nothing to lose but your last feeble principles. — William T. Vollmann

Carlyle had no option but to sit down and recompose the book as best he could - a task made all the more challenging by the fact that he no longer had notes to call on, for it had been his bizarre and patently misguided practice to burn his notes as he finished each chapter, as a kind of celebration of work done. — Bill Bryson

I can't pass a bookstore without slipping inside, looking for the next book that will burn my hand when I touch its jacket, or hand me over a promissory note of such immense power that it contains the formula that will change everything about me. — Pat Conroy

Harry Potter," a voice says from my left. "Have you tried reading the Bible?" A woman, mid-forties, judgment scribbled all over her pinched, powdered face. Why do Bible lovers always have that constipated look on their face? Don't stereotype, Helena! I do my best to smile politely. "Is that the book where that lady turns into a statue after looking back at a burning city after God told her not to?" I say. "And where three defiant men are thrown into a furnace and don't burn. Oh, and isn't there a gal who feeds and puts to sleep the general of an enemy's army, and then uses a mallet to drive a tent peg into his brain?" She looks at me blankly. "But those are true. And that," she says, pointing to Harry, "is fiction. Not to mention devil worship." "Uh huh, uh huh. Devil worship? Is that like when the Israelites made a cow god of gold and worshipped it?" She's enraged. "You would love this book," I say, shoving The Goblet of Fire at her. "It's PG-rated compared to the Bible." "You, — Tarryn Fisher

Stop it. This is serious! (Selena)
Serious? Please. I'm standing out here on my twenty-ninth birthday, barefoot and in jeans my mother would burn, holding a stupid book to my chest in an effort to summon a Greek love-slave from the great beyond. (Grace) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

That first meeting - the one where the hero and heroine start the slow burn that takes the whole story to turn into true love - is the single most important part of the whole book. Nail it, and you've won yourself readers. — Sarah MacLean

They don't gotta burn the books they just remove 'em — Zack De La Rocha

December 26, 7:40 p.m.
Dear America,
I've been thinking of our first kiss. I suppose I should say first kisses, but what I mean is the second, the one I was actually invited to give you. Did I ever tell you how I felt that night? It wasn't just getting my first kiss ever; it was getting to have that first kiss with you. I've seen so much, America, had access to the corners of our planet. But never have I come across anything so painfully beautiful as that kiss. I wish it was something I could catch with a net or place in a book. I wish it was something I could save and share with the world so I could tell the universe: this is what it's like; this is how it feels when you fall.
These letters are so embarrassing. I'll have to burn them before you get home.
Maxon — Kiera Cass

Eric Schlosser's book on the economy and strategies of the fast-food business should be read by anyone who likes to take their children to fast-food restaurants. I shall certainly never do that again. He employs a long, cold burn, a quiet and impassioned accumulation of detail, with calm, wit and clarity. ( ... ) Fast Food Nation is witness to the rigour and seriousness of the best American journalism, readable, reliable and extremely carefully done. — Adam Nicolson

I possessed only a book, which I carried in my small backpack. Suddenly, while I was walking, the book began to burn. Dawn was breaking and almost no cars passed. While throwing the charred backpack in an irrigation ditch I felt my back sting as though I had wings. — Roberto Bolano

There may never be a baby book that offers the conclusive answer to every question,
but it's possible to extract some wisdom from the suffering of past generations of parents.
Does the book you're reading contradict itself repeatedly,
require you to override all your parental instincts,
or send you into a panic over your own inadequacy?
If so, burn it. — Libby Copeland

Not everyone born free and equal, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against. So! A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the weapon. Breach man's mind. Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man. Me? I won't stomach them for a minute. — Ray Bradbury

Coloured people don't like Little Black Sambo. Burn it. White people don't feel good about Uncle Tom's Cabin. Burn it. Someone's written a book on tobacco and cancer of the lungs? The cigarette people are weeping? Burn the book. — Ray Bradbury

