The List Book Quotes & Sayings

I was a pretty good physicist in my time. Too good - good enough to realize that all our science is just a cookery book, with an orthodox theory of cooking that nobody's allowed to question, and a list of recipes that mustn't be added to except by special permission from the head cook. — Aldous Huxley

Onomatomania (n.) Vexation at having difficulty in finding the right word. Finding a word that so perfectly describes a rather large portion of my everyday existence is one of the things that makes reading the dictionary feel like an intensely personal endeavor. The book is no longer merely a list of words; suddenly it is a catalog of the foibles of the human condition, and it is speaking directly to me. Of course, as soon as I learned this word I promptly forgot what it was, but this just provided me with the frustration of not being able to think of it, and then the satisfaction of once again finding it. also — Ammon Shea

Windham, but not often. There were no murders in anyone's memory, no rapes or molestations or sudden disappearances. It's a quiet town. Windham was perfect, we thought. Safe and sound, and that's where Veronica and I would grow up. We moved there ten years ago. That was in April 2005. I was nine and my little sister Veronica was almost three. My dad, Dr. Simon Taylor, had made a bunch from the popularity of his book, and it was number four on the best-seller list and still holding fast. I'll bet fifty thousand a month was tumbling in, and Dad had already signed a two million dollar advance on his next book. — Peter Gilboy

Well ... yes, and here we go again. But before we get to The Work, as it were, I want to make sure I know how to cope with this elegant typewriter - (and, yes, it appears that I do) - so why not make this quick list of my life's work and then get the hell out of town on the 11:05 to Denver? Indeed. Why not? But for just a moment I'd like to say, for the permanent record, that it is a very strange feeling to be a 40-year-old American writer in this century and sitting alone in this huge building on Fifth Avenue in New York at one o'clock in the morning on the night before Christmas Eve, 2000 miles from home, and compiling a table of contents for a book of my own Collected Works in an office with a tall glass door that leads out to a big terrace looking down on The Plaza Fountain. Very strange. — Hunter S. Thompson

...literacy is as vital as food, security, limiting population growth, and control of the environment.

Education, after all, is the one issue that affects every other one. I think of it in the same way as dropping a pebble into a pond and getting a ripple effect. Educated people make more money and are more likely to escape poverty. Educated parents raise healthier children.

...The list goes on, just as ripples in a body of water emanate outward. — John Wood

The Bible is not, in other words, simply a list of true doctrines or a collection of proper moral commands - though it includes plenty of both. The Bible is not simply the record of what various people thought as they struggled to know God and follow him, though it is that as well. It is not simply the record of past revelations, as though what mattered were to study such things in the hopes that one might have one for oneself. It is the book whose whole narrative is about new creation, that is, about resurrection, so that when each of the gospels ends with the raising of Jesus from the dead, and when Revelation ends with new heavens and new earth populated by God's people risen from the dead, this should come not as a surprise but as the ultimate fulfillment of what the story had been about all along. — N. T. Wright

Let me be candid. If I had to rank book-acquisition experiences in order of comfort, ease, and satisfaction, the list would go like this: 1. The perfect independent bookstore, like Pygmalion in Berkeley. 2. A big, bright Barnes & Noble. I know they're corporate, but let's face it - those stores are nice. Especially the ones with big couches. 3. The book aisle at Walmart. (It's next to the potting soil.) 4. The lending library aboard the U.S.S. West Virginia, a nuclear submarine deep beneath the surface of the Pacific. 5. Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore. — Robin Sloan

It is an art form to hate New York City properly. So far I have always been a featherweight debunker of New York; it takes too much energy and endurance to record the infinite number of ways the city offends me. Were I to list them all, I would fill up a book the size of the Manhattan yellow pages, and that would merely be the prologue. Every time I submit myself to the snubs and indignities of that swaggering city and set myself adrift among the prodigious crowds, a feeling of displacement, profound and enervating, takes me over, killing all the coded cells of my hard-won singularity. The city marks my soul with a most profane, indelible graffiti. There is too much of too much there. — Pat Conroy

God's M.O., he reflected, is to transmute evil into good. If He is active here, He is doing that now, although our eyes can't perceive it; the process lies hidden beneath the surface of reality, and emerges only later. To, perhaps, our waiting heirs. Paltry people who will not know the dreadful war we've gone through, and the losses we took, unless in some footnote in a minor history book they catch a notion. Some brief mention. With no list of the fallen. — Philip K. Dick

