The Host Book Quotes & Sayings

I speak as an unregenerate reader, one who still believes that language and not technology is the true evolutionary miracle. I have not yet given up on the idea that the experience of literature offers a kind of wisdom that cannot be discovered elsewhere; that there is profundity in the verbal encounter itself, never mind what further profundities that author has to offer; and that for a host of reasons the bound book is the ideal vehicle for the written word. — Sven Birkerts

How? They have done it in two ways. The first is to take the crimes of the Democratic Party and blame them on America. Progressives today are quick to fault "America" for slavery and a host of other outrages. America did this, America did that. As we will see in this book, America didn't do those things, the Democrats did. So the Democrats have cleverly foisted their sins on America, and then presented themselves as the messiahs offering redemption for those sins. It's crazy, but it's also ingenious. We have to give them credit for ingenuity. — Dinesh D'Souza

I would rather have as my patron a host of anonymous citizens digging into their own pockets for the price of a book or a magazine than a small body of enlightened and responsible men administering public funds. I would rather chance my personal vision of truth striking home here and there in the chaos of publication that exists than attempt to filter it through a few sets of official, honorably public-spirited scruples. — John Updike

Because He lives and was dead He has the keys of Hell and of death. By virtue of His humiliation He reigns. For the suffering of death He is crowned with Glory and honor. The heavenly host proclaim His worthiness to take the Book and open its seven seals, singing, "For You were slain and have redeemed us to God by Your blood." He descended that He might ascend above all things and fill all things! He laid aside His Glory that He might be crowned with this new Glory and honor and might have all things put under His feet as the Son of Man. We speak, therefore, of Jesus Christ the Risen One, who once died, but has now risen from the tomb and quit this earth for the splendors of the New Jerusalem. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Hauntings are memes, especially pernicious thought contagions, social contagions that need no viral or bacterial host and are transmitted in a thousand different ways. A book, a poem, a song, a bedtime story, a grandmother's suicide, the choreography of a dance, a few frames of film, a diagnosis of schizophrenia, a deadly tumble from a horse, a faded photograph, or a story you tell your daughter. — Caitlin R. Kiernan

The text moves like a small crustacean with compound eye and complex nervous system; throbbing, involuted, it becomes a parasite on a different body, animal, using 'filiform protrusions through which it sucks the vital juices of its host.' Parasite or creature in mutation on the shore, torrid / delirium: mordant mortality, systematic competition the narrator against the I, leaking gas, a lapse of memory against a promise, an inset in a book. A muscular, involuntary bulging in the breast, circling all its inner surface: mesoblast: visceral. — Nicole Brossard

When I first opened this book and saw all those scholarly footnotes, my heart leapt up as though I saw a host of golden daffodils. — Steven Moore

I'm the only talk show host, I think, if there's such a category in, what's called, the book of records, to have a guest die while we were taping the show, yeah. — Dick Cavett

One need not believe in Pallas Athena, the virgin goddess, to be overwhelmed by the Parthenon. Similarly, a man who rejects all dogmas, all theologies and all religious formulations of beliefs may still find Genesis the sublime book par excellence. Experiences and aspirations of which intimations may be found in Plato, Nietzsche, and Spinoza have found their most evocative expression in some sacred books. Since the Renaissance, Shakespeare, Rembrandt, Mozart, and a host of others have shown that this religious dimension can be experienced and communicated apart from any religious context. But that is no reason for closing my heart to Job's cry, or to Jeremiah's, or to the Second Isaiah. I do not read them as mere literature; rather, I read Sophocles and Shakespeare with all my being, too. — Walter Kaufmann

I remind myself, "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good." (Cribbed from Voltaire.) A twenty-minute walk that I do is better than the four-mile run that I don't do. The imperfect book that gets published is better than the perfect book that never leaves my computer. The dinner party of take-out Chinese food is better than the elegant dinner that I never host. — Brene Brown

Regardless of what I do, whether I write a book or whether I act or whether I host, I'll always do stand-up comedy because those moments, that's what I crave. If I do something funny, and I hear a crowd laugh in that moment, we're all sharing the exact same experience and the exact same feeling. — Howie Mandel

When the occasional stranger approaches me at a party to say, "Hey, you're Felicia Day. Let's talk about that comic book you were tweeting about last week!" it's the greatest thing in the world. Because it saves me from having to stand in the corner awkwardly, drinking all the Sprite, and then leaving after ten minutes without saying good-bye to my host. — Felicia Day

A book is a carrier, and the ideas contained within its covers are an infection waiting to be spread. They breed in men. They adapt according to the host. Books alter men, and men, in their turn, alter worlds. — John Connolly

Those that spend the greater part of their time in reading or writing books are, of course, apt to take rather particular notice of accumulations of books when they come across them. They will not pass a stall, a shop, or even a bedroom-shelf without reading some title, and if they find themselves in an unfamiliar library, no host need trouble himself further about their entertainment. The putting of dispersed sets of volumes together, or the turning right way up of those which the dusting housemaid has left in an apoplectic condition, appeals to them as one of the lesser Works of Mercy. — M.R. James

O all you host of heaven!O Earth! waht else?
And shall i couple hell? O Fie! Hold, hold, my heart
And you, my sinews, grow not instant old,
But bear me stiffly up. Remember thee?
Ay, thou poor ghost, while memmory holds a seat
In this distracted globe. Remember thee?
Yea, from the table of my memory
I'll wipe away all trivial fond records,
All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past
That youth and observation copied there,
And thy commandment all alone shall live
Within the book and volume of my brain,
Unmixed with baser matter; yes, by heaven! — William Shakespeare

Few religions are definite about the size of Heaven, but on the planet Earth the Book of Revelation (ch. XXI, v.16) gives it as a cube 12,000 furlongs on a side. This is somewhat less than 500,000,000,000,000,000,000 cubic feet. Even allowing that the Heavenly Host and other essential services take up at least two thirds of this space, this leaves about one million cubic feet of space for each human occupant- assuming that every creature that could be called 'human' is allowed in, and the the human race eventually totals a thousand times the numbers of humans alive up until now. This is such a generous amount of space that it suggests that room has also been provided for some alien races or - a happy thought - that pets are allowed. — Terry Pratchett

Gina Hyams has put together a fabulous fun book/gift: Pie Contest in a Box: Everything You Need to Host a Pie Contest. There's a great book inside, with recipes, pie history, and plenty of inspiration for gathering your friends together to see who can make the best pie. Plus, ribbons! And scorecards! This would be a great party. — Shauna James Ahern

Our host drifted away, and Vidia and I continued chatting about this and that. Swift judgments came down. The simplicity in Hemingway was "bogus" and nothing, Vidia said, like his own. Things Fall Apart was a fine book, but Achebe's refusal to write about his decades in America was disappointing. Heart of Darkness was good, but structurally a failure. I asked him about the biography by Patrick French, The World Is What It Is, which he had authorized. He stiffened. That book, which was extraordinarily well written, was also shocking in the extent to which it revealed a nasty, petty, and insecure man. "One gives away so much in trust," Vidia said. "One expects a certain discretion. It's painful, it's painful. But that's quite all right. Others will be written. The record will be corrected." He sounded like a boy being brave after gashing his thumb. The — Teju Cole