The Talmud, the compilation of discussions of Jewish Law which I have quoted earlier in this book, gives examples of bad prayers, improper prayers, which one should not utter. If a woman is pregnant, neither she nor her husband should pray, "May God grant that this child be a boy" (nor, for that matter, may they pray that it be a girl). The sex of the child is determined at conception, and God cannot be invoked to change it. Again, if a man sees a fire engine racing toward his neighborhood, he should not pray, "Please God, don't let the fire be in my house." Not only is it mean-spirited to pray that someone else's house burn instead of yours, but it is futile. A certain house is already on fire; the most sincere or articulate of prayers will not affect the question of which house it is. — Harold S. Kushner

Beg for Love.
Consider this burning, and those who
burn, as gifts from the Friend.
Nothing to learn.
Too much has already been said.
When you read a single page from
the silent book of your heart,
you will laugh at all this chattering,
all this pretentious learning. — Shaikh Abu-Saeed Abil-Kheir

Often what keeps us stuck and continually doing penance is the very feeling that we must pay for lack of action. We become caught in a circle of blame, condemn ourselves, feel hopeless, and feed the fire - or slow burn - by reciting like a mantra our history of inertia and self-judged wrong choices. Well, let's break that dead-end cycle of waste and regret. — Noelle Sterne

Burn the books and trust the Book; shred the papers and hear the Word. — Salman Rushdie

I almost trust her to burn the bridges while standing at the cliff herself. She hardly agrees to be on the same page as others, either ahead of all or all in a different book. — Parul Wadhwa

When have I ever suggested you burn them? I am allowed to have opinions, aren't I? And I don't hate them - I don't give a fig about them. The only reason I cared is because you were so comfortable belittling me for believing things you only read about. I was afraid you'd turn into one of those literary types who say books can change the world when they're feeling good about themselves and it's only a book when anybody challenges them. It wasn't about the books themselves - it was about hypocrisy. You can speak casually about burning the Alf Yeom for the same reason you'd be horrified if I suggested burning The Satanic Verses - because you have reactions, not convictions. — G. Willow Wilson

What will you do when the Law of God comes in terror; when the trumpet of the archangel shall tear you from your grave; when the eyes of God shall burn their way into your guilty soul; when the great books shall be opened and all your sin and shame shall be punished ... can you stand against an angry Law in that Day? — Charles Spurgeon

The point is obvious. There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches. Every minority, be it Baptist/Unitarian, Irish/Italian/Octogenarian/Zen Buddhist, Zionist/Seventh-day Adventist, Women's Lib/Republican, Mattachine/Four Square Gospel feels it has the will, the right, the duty to douse the kerosene, light the fuse. Every dimwit editor who sees himself as the source of all dreary blanc-mange plain-porridge unleavened literature licks his guillotine and eyes the neck of any author who dares to speak above a whisper or write above a nursery rhyme. — Ray Bradbury

There isn't a single day I don't do some writing
if you don't, you won't have a book. When you're self-employed it is very easy to burn away your time instead
answering e-mails, surfing the Internet, or hanging out with friends. You really must have the discipline to sit down and write every day. Most of what I am writing is living in the back of my head or in my subconscious. I find if I write every day, my subconscious will do the job for me. — Charles De Lint

Do you get the feeling with Sarah Palin, in high school, she was voted least likely to write a book and most likely to burn one? — Robin Williams

The lights burn bright for those who obey; the others will live in shadow all the days of their lives (The Book of Shhh, Psalm 17). — Lauren Oliver

Burn the book. It serves you once.
Read the book. Serves you for a lifetime.
Lend the book. It serves for generations to come. — Kowtham Kumar K

If I were rich I would have many books, and I would pamper myself with bindings bright to the eye and soft to the touch, paper generously opaque, and type such as men designed when printing was very young. I would dress my gods in leather and gold, and burn candles of worship before them at night, and string their names like beads on a string. — Will Durant

But once an idea for a novel seizes a writer ... well, it's like an inner fire that at first warms you and makes you feel good but then begins to eat you alive, burn you up from within. You can't just walk away from the fire; it keeps burning. The only way to put it out is to write the book. — Dean Koontz

I have to find my happy thoughts, and my pain, and let them do their alchemic dance to become words, sentences, paragraphs, pages, and eventually a novel. It always seems a little improbable that I can sit at a blank computer screen and just keep typing until I have a whole book. It's like getting into your car with a full tank of gas, but no idea where you're going, or how long the journey will be, but there's an envelope in the glove compartment. It will contain the first clue, and the direction to start driving.