A star is extinguished, another will begin to shine - thus it is written in the Book of Nature — Guido Von List

I am writing to apply for the position of bookkeeper. Attached, you will find my list of qualifications. I have been keeping books for four years now, and I am never going to give them back. — Joey Comeau

If asked to list my ten favorite American fiction writers, Gail Godwin would be among them. In this, her latest ... she evokes in a short book the long married life of two artists. Evenings at Five is a strong tale of love-after-death. — Ned Rorem

She quickly realized she had an affinity for the older books and their muted scents of past dinners and foreign countries, the tea and chocolate stains coloring the phrases. You could never be certain what you would find in a book that has spent time with someone else. As she has rifled through the pages looking for defects, she had discovered an entrance ticket to Giverny, a receipt for thirteen bottles of champagne, a to-do list that included, along with groceries and dry cleaning, the simple reminder, 'buy a gun.' Bits of life tucked like stowaways in between the chapters. Sometimes she couldn't decide which story she was most drawn to. — Erica Bauermeister

Whenever I'm reading a book I enjoy, I always develop a mental list of the people I want to share it with. — Jeannette Walls

Early 1990s, Deborah Tannen, a linguist at Georgetown University, attracted international notice with her book You Just Don't Understand. Her book, which was on the New York Times bestseller list for over four years, argued that men and women often talk past each other without appreciating that the other sex is almost another culture. Women, for example, are highly attentive to the thoughts and feelings of others; men are less so. Women view men's speaking styles as blunt and uncaring; men view women's as indirect and obscure. — James W. Pennebaker

They say in that book (Keneally's Schindler's List) that I gave the Jews the food in their mouths. I never had time to find out who was sick and who had to be fed (by hand). I am no good as a nurse, I tell you frankly. I have no talent for nursing ... I bought the food for everyone. — Emilie Schindler

On November 18 of alternate years Mr Earbrass begins writing 'his new novel'. Weeks ago he chose its title at random from a list of them he keeps in a little green note-book. It being tea-time of the 17th, he is alarmed not to have thought of a plot to which The Unstrung Harp might apply. — Edward Gorey

I jump around in the plotting stage, where I basically just make a bulleted list of every damn thing that happens in the entire book. — Peter V. Brett

What are we after when we open one of those books? What is it that makes a classic a classic? ... in old-fashioned terms, the answer is that it wll elevate your spirit. And that's why I can't take much stock in the idea of going through a list of books or 'covering' a fixed number of selections, or anyway striving for the blessed state of having read this, or the other. Having read a book means nothing. Reading a book may be the most tremendous experience of your life; having read it is an item in your memory, part of your receding past ... Why we have that odd faith in the magic of having read a book, I don't know. We don't apply the same principle elsewhere: We don't believe in having heard Mendelssohn's violin concerto ...
I say, don't read the classics
try to discover your own classics; every life has its own. — Rudolf Flesch

He is writing a book," said the King, following them out into the sunny, crisp gardens. "About the gardens here. We have two of his books already. Library, north side, O. What say you, Miss Azalea? Does he pass that list of your sisters'?"
Azalea cocked her head. Was the king actually teasing her?
"He'll have to shave," she said, deciding to take his lead.
"And what," said the King, stroking his own close-trimmed beard, "is wrong with whiskers?"
Azalea laughed, surprised at the King's uncharacteristic funning. — Heather Dixon

I tossed the book aside. Great. My dad was a D-list god who frolicked in the woods. He was probably eliminated early last season on Dancing with the Asgardians. — Rick Riordan

As I went through all these experiences, I began to compile a list that wasn't written down in any book, only inscribed in my soul. To me these were as universal, dependable, and invariable as the laws of nature. Together they constituted The Forty Rules of the Religion of Love, which could be attained through love and love only. — Elif Shafak

The best source for finding an agent is called Literary Agents of North America. It's a complete list of agents, not only by name and address, but by type of book they represent and by what their submission criteria are. — Sara Paretsky

Steve Coogan picks up enough to lecture an interviewer: This is a postmodern novel before there was any modernism to be post about. Later it's claimed that Tristram Shandy was No. 8 on the Observer's list of the greatest novels, which cheers everyone until they discover the list was chronological. — Roger Ebert

