The Fire Within Book Quotes & Sayings

The State exists simply to promote and to protect the ordinary happiness of human beings in this life. A husband and wife chatting over a fire, a couple of friends having a game of darts in a pub, a man reading a book in his own room or digging in his own garden-that is what the State is there for. And unless they are helping to increase and prolong and protect such moments, all the laws, parliaments, armies, courts, police, economics, etc., are simply a waste of time. — C.S. Lewis

Grandma told me Mama was once caught by the Principal for writing in the front of her book, "In Case of Fire, Throw This in First." I have never had so much respect for Mama as the day I heard this. — Erma Bombeck

And a fire in the fireplace? Wow, that's impressive." I continued, walking backwards into the room.
"Yeah, I saw it in a book about how to woo women ... apparently you all like to be boinked in front of a roaring fire. — Alice Clayton

Man is the animal who weeps and laughs - and writes. If the first Prometheus brought fire from heaven in a fennel-stalk, the last will take it back - in a book. — John Cowper Powys

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

An assassin can be found for every president. And for every prophet there are a thousand interpreters to distort the essence of the religion, to replace the bright flame with the heat of the inquisitors' pyres. The time came when every book was cast into the fire, when every symphony was reduced to a popular tune and played in all the drinking dens. A sound philosophical basis could be set in place under any vile nonsense. — Sergei Lukyanenko

No one will be alive by the last book. In fact, they all die in the fifth. The sixth book will be just a thousand-page description of snow blowing across the graves ... — George R R Martin

Keep in mind that this appears in the same book of the Bible that approves the death sentence for a child who curses his parents, owners of oxen who injure someone through the owner's negligence, anybody who works or kindles a fire on Sunday, and anyone who has sex with an animal. — Jim Butcher

Books light the fire - whether it's a book that's already written, or an empty journal that needs to be filled in. — Meg Wolitzer

Conspiracies fascinate me. When I visited the Rozabal shrine in Srinagar before writing my first book, I remember thinking that the person enshrined there was no ordinary mortal. History is rife with mysteries, and that visit ignited a fire to unveil some of them. — Ashwin Sanghi

Rises XXIII. Fire Rises XXIV. Drawn to the Loadstone Rock Book the Third - — Charles Dickens

Writing a book is very personal. It's a very personal relationship. A book will start with something as simple as two men talking about work. That gets the fire going. Sustaining that fire is the hard work. It takes attention and empathy to hone the characters. — Ron Carlson

I never had a book get angry or yell at me, never had a book show disappointment in me or consider me stupid because I didn't understand a line or needed to reread a paragraph or didn't know a word, never had a book mock me, never had a book turn its back on me or slap me in the face or fire me from reading it or decide it was in love with a faster, more intelligent, handsomer reader, I never even had a book get bored with me, or question my logic, I never had a book look suddenly crestfallen because I shut it and left it on its own, I've never met a book too shy to come into the bathroom with me or under the covers, I never met a book that refused to read me to sleep. — Mark Frutkin

Despite any warnings, she continued to move towards the flames he had ignited within her. Her limbs tingled as the fire spread, each touch of Alex's hands and lips caused a wave of cinders. — Amy Lee Peine

I was sprawled out in my usual position on the couch, half asleep but entirely drunk, torturing myself by tearing memories out of my mind at random like matches from a book, striking them one at a time and drowsily setting myself on fire. — Jonathan Tropper

According to your holy book, every single Buddhist, Jew, Hindu, Muslim, follower of various minor traditions or sects, those who do not affiliate themselves with a religious tradition and the approximately 2.74 billion humans who have never had the 'privilege' of hearing the word of your Messiah will be sentenced to eternal damnation in a lake of fire - regardless of moral standings or positive worldly accomplishments. If this sounds like a fair proposition to you, then I bite my tongue - but I honestly believe that the majority of Christians do not agree with these doctrinal assertions, and instead categorize themselves as 'Christians' out of cultural familiarity or perhaps out of complete ignorance in regards to the topic. — David G. McAfee

I once read Updike after writing a first draft, and I wanted to put my own book on the fire. I've since learned to read utter crap while I'm writing: pulp is the thing. — John Niven

I admire Tolkien greatly. His books had enormous influence on me. And the trope that he sort of established - the idea of the Dark Lord and his Evil Minions - in the hands of lesser writers over the years and decades has not served the genre well. It has been beaten to death. The battle of good and evil is a great subject for any book and certainly for a fantasy book, but I think ultimately the battle between good and evil is weighed within the individual human heart and not necessarily between an army of people dressed in white and an army of people dressed in black. When I look at the world, I see that most real living breathing human beings are grey. — George R R Martin