What direction do we start? South - lets burn this mother fucker down! — Laurell K. Hamilton

They're going to burn this complete collection of MacDonald's children's book There's a new translation out in paperback but I've always dreamed of eating the entire twelve-volume set in hardcover I refuse to watch something so delicious get turned to charcoal right in front of me — Mizuki Nomura

Only a foolish soul would love the stars. As beautiful as they are, they will burn you. Regardless of your best intentions. — Kendal Rob

The summer movies are coming out. My advice: just stay home and burn a good book. — Stephen Colbert

His fingers painted my skin with ruby red patterns of desire. In Keahi's kiss I could taste the red burn of chili encrusted in the rich sweetness of melted chocolate. I breathed in his scent and it spoke to me of vanilla. The ink of my malu tattoo began to burn, searing markings of fiery joy. — Lani Wendt Young

I will write in words of fire.
I will write them on your skin.
I will write about desire.
Write beginnings, write of sin.
You're the book I love the best,
your skin only holds my truth,
you will be a palimpsest
lines of age rewriting youth.
You will not burn upon the pyre.
Or be buried on the shelf.
You're my letter to desire:
And you'll never read yourself.
I will trace each word and comma
As the final dusk descends,
You're my tale of dreams and drama,
Let us find out how it ends. — Neil Gaiman

I can walk into a bookshop and point out a number of books that I find very unattractive in what they say. But it doesn't occur to me to burn the bookshop down. If you don't like a book, read another book. If you start reading a book and you decide you don't like it, nobody is telling you to finish it. — Salman Rushdie

So, my good father, you go and write the order to burn that book, as your church requires of you. And I will say nothing to the printing house, as my conscience requires of me. Censura praevia or censura repressiva, the effect is the same. Either way, a book is destroyed. Better you do it than have us so intellectually enslaved that we do it for you. — Geraldine Brooks

We all know that books burn, yet we have the greater knowledge that books cannot be killed by fire. People die, but books never die. No man and no force can put thought in a concentration camp forever. No man and no force can take from the world the books that embody man's eternal fight against tyranny of every kind. — Franklin D. Roosevelt

Cut word lines - Cut music lines - Smash the control images - Smash the control machine - Burn the books - Kill the priests - Kill! Kill! Kill! — William S. Burroughs

That was only the beginning - where one burns books, one will finally also burn people. — Heinrich Heine

Aren't you, like me, hoping that some person, thing, or event will come along to give you that final feeling of inner well-being you desire? Don't you often hope: 'May this book, idea, course, trip, job, country or relationship fulfill my deepest desire.' But as long as you are waiting for that mysterious moment you will go on running helter-skelter, always anxious and restless, always lustful and angry, never fully satisfied. You know that this is the compulsiveness that keeps us going and busy, but at the same time makes us wonder whether we are getting anywhere in the long run. This is the way to spiritual exhaustion and burn-out. This is the way to spiritual death. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

From the Prize winning poem - UNBORN in the book Terra Affirmative.
Under the surface / her body is curled, / seed of the one race, / shell of the world. // She is thw waterfall, / she is the womb, / she is the bubble, /she is the tomb. // Her hair flows upward, / blood red of the birth. / Her arms are folded / deep into the earth. // She is the fern, / she is the bark, / she is the lantern, / she is the dark. // Her eyes burn the flame / of the old and the young. / Her breath is the name / of each branch of each lung. // She is the ingredient. / She is the blend. / She is the beginning. / She is the end. — Jay Woodman