I could list more excuses, but a mind that is set against accomplishing its goals will always have a fresh one close at hand. Instead, I'll give you first step: set your morning alarm one hour earlier. Devote that hour to your dreams. Rip out the snooze button. Know you will sleep all the better when your project is done. Think I'm kidding? Think this is just a clever way to start a book? — Terry Fletcher

With the vague hope that it might somehow explain his dream, he took one of his old textbooks from the shelves and tried to read the chapter on lycanthropy. The book cataloged the queerly universal primitive beliefs that human beings could change into dangerous carnivorous animals. He skimmed the list of human wolves and bears and jaguars, human tigers and alligators and sharks, human cats and human leopards and human hyenas. The were-tigers of Malaysia, he read, were believed invulnerable in the transformed — Jack Williamson

TV was entertainment of the last resort. There was nothing on during the day in the summer other than game shows and soap operas. Besides, a TV-watching child was considered available for chores: take out the trash, clean your room, pick up that mess, fold those towels, mow the lawn ... the list was endless. We all became adept at chore-avoidance. Staying out of sight was a reliable strategy. Drawing or painting was another: to my mother, making art trumped making beds. A third choir-avoidance technique was to read. A kid with his or her nose in a book is a kid who is not fighting, yelling, throwing, breaking things, bleeding, whining, or otherwise creating a Mom-size headache. Reading a book was almost like being invisible - a good thing for all concerned. — Pete Hautman

Here's my full list of guidelines for how to apply the principles of this chapter to email communication. 1. Emails should contain as few words as possible. 2. Make it easy to see your central point at a glance, in one screen. 3. Never send an email that could emotionally affect another person unless it's pure positive feedback. 4. Emotional issues must be discussed by phone; email should be used only to book a time for a call. 5. If you accidentally break rule number four, phone the person immediately, apologize, and discuss the issue by phone. — David Rock

His own children were not members of the Clemson incoming freshman class, but two of his nieces and a nephew were. On the news, he outlined his problems with the summer-reading committee's selection. The book talks in graphic terms about pornography, about fetish, about masturbation, about multiple sex partners . . . The book contains a very extensive list of over-the-top sexual and antireligious references. The explicit message that this sends to students is that they are encouraged to find themselves sexually. — Ann Patchett

In addition, we were unable to meet openly to discuss the progress of the book, for we were both on the list of persons banned from communicating with other banned persons. — Ruth First

Beautiful songs could sometimes take a person out of themselves and carry them away to a place of magic. But when Jill sang, it was not about the song, really. She could sing the phone book. She could sing a shopping list. Whatever she sang, whatever the words or the tune, it was so beautiful, so achingly lovely, that no one could listen and be untouched. — Michael Grant

The importance of the romantic element does not rest upon conjecture. Pleasing testimonies abound. Hannah More traced her earliest impressions of virtue to works of fiction; and Adam Clarke gives a list of tales that won his boyish admiration. Books of entertainment led him to believe in a spiritual world; and he felt sure of having been a coward, but for romances. He declared that he had learned more of his duty to God, his neighbor and himself from Robinson Crusoe than from all the books, except the Bible, that were known to his youth. — Robert Aris Willmott

There are some words I find impossibly difficult ... 'Love,' 'feeling' and especially 'happiness' are at the head of the list. This is not because I haven't experienced any of them but because whenever I think about using the words I don't really know what anyone means by them. I'd find it easier to sit down and write a book about each (coming, obviously, to no conclusion) than to use them casually in speech or writing. — Jenny Diski

He turned the book around to show me. It was a short list. Accept Dan's apology. Give Dan a Toblerone. Kiss Dan. Without — Lindsey Kelk

The horror genre is vast and full of brilliance. Stephen King, Shirley Jackson, Herman Melville, the book of Esther. I'll happily join that list. — Victor LaValle

She rose from her bed full of new resolutions. 'We must get out and about more,' she told her startled mother. 'We must try different things. We are getting groovy.' She drew up a list of events and activities: concerts, day trips, public meetings. She went in a fit through her address book, writing letters to old friends. She borrowed novels from the library by authors who had never interested her before. She began to teach herself Esperanto, reciting phrases as she polished and swept. — Sarah Waters