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

If I could tell you about Red
I would sing to you of fire Sweet like cherries
Burning like cinnamon Smelling like a rose in the sun — Dixie Dawn Miller Goode

Jimmy: One day, when I'm no longer spending my days running a sweet-stall, I may write a book about us all. It's all here. (slapping his forehead) Written in flames a mile high. And it won't be recollected in tranquillity either, picking daffodils with Auntie Wordsworth. It'll be recollected in fire, and blood. My blood. — John Osborne

You have started the book with this bubble over your head that contains a cathedral full of fire - that contains a novel so vast and great and penetrating and bright and dark that it will put all other novels ever written to shame. And then, as you get towards the end, you begin to realise, no, it's just this book. — Michael Cunningham

A book is a delicate friend, a white bird, an exquisite being, afraid of water.
Darling things! Afraid of water, of fire, They shiver in the wind. Clumsy, crude human fingers leave bruises on them that'll never fade! Never!
Some people touch books without washing their hands!
Some underline things in ink!
Some even tear pages out! — Tatyana Tolstaya

He rose, placed another small log on the fire, sat back down in his armchair, and opened his book.
"What are you reading?" Reggie asked.
"On a wild night like this? Agatha Christie, of course. I still feel compelled to see if Hercule Poirot's 'little gray cells' will do their job one more time. It seems to often inspire my own brain, however inferior it might be to the diminutive Belgian's. — David Baldacci

But seriously Poirot, what a hobby! Compare that to
" his voice sank to an appreciative purr
"an easy chair in front of a wood fire in a long low room lined with books
must be a long room
not a square one. Books all round one. A glass of port
and a book open in your hand. Time rolls back as you read. — Agatha Christie

Apparently zombie killing wears him out. I slip beneath my flannel covers and fire up my e-reader. I always said I wouldn't get one; that I would always continue the timeless tradition of holding a physical book within my hands, but I do have to — Lacey Black

I am fascinated by the fact that the stories show how a better life comes primarily through self-sacrifice. This is brought out unmistakably in the fourth book, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. — A. Hussa

Beneath my eyes opens
a book; I see to the bottom; the heart
I see to the depths. I know what loves are trembling into fire; how jealousy shoots its green flashes hither and thither; how intricately love crosses love; love makes knots; love brutally tears them apart. I have been knotted; I have been torn apart. — Virginia Woolf

I didn't ask to be born!"
"No, but I asked." He was breathing hard. His eyes hard and glinting with a fire that burned straight through me. "I asked for you every day of my life! — Airicka Phoenix

When you are old and grey and full of sleep
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep — W.B.Yeats

On the hob was a little brass kettle, hissing and boiling; spread upon the floor was a warm, thick rug; before the fire was a folding-chair, unfolded and with cushions on it; by the chair was a small folding-table, unfolded, covered with a white cloth, and upon it were spread small covered dishes, a cup and saucer, and a tea-pot; on the bed were new, warm coverings, a curious wadded silk robe, and some books. The little, cold, miserable room seemed changed into Fairyland. It was actually warm and glowing. — Frances Hodgson Burnett

We cannot tear out a single page of our life, but we can throw the whole book in the fire. — George Sand

I felt the heat of the animosity they bear towards me, the vindictive nature that drives a man to destroy his neighbour in a fire as if he were a banned book ... for what is the difference? Every book is imbued with the human spirit. — Sjon

Spirituality is human equality. Spirituality is human rights. They are one and the same thing," Lord Fire replied "To act as if you are religious or spiritual whilst treating other people unequally or as an inferior means you are nothing but a fraud."

Book 5 - The King of Control — M.C. Rooney

I spent the majority of time at school trying to break the rules. I would climb to the top of buildings; I even burned a building down once - not intentionally, just because I was interested in fire. I remember going through the rule book, ticking off the ones I had broken and looking for the ones I hadn't. — Simon McBurney

The inspiration for the book came after a visitation from a spiritual being that materialized before me on two consecutive nights. Although I crumpled into unconsciousness at the outset of each encounter and consciously remembered hearing only an initial word or two from the entity, I awakened on the dawn after the second visit with the ideas for The Divine Fire bubbling in my brain. — Brad Steiger

At the age of fifteen he had bought off a twopenny stall in the market a duo-decimo book of recipes, gossip, and homilies, printed in 1605. His stepmother, able to read figures, had screamed at the sight of it when he had proudly brought it home. 1605 was 'the olden days', meaning Henry VIII, the executioner's axe, and the Great Plague. She thrust the book into the kitchen fire with the tongs, yelling that it must be seething with lethal germs. A limited, though live, sense of history. And history was the reason why she would never go to London. She saw it as dominated by the Bloody Tower, Fleet Street full of demon barbers, as well as dangerous escalators everywhere. — Anthony Burgess

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