Top Best Book Quotes & Sayings

The book [Joyce's "Ulysses"] can just as well be read backwards, for it has no back and no front, no top and no bottom. Everything could easily have happened before, or might have happened afterwards. You can read any of the conversations just as pleasurably backwards, for you don't miss the point of the gags. Every sentence is a gag, but taken together they make no point. You can also stop in the middle of a sentence
the first half still makes sense enough to live by itself, or at least seems to. The whole work has the character of a worm cut in half, that can grow a new head or a new tail as required. — C. G. Jung

When I'm writing a book - say I'm going to write a parenting book. I'll go out and buy the 100 top parenting books and I will read those, not so I can copy them for sure. — Larry Winget

Because there was no pre-existing patrician elite, those successful in the new book industry could write very swiftly to the top of the social hierarchy. — Andrew Pettegree

There is a wonderful book called "Gandhi's Truth," by Erik Erikson, the psychologist. It is a great book. And I remember reading that and thinking about this connection between what we think in our personal lives and how that manifests itself in our politics. Those are two books, just off the top, that I think are sort of representative of reading that I did at that time. I never get a chance to read anymore. — Barack Obama

I work in a small study on the top floor of a brownstone in Brooklyn - it's about 75 square feet, 11 taken up by book shelves along one wall. — Kathryn Harrison

I was not gentle on my books. I read while I ate, I read in the bathtub. At night, I rolled over on top of my books that had fallen between the covers as I dozed. — Georgia Bell

So this book is my phone call
not from the top of a mountain, or even the top of the Eiffel Tower: the "here" is negotiable. It's so beautiful here. You must come visit before you die. — Eloisa James

The English major is, first of all, a reader. She's got a book pup-tented in front of her nose many hours a day; her Kindle glows softly late into the night. But there are readers and there are readers. There are people who read to anesthetize themselves - they read to induce a vivid, continuous, and risk-free daydream. They read for the same reason that people grab a glass of chardonnay - to put a light buzz on. The English major reads because, as rich as the one life he has may be, one life is not enough. He reads not to see the world through the eyes of other people but effectively to become other people. What is it like to be John Milton, Jane Austen, Chinua Achebe? What is it like to be them at their best, at the top of their games? — Mark Edmundson

You're not moving your body the correct way, Here, just let me show you.
Though it was the oldest and most shameless trick in the book, he reached over her and put his hand on top of the one that gripped the cure. He then positioned the fingers of her other hand on the wood before lightly gripping her wrist. To Dorian's dismay, his face became warm.
His eyes shifted to her, and, to his relief, he found that she was as red as he, if not more so. — Sarah J. Maas

Then there was sex, which, for me, was such a need. When I was younger, I had a need to have sex with everyone. I don't know where that was coming from, but there was such a need to connect physically - obviously, for me to connect physically to myself. There were times, like I say in the book, where you lay on top of me, when you push me down, when you're inside me. — Eve Ensler

In ninth grade, I came up with a new form of rebellion. I hadn't been getting good grades, but I decided to get all A's without taking a book home. I didn't go to math class, because I knew enough and had read ahead, and I placed within the top 10 people in the nation on an aptitude exam. — Bill Gates

If you want to win this argument with Dad, look in chapter two of the first book of the Feynman Lectures on Physics. There's a quote there about how philosophers say a great deal about what science absolutely requires, and it is all wrong, because the only rule in science is that the final arbiter is observation - that you just have to look at the world and report what you see. Um ... off the top of my head I can't think of where to find something about how it's an ideal of science to settle things by experiment instead of arguments - — Eliezer Yudkowsky

Sitting on the train I watch the scenery speeding by, notice a cobweb in the top corner of the window, undulating with a gentle breeze I can't feel. I lean back in my seat and take my book out of the carrier bag. Turning it over in my hand, it feels warm. It feels how I want to feel; full of knowledge, full of the future.
The time I've spent staying in bed smoking dope I've been hibernating, recuperating and gaining strength. I'm weak socially, but being away from other drug users has made me resilient. It's allowed my mind and body to heal and mend. As if the winter is over, I've come out stronger now. I'm on my own. I have the choice of what to do with my life.
I'm going to stay clean. I'm going to be the woman I can be. — Christine Lewry