By Cunning & Craft is a masterpiece of writing about writing. If, like Scheherazade, you had to spin out a story under threat of death, this is the how-to book to read. It's filled with thoughtful, nuanced advice from a teacher/writer who actually writes, and writes beautifully and with great humor. The list of rejected stories is worth the price of the whole book. — Nora Gallagher

This is the one time in this book this book that I felt Mustang acted like himself. His thoughts were so "Mustang". A frown furrowed Jenna's brow. "Oh, come on. What possible harm could it do?" "Darlin', I couldn't even begin to list all the harm her meeting you could do." He pictured that cozy introduction. Sage, this is Slade and his girlfriend, Jenna. She's the woman we shared for a week in Tulsa. You should read her book. It tells all about it, right down to the old double P. Yeah, right. He might as well add on, Oh, and by the way, that the name of the porno I starred in to. — Cat Johnson

Any time you can take a book a little beyond the realm of pure entertainment, I think it's a good thing. But I don't really have it on my to-do list when I write a book. It just evolves naturally during the process of immersing yourself in a subject. — Mary Roach

When I wrote 'Neuromancer', I had a list in my head of all the things the future was assumed to be which it would not be in the book I was about to write. In a sense, I intended 'Neuromancer', among other things, to be a critique of all the aspects of science fiction that no longer satisfied me. — William Gibson

I like to skip prewriting. I love just jumping into the actual writing process. Then I revise/edit and fix what I need to. Then the following steps; proofread and publish. Of course before you just go into writing, it would be a good idea to do some charts of each chapter ... what you would want each one to be about and have a character list with their personalities and how they will come into play in your book. I mean, you wouldn't just want to go all crazy and jot down all kinds of random stuff at once ... trust me, you'll go crazy. With writing, you take it as it comes, go with your own flow.-Nina Jean Slack — Nina Jean Slack

Portraits of Integrity is sure to be a favorite with your family! It contains 45 stories of real people from history who, in the course of their lives, have been placed in situations where their character shone through. History is best remembered when learned through the stories of those who lived it! For many years, I have given to parents a list of 45 character qualities with Scripture verses to learn what God's Word says about each one. Principles are best learned from practical examples and that is what has given birth to this book. Through the lives of people, some of whom you have heard of and some you will be meeting for the first time, you will learn how to appreciate character in the lives of others and be inspired to become people of character yourselves. I hope you will be challenged as I have to learn of people who, often at great sacrifice, strove to fulfill their responsibilities in life and as a result left to us a legacy of character! — Marilyn Boyer

Idly, I flipped through the ledger's pages, for I cannot resist a book set before me no matter its kind. Writing draws my eye; I am impelled as by sorcery to read even if it is an accountant's list or a solicitor's instructions or, as here, nothing more than a record of travelers who have passed through this inn. — Kate Elliot

Our first CTA is usually for another purchase: either the next book or a bundle of multiple books. After that we'll have a call to join our e-mail list in order to get upcoming books free or at a discount. We often follow with a third CTA that contains either a list of our other books or (preferably) a link to a web page with that list (seeing as we can update the webpage easily but don't want to update all of our books' CTAs). Somewhere in there we usually try adding a request for the reader to leave a review for the book they've just read. — Sean Platt

The "to read' list is a place where most good books go to die... — Danny L. Deaube

I have a great book. It's called Stantasyland. Except I don't have the money to buy a million copies to put it on the bestsellers list. — Stanley Victor Paskavich

Ever broken a promise you've made to God? Don't you deserve to be punished? And yet, here you are. Reading this book. Breathing. Still witnessing sunsets and hearing babies gurgle. Still watching the seasons change. There are no lashes on your back or hooks in your nose or shackles on your feet. Apparently God hasn't kept a list of your wrongs. — Max Lucado

My essay had evolved into thinking about fucking. You could be raped a thousand times and still be a virgin. I was writing about fucking by a master and fucking as a slave, about Hegel, the comfort women and teenage porno stars. Ms. Bain and Mr. Rotowsky could fail me, I didn't care. I'd pass just with the bibliography. I was compiling a list of every single book I'd read or that I wanted to read that was about power and sex. High school should have a whole fucking course on just this. I was helping the school make curriculum ...
I was writing my essay, writing easily now. I didn't have a reader anymore like Lee or Chris but I imagined that I was writing for them both. Maybe I was writing for anyone who could fucking stand me. — Tamara Faith Berger

