While It Lasts Book Quotes & Sayings

My last book was speculative. I just don't quite know what I am doing. But I'll get there. I have a list of things I would love to write. — Jami Attenberg

Where I have seen good I shall speak of it with pleasure, and where I have seen the reverse, I shall try to be silent; for a book is meant to give pleasure, and pain that is inflicted in black and white lasts for ever. — Isabel Burton

I was just getting to the good bit when I heard the sound of his footsteps approaching and wasn't sure whether I would rather be alone with him or alone to finish my book. Men come and go. A good book lasts forever. — Chloe Thurlow

I believe I belong to the last literary generation, the last generation, that is, for whom books are a religion. — Erica Jong

In fact, isn't it a joy - there is hardly a greater one - to find a new book, a living book, and to know that it will remain with you while life lasts? — Katherine Mansfield

Book love, my friend, is your pass to the greatest, the purest, and the most perfect pleasure that God has prepared for His creatures. It lasts when all other pleasures fade. It will support you when all other recreations are gone. It will last until your death. It will make your hours pleasant t you as long as you live. — Anthony Trollope

Failing is not a disgrace unless you make it the last chapter of your book. — Jack Hyles

[Why] should not the Bible regain the place it once held as a school book? Its morals are pure, its examples captivating and noble. The reverence for the Sacred Book that is thus early impressed lasts long; and probably if not impressed in infancy, never takes firm hold of the mind. — Fisher Ames

The last thing that we find in making a book is to know what we must put first. — Blaise Pascal

What does seem to me poisonous, what breeds a type of patriotism that is pernicious if it lasts but not likely to last long in an educated adult, is the perfectly serious indoctrination of the young in knowably false or biased history - the heroic legend drably disguised as text-book fact. With this creeps in the tacit assumption that other nations have not equally their heroes; perhaps even the belief - surely it is very bad biology - that we can literally 'inherit' tradition. — C.S. Lewis

When a literary person's exhaustive work is over, the last thing he wishes to do is to talk books. — Fanny Fern

The great high of winning Wimbledon lasts for about a week. You go down in the record book, but you don't have anything tangible to hold on to. But having a baby
there isn't any comparison. — Chris Evert

There are no minarets built in praise of
what doubters say, no passionate talk about their lives.
The coin faces of officials
keep changing, but not the flame-tongued book of the sun. Be plain as day and a friend to what
lasts. Cynics say the same thing over and over, "I only know what I see." Every external form is
a text to study, embodying a truth, the way medicine contains healing. Does a painter paint
for the sake of the picture and not for the eyes of those who will look at it? — Rumi

Open your eyes at last and see ... now I will open the book of the world for you,there are no words in it,just pictures — Oskar Kokoschka

Could anyone fail to be depressed by a book he or she has published? Don't we always outgrow them the moment the last page has been written? — Mary Ritter Beard

Doctora Zainab looks at her watch. I should leave. But Mai carries her book and sits next to me. She wants me to read it for her. I start to read 'This is the House that Jack Built' and I forget Doctora Zainab's presence there is only Mai's attention and Tamer looking at us. For as long as the book lasts, we are poised, no future, no past.-Minaret — Leila Aboulela

I usually am thinking about my next book the second I put the last dot on the previous one that I turn in. — Greg Graffin

The second death. To think that you died and no one would remember you. I wondered if this was why we tried so hard to make our mark in America. To be known. Think of how important celebrity has become. We sing to get famous; expose our worst secrets to get famous; lose weight, eat bugs, even commit murder to get famous. Our young people post their deepest thoughts on public web sites. They run cameras from their bedrooms. It's as if we are screaming Notice Me! Remember Me! Yet the notoriety barely lasts. Names quickly blur and in time are forgotten. — Mitch Albom

There are many readers of the book, who don't know anything about the authors and the artists. There is more than one author. It doesn't matter, if you can't make the reader dive into the story and surround him with that environment and those characters. That's an experience that lasts longer than figuring out who did what. I think that's what makes our working relationship better, it helps us to make a book that feels unique and not like different voices. — Gabriel Ba

Books constitute capital. A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not, then, an article of mere consumption but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital. — Thomas Jefferson

This book out-lives, out-loves, out-fits, out-lasts, out-reaches, out-runs, and out-ranks all books. This book is faith producing. It is hope awakening. It is death destroying, and those who embrace it find forgiveness of sin. — Arcturus Z. Conrad

Nothing could be slow enough, nothing lasts too long. No pleasure could equal, she thought, straightening the chairs, pushing in one book on the shelf, this having done with the triumphs of youth, lost herself in the process of living, to find it with a shock of delight, as the sun rose, as the day sank. Many a time had she gone, at Barton when they were all talking, to look at the sky; seen it between peoples shoulders at dinner; seen it in London when she could not sleep. She walked to the window. — Virginia Woolf

The moment when the finished book or, better yet, a tightly packed carton of finished books arrives on my doorstep is the moment of truth, of culmination; its bliss lasts as much as five minutes, until the first typographical error or production flaw is noticed. — John Updike

Book-love, I say again, lasts throughout life, it never flags or fails, but, like Beauty itself, is a joy forever. — Holbrook Jackson

Some authors state that the last stage in this chain of measurements involves "consciousness," or the "intellectual inner life" of the observer, by virtue of the "principle of psycho-physical parallelism." Other authors introduce a wave function for the entire universe. In this book, I shall refrain from using concepts that I do not understand. — Asher Peres

The whole process of getting a book published is just part of the process. The last of the process that I enjo — Victoria Chang

The mind is refrigerated by interruption; the thoughts are diverted from the principle subject; the reader is weary, he suspects not why; and at last throws away the book, which he has too diligently studied. — Samuel Johnson

The product of paper and printed ink, that we commonly call the book, is one of the great visible mediators between spirit and time, and, reflecting zeitgeist, lasts as long as ore and stone. — Johann Georg Hamann

I wish I could write a book that will be read for as long as our civilization lasts ... I would value it much more highly than any business success if I could contribute to an understanding of the world in which we live or, better yet, if I could help to preserve the economic and political system that has allowed me to flourish as a participant. — George Soros

For me, the favourite chapters have always been the last chapters in the books. I knew exactly how each book would end - and how the first chapter of the following book would begin. I knew I wanted to leave the readers with answers - and a bunch of new questions! — Michael Scott

I can't remember the last book that taught me so much, and so well, about what it means to be human. — James Gleick

The book itself is a curious artifact, not showy in its technology but complex and extremely efficient: a really neat little device, compact, often very pleasant to look at and handle, that can last decades, even centuries. It doesn't have to be plugged in, activated, or performed by a machine; all it needs is light, a human eye, and a human mind. It is not one of a kind, and it is not ephemeral. It lasts. It is reliable. If a book told you something when you were fifteen, it will tell it to you again when you're fifty, though you may understand it so differently that it seems you're reading a whole new book.
(Staying Awake: Notes on the alleged decline of reading, Harper's Magazine, February 2008) — Ursula K. Le Guin