Why books?"
Her brows rose. "I beg your pardon?"
"Why are they your vice?"
She set her plate down and wiped her hand on her skirts before reaching for the top volume on a stack of small, leather bound books nearby and extending it to him. "Go on."
He took it. "Now what?"
"Smell it." He tilted his head. She couldn't help but smile. "Do it."
He lifted it to his nose. Inhaled.
"Not like that," she said. "Really give it a smell."
He raised one brow but did as he was told.
"What do you smell?" Sophie asked.
"Leather and ink?"
She shook her head. "Happiness. That's what books smells like. Happiness. That's why I always wanted to have a book shop. What better life than to trade in happiness? — Sarah MacLean

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

The opening chapter was the book's unique selling point, the singular idea that had carried Darcy through last November, and Coleman had just come up with it off the top of his head. — Scott Westerfeld

If it had anything to do with the PC or networking industry I was on top of it. I bought manuals. I read every book and magazine. Then I would get involved with industry conferences and put myself out there. — Mark Cuban

When you're writing a book, it's rather like going on a very long walk, across valleys and mountains and things, and you get the first view of what you see and you write it down. Then you walk a bit further, maybe up onto the top of a hill, and you see something else. Then you write that and you go on like that, day after day, getting different views of the same landscape really. The highest mountain on the walk is obviously the end of the book, because it's got to be the best view of all, when everything comes together and you can look back and see that everything you've done all ties up. But it's a very, very long, slow process. — Roald Dahl

Today the crime novelist has one advantage denied to writers of 'straight' or 'literary' novels. Unlike them he can range over all levels of society, for crime can easily breach the barriers that exist in our stratified society. Because of these barriers the modern literary novel, unlike its 19th-century predecessors, is often confined to the horizontal, dealing only with one class. But crime runs through society from top to bottom, and so the crime novelist can present a fuller picture of the way we live now. — Allan Massie

Writing your book is not the end all of your strategy. It is a powerful catalyst that will push you to the top of your game. You see, something magical happens when you write your book and this is the best place to mention it because a sale happens when your book is complete. You sell yourself on the idea that you are more than you previously believed yourself to be. You get to experience that "I did it" moment where your mind releases these wonderful stimulators that make you feel awesome. You see yourself in a different way and this opens up a greater opportunity for accomplishment, achievement, and success. — Kytka Hilmar-Jezek

Instead of working hard to keep their share of a shrinking pie, or working even harder to make sure the industry stays as is, I think the most essential thing legacy book industry players can do is set up independent ventures with great people and little interference and work really hard to put themselves out of business by starting at the bottom, not by reinforcing the top. — Seth Godin

I recognized the great monument from the illustration in the copy of /The Jungle Book/ that my mother kept in the top drawer of my bedside table. When I went with Sophia to the Taj Mahal for the first time, I was not as enchanted by the real mausoleum as I had been by its plaster, paint, and paper replica in the studio; the original posed a dreadfully seductive promise in cool marble of a strangely painful loveliness, a lover's lie that death itself might in some mysterious way, because of love, be lovely. — Lee Siegel

We lie and we are lied to, and the best liars - the ones who don't even see it as lying - get the business cards and the corner offices and the fancy clothes some other liar tricked them into thinking they needed. At least it used to bother people that the liars and
frauds and phonies rose to the top, the citizens expressed concern that shit floated. Today we put the shit on magazine covers, laud its buoyancy, and anxiously wait to buy the shit's best-selling business book about how you can float your shit, too. — Shalom Auslander

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

Well, the United States has said that the disarmament of Iraq is the top priority, but we have also noted that there are many other United Nations Security Council Resolutions which are on the books, including the necessity to respect the human rights of all the citizens of Iraq that we're very interested in. — Richard Armitage

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

Making you believe what he wanted you to believe was his very reason for being. Maybe his only reason. I was intrigued by the way he turned events, or hints I had given him about people, into reality
that is, his kind of reality. This obsessive reinvention of the real never stopped, what-could-be having always to top what is.
...
I began to wonder which was real, the woman in the book or the one I was pretending to be upstairs. Neither of them was particularly "me." I was acting just as much upstairs; I was not myself just as much Maria in the book was not myself. Perhaps she was. I began not to know which was true and which was not, like a writer who comes to believe that he's imagined what he hasn't.
...
The book began living in me all the time, more than my everyday life. — Philip Roth

[A comic book writers' union] will never happen. Someone will always be willing to write Batman for free ... You sit at a bar with an editor at a show and you see 19 people come up and pitch ideas at them. If everybody writing the top 20 books all quit and demanded, 'Union now, union forever,' those 19 guys would be getting phone calls. There will never be a union. I think things are getting better - I bet things have never been so good - but there will never be a union. — Matt Fraction