When I was putting the 'Best of Hollywood' book together, I sat down and added up just the list of Westerns I've done, and it came to well over 200. — James Best

I feel very discouraged with the state of gay and lesbian publishing because I don't feel like we're really welcome in the mainstream and then you get ghettoized and put on some lesbian book club reading list where you don't want to be either. — Ali Liebegott

A lot of excellent illustrators are working at the moment
especially in fantasy and children's books. It is exciting also to see graphic artists such as Dave McKean, in his film Mirrormask, moving between different media. I also greatly admire the more traditional work of Gennady Spirin and Roberto Innocenti. Kinuko Craft, John Jude Palencar, John Howe, Charles Vess, Brian Froud ... I'll stop there, as the list would get too long. But
in a fit of pride and justified nepotism
I'll add my daughter, Virginia Lee, to the list. Her first illustrated children's book, The Frog Bride [coming out in the U.K. in September, 2007], will be lovely. — Alan Lee

When I was on the bestseller list with the first book, everyone who knows me knows that every week it continued to be on the list was a very dark week for me. Everyone knows that all I wanted was to be off that list. — Dave Eggers

The Bible give us a list of human stories on both sides of the ledger. On list of human stories is used examples - do what these people did. Another list of human stories is used as warnings - don't do what these people did. So if your story ever gets in one of these books, make sure they use it as an example, not a warning. — Jim Rohn

Ironically, white America will catapult books about race to the top of the best-seller list, even as racism remains a national open wound. Obsession ain't solution, however, because reading even at its most intense and verisimilitudinous is vicarious, and once you close the book you're off the hook. — Marita Golden

Lists make magic, the rhythm of itemised words: you do not list ten techniques, numbered and chantable, in austere prose appropriate for some early-millennium rebooted Book of Thoth, and not know that you have written an incantation. — China Mieville

When the first list was being drawn up in the rock and roll book of Genesis, it would have been: In the beginning, God created Pink Floyd. — Rick Wakeman

Go where ye list,' as the Good Book says. But go there alive, Trisha. Don't be no ghost. If you turn into one of those, it might be better if you stayed away. — Stephen King

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

Keep a diary, but don't just list all the things you did during the day. Pick one incident and write it up as a brief vignette. Give it color, include quotes and dialogue, shape it like a story with a beginning, middle and end - as if it were a short story or an episode in a novel. It's great practice. Do this while figuring out what you want to write a book about. The book may even emerge from within this running diary. — John Berendt

Brian Walker and David Salt have written a thoughtful and powerful book to help resource users and managers put resilience thinking into practice and aim toward increasing the sustainability of our world. I urge public officials, scholars, and students in public policy programs to place this volume on their list of must-read books. It is a powerful antidote to the overly simplified proposals too often offered as solutions to contemporary problems at multiple scales. — Elinor Ostrom

Speak Peace sums up decades of healing and peacework. It would be hard to list all the kinds of people who can benefit from reading this book, because it's really any and all of us. — Michael N. Nagler

If I am willing to read a book in its entirety, I will give it five stars. I do not list books that I did not finish; they were not written for me as the audience. — Paula Shene

The annoying thing about reading is that you can never get the job done. The other day I was in a bookstore flicking through a book called something like 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die (and, without naming names, you should be aware that the task set by the title is by definition impossible, because at least four hundred of the books suggested would kill you anyway), but reading begets reading
that's sort of the point of it, surely?
and anybody who never deviates from a set list of books is intellectually dead anyway. — Nick Hornby

Woman. My lord, said she, he is kept unlawfully in prison; they clapped him up before there was any proclamation against the meetings; the indictment also is false. Besides, they never asked him whether he was guilty or no; neither did he confess the indictment. One of the Justices. Then one of the justices that stood by, whom she knew not, said, My Lord, he was lawfully convicted. Wom. It is false, said she; for when they said to him, Do you confess the indictment? he said only this, that he had been at several meetings, both where there were preaching the Word, and prayer, and that they had God's presence among them. Judge Twisdon. Whereat Judge Twisdon answered very angrily, saying, What, you think we can do what we list; your husband is a breaker of the peace, and is convicted by the law, etc. Whereupon Judge Hale called for the Statute Book. Wom. But, said she, my lord, he was not lawfully convicted. — John Bunyan