The State insists that, by thus quarantining the general reading public against books not too rugged for grown men and women in order to shield juvenile innocence, it is exercising its power to promote the general welfare. Surely this is to burn the house to roast the pig ... The incidence of this enactment is to reduce the adult population of Michigan to reading only what is fit for children. — Felix Frankfurter

Use your intuition. Picture how things happen, why they happen. Don't stick rigidly to first impressions, and once you've read the rule book, throw it away. Better still, burn the bastard. — Andrew Barrett

And wasn't it this bright boy you selected for beating and tortures after hours? Of course it was. We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for their are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against. So! A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the weapon. Breach man's mind. Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man? Me? I won't stomach them for a minute. And so when houses were finally fireproofed completely, all over the world (you were correct in your assumption the other night) there was no longer need of firemen for the old purposes. They were given the new job, as custodians of our peace of mind, the focus of our understandable and rightful dread of being inferior: official censors, judges and executors. That's you, Montag, and that's me. — Ray Bradbury

Once I accepted the fact that I was bad luck, I shied away from group activities. And groups. And activities. I started spending a lot of time in my room, tucked under my covers reading books. There's only so much damage a book can do, and I wasn't worried about hurting myself. Accidentally hurting yourself is way better than hurting other people.
Sure, I got lonely for a while. But getting invited to slumber parties just wasn't worth the stress of wondering if I might accidentally burn down the house with my flat iron or be the only survivor of a freak sleepover massacre. And loneliness is just like everything else - if you endure it long enough, you get used to it. — Paula Stokes

I can see he's not in your good books,' said the messenger. 'No, and if he were I would burn my library. — William Shakespeare

I will lead you to the City Hall, clean out the police force, hang the Prosecuting Attorney, burn every book that has a particle of law in it, then enact new laws for the workingmen. — Denis Kearney

You need not to burn copies of a book. Just make people feel indifferent to the book. — Lara Biyuts

Writer's Resolution
Enough's Enough! No more shall I
Pursue the Muse and scorch the pie
Or dream of Authoring a book
When I (unhappy soul) must cook;
Or burn the steak while I wool-gather,
And stir my spouse into a lather
Invoking words like "Darn!" and such
And others that are worse (Oh, much!)
Concerning culinary knack
Which I (HE says) completely lack.
I'll keep my mind upon my work;
I'll learn each boresome cooking quirk;
This day shall mark a new leaf's turning...
That smell! Oh Hell! The beans are burning! — Terry Ryan

Those who want to burn books are either afraid of the ideas contained within the covers or they haven't the courage to stand up for the views which they themselves profess to hold. — Tommy Douglas

There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches. — Ray Bradbury

One of the scandalous things I did was as I read them afterward I would burn them. I loved them, but for practical reasons I had to lighten the load. I burned favorites, like William Faulkner's "As I Lay Dying." There's a whole list in the back of my book. It's me,[Adolf] Hitler, [Benito] Mussolini, and Pol Pot. We're the book burners. — Cheryl Strayed

We are free to burn the Qur'an or any other book, and to criticize Muhammad or any other human being. Let no one forget it. — Sam Harris

You turned the page, i burned the book. — Anonymous

Here are beauties which pierce like swords or burn like cold iron. Here is a book which will break your heart. [on Lord of the Rings] — C.S. Lewis

I could not do it. I would not do it. I sat back on my heels with the book in my hand with the light of the fire flickering and dying down and realized that not even in mortal danger could I bring myself to burn a book. — Philippa Gregory

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

[It] began to seem amazing how often it was assumed that having a vagina automatically meant I was less intelligent, talented, capable, and interesting than the world's least interesting human being who happened to have a penis. — Francine Prose

Blindness to the aesthetic element in mathematics is widespread and can account for a feeling that mathematics is dry as dust, as exciting as a telephone book ... Contrariwise, appreciation of this element makes the subject live in a wonderful manner and burn as no other creation of the human mind seems to do. — Philip J. Davis