The woman dashed up the staircase toward the library's main doors. Arriving at the top of the stairs, she grabbed the handle and tried desperately to open each of the three giant doors.
The library's closed, lady.
But the woman didn't seem to care. She seized one of the heavy ring-shaped handles, heaved it backward, and let it fall with a loud crash against the door. Then she did it again. And again. And again.
Wow, the homeless man thought, she must really need a book. — Dan Brown

I take a slow sip of lukewarm coffee, reopen the book, and read the words scribbled in red ink near the top: Everyone needs an olly-olly-oxen-free. — Jay Asher

I've only read a few chapters of this book, Trumpet Blast Warning but it's amazing. All of his statements are backed up by original quotes & references from top politicians, the media, etc, so you can check for yourselves & discover this is not a conspiracy theory about world government, it's all backed by facts! All Christians, especially pastors & prayer groups really should read this book. Many thanks to Jason Carter for sending me a copy! — Jason Carter

Which is so important, I mean, that's what's so great about the books, is, you know, those two worlds are sort of, the slacker world of just comedy and laziness and then this crazy, over the top action, supernatural world, and you know, combined. — Mary Elizabeth Winstead

I am the most tired woman in the world. I am tired when I get up. Life requires an effort I cannot make. Please give me that heavy book. I need to put something heavy like that on top of my head. I have to place my feet under the pillows always, so as to be able to stay on earth. Otherwise I feel myself going away, going away at a tremendous speed, on account of my lightness. I know that I am dead. As soon as I utter a phrase my sincerity dies, becomes a lie whose coldness chills me. Don't say anything, because I see that you understand me, and I am afraid of your understanding. I have such a fear of finding another like myself, and such a desire to find one! I am so utterly lonely, but I also have such a fear that my isolation be broken through, and I no longer be the head and ruler of my universe. I am in great terror of your understanding by which you penetrate into my world; and then I stand revealed and I have to share my kingdom with you. — Anais Nin

Webster and I are very aloof. The two of us go and sit there by ourselves. I sit by myself in the corner with my book and the newspaper. He kind of runs around a little bit, and then he goes and sits on top of the picnic table. He never plays with other little dogs. — Calista Flockhart

I just trust the people involved. Marvel and DC for the last 16 years - is that 90 percent of the time it's incredible top talent. Like, this is what makes it different from the pre-2000 superhero movies. I would say, except Tim Burton and Richard Donner, it was generally, comic book movies were done by guys who weren't that into the material and people who didn't really respect the stuff. But as everything, whether it's Wolverine, X-Men, Avengers, Batman, all these things, it's just been done by top-tier people. I have total confidence that they'll continue that tradition of being great. — Mark Millar

Anyone wishing to buy the film rights for a rather large sum can contact my publisher and anyone wishing to put me in the top 100 wealthiest people in the UK, please send cheques or Postal Orders to me care of my publisher. — James Berryman

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

I remember her, not a girl but the girl. The brains behind the all time top ten comic book vixens only wish they could conjure a a siren the likes of Susan Glenn, beneath my feet my own private earthquake registered an eight when Susan Glenn was near. In her presence all was beautiful before she arrived turned grotesque and in her shadows others became goblinesque, if she approached Susan Glenn she didn't walk she floated, accompanied by Pyrotechnics spectacals that left me feeling a foot tall. She embodied every desireable quality I have ever wanted. In my mind I was a peasant before a Queen. And so Susan Glenn and I were never a thing, if I could do it again, I'd do it differently. — Keifer Sutherland

when the rain arrives" she said "I will dig a hole to meditate in"
she said a lot of good things, but i don't know if she did them
i asked if she would dig it so deep that no one could see her
unless they looked inside, and she said "let's get gin"
i didn't want gin though I wanted to put water balloons
in people's mail boxes, but she wanted gin so i bought gin
i sat on the edge of her bed and held her tarantula
i showed her my bob dylan book called "tarantula"
she was scrolling through instagram, and the tarantula was still
i said "wanna dig a hole to meditate in?"
she said "yeah do you wanna get naked?"
I set the tarantula in it's vitrine and placed bob dylan's book on top — Taj Bourgeois

I've got to get my body back. While I like wearing you, I'd rather wear you as a blanket on top of me and not the skin I'm walking around in. It has this whole Hannibal Lecter aspect that's really creeping me out."Jo
"Hannibal Lecter?" Cadegan
"It's a TV show and book character. Not really important. Like a wombat in a blender." Jo
"I'm not sure what this blender is, but I think I should be feeling bad for that poor wombat." Cadegan — Sherrilyn Kenyon