Feeling inspired, I grabbed one of Jay's cookbooks from the kitchen shelf and flicked through until I found a recipe for something I recognised. Lasagna. That was just pasta, and pasta was easy, right? Trying not to be put off by the list of ingredients longer than my small intestine, I scanned the instructions. Chop onions ... I could do that. Brown mince ... trickier but manageable. Probably. Make a roux in the usual way ... I sighed, shut the book with a snap and went off to make dinner in my usual way: pierce film; bung in microwave; wait for bell. — J.L. Merrow

I wear glasses, and maybe you do, too. Mine probably cost about the same as yours. Would you trade lenses with me just because I asked you to? Of course not!
That would be silly because yours fit you and mine fit me.
Reading is the same thing. Are you reading what the boss is reading or are you reading what fits you? Are you reading a book because someone sent it to you? how about because it's on the bestseller list? You wouldn't wear someone else's glasses - don't let them pick your books. Understand what your purpose is for reading and carefully discipline your choices - Fred Smith — Pat Williams

When I was 11 or 12, I was really bored with everything on my summer reading list. It was all happy, middle-grade kinds of books. I was getting frustrated, because I liked to read. My mother went to the library and got me a copy of 'The Other Side of Midnight' by Sidney Sheldon. It was my first adult book. — Lauren DeStefano

Remember to take a flood book with you wherever you go. This is a book on hand for whenever there is a "flood" or something unexpected that leads to a free moment. Such moments include: waiting in line someplace, waiting for a friend to be ready, waiting for something to start, waiting for a thunderstorm to pass, or waiting at the doctor's office. The list goes on and on. Follow the Boy Scout motto and be prepared. — Bruce Johnson

All of the disparate books on my list contain characters, scenes or voices that linger long past the last page of their stories. — Maureen Corrigan

Create a guidebook of creative dreams
You can use a blank book or just blank paper clipped together. Put photographs or scraps from magazines in that represent your creative dreams. Draw, scribble, or paint in between the images. Make a list of creative dreams you've thought of or admire in others. — SARK

Insider can be more ludicrous. How did I ever end up [as one]? Carsick [Waters's book on hitchhiking] was on the New York Times best-seller list for five weeks. [One of the characters was] a singing asshole that does a duet with Connie Francis! Times have changed. That's mainstream, in a weird way. — John Waters

I know what you're thinking. 'How the hell does this broke ass piece of trailer trash know words like caveat,' right? Well guess what? I've read every single book on the New York Times list of 'Top 100 Literary Classics,' not to mention every Jane Austen, Sylvia Plath or Bronte sisters' book ever written. And fuck you very much for judging me, by the way. — Isobel Irons

It's like, you write a book, you want it to be well received, you want it to be at the top of the bestsellers list, but you have limited control over what happens. You can hire a publicist, you can do every interview, you can be prepared, but you have very little control over the marketplace. So you put it out there without attachment, so it has its own life. Everything is like that. — Dan Harris

I love bookshelves, and stacks of books, spines, typography, and the feel of pages between my fingertips. I love bookmarks, and old bindings, and stars in margins next to beautiful passages. I love exuberant underlinings that recall to me a swoon of language-love from a long-ago reading, something I hoped to remember. I love book plates, and inscriptions in gifts from loved ones, I love author signatures, and I love books sitting around reminding me of them, being present in my life, being. I love books. Not just for what they contain. I love them as objects too, as ever-present reminders of what they contain, and because they are beautiful. They are one of my favorite things in life, really at the tiptop of the list, easily my favorite inanimate things in existence, and ... I am just not cottoning on to this idea of making them ... not exist anymore. Making them cease to take up space in the world, in my life? No, please do not take away the physical reality of my books. — Laini Taylor

Finally, power-law distributions have "thick tails," meaning that they have a nonnegligible number of extreme values. You will never meet a 20-foot man, or see a car driving down the freeway at 500 miles per hour. But you could conceivably come across a city of 14 million, or a book that was on the bestseller list for 10 years, or a moon crater big enough to see from the earth with the naked eye - or a war that killed 55 million people. — Steven Pinker