If people wrote their reviews on paper and put them into a real, physical library, I am sure that the Goodreads administrators would be very reluctant to pull them down from shelves and burn them. When you can get rid of a piece of writing just by clicking on a few links, there's a temptation to believe that it's less serious. But it isn't. It's just less clear what you've done. — G.R. Reader

Priest is a fisherman and Holy Book is a fishook. We either refuse to be a fish or we burn in the frying pan of irrationality! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

Colored people don't like Little Black Sambo. Burn it. White people don't feel good about Uncle Tom's Cabin. Burn it. Someone's written a book on tobacco and cancer of the lungs? The cigarette people are weeping? Burn the book. Serenity, Montag. Peace, Montag. Take your fight outside. Better yet, into the incinerator. Funerals are unhappy and pagan? Eliminate them, too. Five minutes after a person is dead he's on his way to the Big Flue, the Incinerators serviced by helicopters all over the country. — Ray Bradbury

Ghosts can haunt damned near anything. I have heard them in the breathy voice of a song and seen them between the covers of a book. They have hidden in trees so that their faces peer out of the bark, and hovered beneath the silver surface of water. They disguise themselves as cracks in concrete or come calling in a delirium of fever. On summer days they keep pace like the shadow of our shadow. They lurk in the breath of young girls who give us our first kiss. I've seen men who were haunted to the point of madness by things that never were and things that should have been. I've seen ghosts in the lines on a woman's face and heard them in the jangling of keys. The ghosts in fire freeze and the ghosts in ice burn. Some died long ago; some were never born. Some ride the blood in my veins until it reaches my brain. Sometimes I even mistake myself for one. Sometimes I am one. — Damien Echols

If they burn a book, have no worries. The book will feel NO pain so neither should you! True destruction of the Qur'an cannot be done with fire; it is destroyed when we fail to remember & practice its lessons in our daily lives. If this occurs, then it is ANOTHER fire that you should truly be concerned about! — Lupe Fiasco

Melanie cried, but only a little bit. She had gained quite a bit of experience with crying over the past few years. She could at least console herself that she never cried at trivial things; no book had ever brought her to tears. Instead, it was deaths, debts, and abandonment that moved her to tears. The world had simply decided that it didn't particularly like Melanie Masters, and that was an appropriate thing to cry about.

In the end, Melanie did what she always did after crying. She got to her feet, said a silent curse, and went back to work. The world didn't like her, but she didn't like the world either. It would be impossible to burn the whole world down, so the only other option was to carry on as though she weren't losing a small piece of her soul with every attack the world made against her. — Alexander Wales

Where they burn books, at the end they also burn people — Heinrich Heine

Before bed, I read a book or flip on the radio - I'm not picky, I'll just turn it on and see what comes up. I burn a yummy lavender- scented candle. — Carrie Underwood

Man today lives in a coffin of flesh. Hearing and seeing nothing. The Land and Law are perverted. The Good Book says I will gather you to Jerusalem to the furnace of my wrath. It says thou art the land that is not cleansed. I concur. We need a great fire that will sweep from ocean to ocean and I offer my oath that I will soak myself in kerosene if promised the fire would be allowed to burn. — Philipp Meyer

Every world crowns its own kings, laurels it own gods. A Hans Anderson book cover opens its worlds: the snowqueen, bluewhite as ice, flies in a sleigh through her snow-thick air: our hearts are ice. Always: sludge, offal, shit against palaces of diamond. That man could dream god and heaven: how mud labors. We burn in our own fire. — Sylvia Plath

Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas. The source of better ideas is wisdom. The surest path to wisdom is a liberal education. — Alfred Whitney Griswold

Pulvis et umbra sumus. It's a line from Horace. 'We are dust and shadows'. Appropriate, don't you think?" Will said. "It's not a long life, killing demons; one tends to die young, and then they burn your body - dust to dust, in the literal sense. And then we vanish into the shadows of history, nary a mark on the page of a mundane book to remind the world that once we existed at all. — Cassandra Clare