It reminded him of the Sound of Music. Myron liked the ole Julie Andrews musical well enough. who didn't? but he always found one song particularly dumb. One of the classics, actually. My Favorite Things. The song made no sense. Ask a zillion people to list their absolute favorite things, and how many of them are going to list doorbells for crying out loud.
You know what, Milly, I love doorbells. To hell with strolling on a quiet beach, or reading a great book, or making love or seeing a broadway musical. Doorbells, Milly, doorbells really punch my ticket. Sometimes I just run up to people's houses and press their doorbells and, well, I think i am man enough to admit I shutter. — Harlan Coben

Finally I had made that necessary imaginative leap - which is a real necessity, since most of us writers can't be out there living like crazy all the time. These days, very few are the writers whose book jackets list things like bush pilot, big game hunter, or exotic dancer. No, more often we are English teachers. We have children, we have mortgages, we have bills to pay. So we have to stop writing strictly about what we know, which is what they always told us to do in creative writing classes. Instead, we have to write about what we can learn, and what we can imagine, and thus we come to experience that great pleasure Anne Tyler noted when somebody asked her why she writes, and she answered, I write because I want more than one life. — Lee Smith

I appreciate another Good Reads member adding my book to their 'To Read' list. But I consider it rude to immediately add the same book to your 'Not interested' list. Ergo, exactly why did you bother? So do me a favour and kindly remove my book from your 'To read' list. Then, kindly attempt to write your own book so I can return the favour. Thank you! — Me

Terrifying ... A Dark Matter is populated with vivid, sympathetic characters, and driven by terrors both human and supernatural. It's the kind of book that's impossible to put down once it has been picked up. It kept me reading far into the night. Straub builds otherworldly terror without ever losing touch with his attractive cast of youngsters, who age beautifully. Put this one high on your list. — Stephen King

Tonight, I want to curl up with a good book and visit my fictional boyfriends. Now let me tell you, my list is long. I am the equivalent to Hugh Hefner, but instead of bunnies I have this ever-growing list of male characters that have stolen my heart. I — Kat T. Masen

It took the Church until 1832 to remove Galileo 's work from its list of books which Catholics were forbidden to read at the risk of dire punishment of their immortal souls. — Carl Sagan

A year after I'd graduated college, I went to a weeklong conference intensive in Boston, and that's when things kicked into high gear. My workshop leader was a Harvard professor and editor. At the end of the week we met one-on-one over breakfast, and she said, in essence, "Look, you're ready to turn pro." She gave me a list of literary agents to query once I had something to show them. I came home and wrote my first real novel, and the agent that sold it to Tor Books was on that list. — Brian Hodge

You may not agree, you may not care, but
if you are holding this book you should know that of all the sights I love in this world - and there are plenty - very near the top of the list is this one: dogs without leashes. — Mary Oliver

It is not just bookstores and libraries that are disappearing but museums, theaters, performing arts centers, art and music schools - all those places where I felt at home have joined the list of endangered species. The San Francisco Chronicle, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe and my own hometown paper, The Washington Post, have all closed their weekend book review sections, leaving books orphaned and stranded, poor cousins to television and the movies. In a sign of the times, the Bloomberg News website recently transferred its book coverage to the Luxury section, alongside yachts, sports clubs and wine, as if to signal that books are an idle indulgence of the super-rich. But if there is one thing that should not be denied to anyone rich or poor it is the opportunity to dream. — Azar Nafisi

Instead of buying into that negative self-talk, state what you intend to invite into your life each day. Be as specific as possible. When I stated my intention of becoming a Best-Selling Author, I didn't know HOW I would do it. I just stated my intention and desire with certainty. Before I knew it, I started to manifest what I intended to attract and the "how" showed up. The right people at the right time came into my life. Within one year, my book, Me, Myself, and Why? The Secrets to Navigating Change, was sitting on the Best Sellers List. That's what happens when you state an intention. It sparks a series of events bringing your intention into reality. — Lisa A. Mininni

When I'm crusty and old, either of these two sentences will be constantly uttered by my wrinkled mouth.

Yes, I was once on the NY Times Best Seller's List,or,Yeah, I wrote that book that only earned a few pennies

Either of the two makes me a writer, and that's what matters. — Vergielyn

It is worth remembering that every writer begins with a naively physical notion of what art is. A book for him or her is not an expression or a series of expressions, but literally a volume, a prism with six rectangular sides made of thin sheets of papers which should include a cover, an inside cover, an epigraph in italics, a preface, nine or ten parts with some verses at the beginning, a table of contents, an ex libris with an hourglass and a Latin phrase, a brief list of errata, some blank pages, a colophon and a publication notice: objects that are known to constitute the art of writing. — Jorge Luis Borges

Before writing, I start with a series of questions, specific things I need to know before I can write the book ... That list grows and changes as I do more and more research. But when I've answered the bulk of the questions, I begin to write ... — David B. Coe

If we weigh the significance of a book by the effect it has on its readers, then the great children's books suddenly turn up very high on the list. — Laura Miller

The Victorian language of flowers began with the publication of 'Le Language des Fleurs,' written by Charlotte de Latour and printed in Paris in 1819. To create the book - which was a list of flowers and their meanings - de Latour gathered references to flower symbolism throughout poetry, ancient mythology, and even medicine. — Vanessa Diffenbaugh

The Bible isn't an answer book. It isn't a self-help manual. It isn't a flat, perspicuous list of rules and regulations that we can interpret objectively and apply unilaterally to our lives. The Bible is a sacred collection of letters and laws, poetry and proverbs, philosophy and prophecies, written and assembled over thousands of years in cultures and contexts very different from our own, that tells the complex, ever-unfolding story of God's interaction with humanity. — Rachel Held Evans

Oh, Sweetie. No one ever gets through their TBR list. For every book you finish, you'll add five more. That's just the way it works. — Leisa Rayven

My friend Josh Glenn compiles terrific lists of genre novels from the mid-20th century. His latest is a list of the ten best adventure novels of 1966. Josh also includes the cover art of early editions of the books, which are always much better than the art on newer editions. I want to read every book in this list! — Mark Frauenfelder

Kindle Singles is publishing on skates. It prints like lightning; our book meets readers in hours. I've spent so many years waiting for publishers to consider whether they wanted to print a book of mine, making contracts, taking months to fit it into the Fall list or the Spring list, fitting it into an advertising plan. — Richard Bach

For many Christ-followers, the Bible is a book of principles to show us how to live. No wonder we struggle to spend time in the Word - how excited are you about spending time reading a to-do list that's 1,500 pages long? When we view the Bible primarily as a book of principles for living, we miss the point. The point of the Bible is not principles but a Person. Jesus said in John 5:39, "These are the Scriptures that testify about me." He is the point. If our interaction with the Word isn't resulting in a deepening intimacy with Jesus, a deepening experience of His love and grace, we are missing something huge. — Alan Kraft

Have suggested throughout this book that the New Testament itself answers the first half of each of these prayers in terms, primarily, of a clear list of character traits whose radical novelty is generated from within the life, vision, achievement, death, and resurrection of Jesus himself. These events, taken together, constitute Jesus's followers as the true, image-bearing human beings, the royal priesthood. I have proposed, further, that according to the New Testament the way God the Holy Spirit answers the second half of the prayer is by renewing the individual heart and mind so that we can freely and consciously choose to practice those habits of behavior which, awkward and clumsy at first, will gradually become second nature. — N. T. Wright

When I wrote the first Betsy book, 'Undead and Unwed,' I had no idea, none, that it would be a career-defining, genre-defining book, the first of over a dozen in the series, the first of over 70 published books, the first on my road to the best-seller list, the first on my road to being published in 15 countries. — MaryJanice Davidson

Number one of the list now was a diet book entitled Eat as much as You Want of the Food You Love and Still Lose Weight. What a great title. The whole book could be blank inside and it would still sell. — Haruki Murakami

I don't start with a list of historical scenes that I want to include in the book. At a certain point, the narrative totally takes over, and everything that I include I can only incorporate if it answers to the internal terms of the novel. — Rachel Kushner

And so of course we won't define 'biblical womanhood' well using a list of chores or a job description, a schedule or income level. After all, healthy God-glorifying homes look as different as the image bearers that entered into the covenant, biblical doesn't mean a baptized version of any culture, ancient or modern.
No, I am a biblical woman because I live and move and have my being in the daily reality of being a follower of Jesus, living in the reality of being loved, in full trust of my Abba. I am a biblical woman because I follow in the footsteps of all the biblical women who cam before me.
Biblical womanhood isn't so different from biblical personhood. Biblical personhood becomes a dead list of rules when it becomes a law to keep. If we have a long list of rules - Put others first! Be generous! Give money! Believe this! Do that! - it's a dead religion from a glorified rule book. — Sarah Bessey