Famous Quotes & Sayings

Elmore Leonard

These are rules I've picked up along the way to help me remain invisible when I'm writing a book, to help me show rather than tell what's taking place in the story,

Elmore Leonard

To me, a book is a book, an electronic device is not, and love of books was the reason I started writing.

Elmore Leonard

Really, when I write a book I'm the only one I have to please. That's the beauty of writing a book instead of a screenplay.

Elmore Leonard

I want the reader to know what's going on. So there's never a mystery in my books.

Elmore Leonard

Never open a book with weather. There are exceptions. If you happen to be Barry Lopez, who has more ways to describe ice and snow than an Eskimo, you can do all the weather reporting you want.

Elmore Leonard

At the time I begin writing a novel, the last thing I want to do is follow a plot outline. To know too much at the start takes the pleasure out of discovering what the book is about.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Books are sepulchres of thought.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The pleasant books, that silently among Our household treasures take familiar places, And are to us as if a living tongue Spake from the printed leaves or pictured faces!

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Many readers judge of the power of a book by the shock it gives their feelings.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Authors have a greater right than any copyright, though it is generally unacknowledged or disregarded. They have a right to the reader's civility. There are favorable hours for reading a book, as for writing it, and to these the author has a claim. Yet many people think that when they buy a book they buy with it the right to abuse the author.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Time has a doomsday book, upon whose pages he is continually recording illustrious names. But as often as a new name is written there, an old one disappears. Only a few stand in illuminated characters never to be effaced.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

My Book and Heart Shall never part.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

There are favorable hours for reading a book, as for writing it.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I love an author the more for having been himself a lover of books.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

It is true, that it is not at all necessary to love many books, in order to love them much.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Many readers judge of the power of a book by the shock it gives their feelings - as some savage tribes determine the power of muskets by their recoil; that being considered best which fairly prostrates the purchaser.

Henrik Ibsen

I believe that before anything else I'm a human being -- just as much as you are... or at any rate I shall try to become one. I know quite well that most people would agree with you, Torvald, and that you have warrant for it in books; but I can't be satisfied any longer with what most people say, and with what's in books. I must think things out for myself and try to understand them.

Henrik Ibsen

...I'm no longer prepared to accept what people say and what's written in books. I must think things out for myself, and try to find my own answer.

Henri Nouwen

People have filled an enormously important role in my life - more than books! For me, it's not the formal advising or the therapy that meant so much. It was more the fact that someone committed himself or herself to me. They were really interested in my life; they wanted to know what I was doing; they followed me; they dared to confront and challenge me.

Heidi Julavits

If I'd done the discovery before I wrote the book, then there would be nothing to discover. It would feel dutiful instead of exciting.

Heidi Julavits

I calmed myself by walking into my nearby bookstore and marveling at all the books other people had written. So many people had finished and published novels; it couldn’t be so hard, right?

Hayley Williams

Whether I'm being influenced by new music that I'm listening to, books I've read, my friends, or my faith, I'm learning all the time.

Hayley Mills

I cry in movies a lot, and over books.

Hattie McDaniel

In playing the part of Mammy, I tried to make her a living, breathing character, the way she appeared to me in the book

Between the villages of Aubiere and Romagnat in the ancient Province of Auvergne there is an old road that comes suddenly over the top of a high hill. To stand south of this ridge looking up at the highway flowing over the skyline is to receive one of those irrefutable impressions from landscape which requires more than a philosopher to explain. In this case it is undoubtedly, for some reason, one of exalted expectation.

Heston Blumenthal

At home I've got 1,500 cook books and the spines have all gone, the pages are all torn - it's chaos.

Hesketh Pearson

Misquotations are the only quotations that are never misquoted.

Hesketh Pearson

Misquotation is, in fact, the pride and privilege of the learned. A widely- read man never quotes accurately, for the rather obvious reason that he has read too widely.

Henry Morton Stanley

But my estimates, for instance, based upon book information, were simply ridiculous, fanciful images of African attractions were soon dissipated, anticipated pleasures vanished, and all crude ideas began to resolve themselves into shape.

Henry Selick

'Coraline' is Neil Gaiman's book, it sold a lot, it has a big fan base. It was originally conceived to be live action, but I never really wanted it to be. I always thought that it would work better as an animated film.

Henry Petroski

The bookshelf, like the book, has become an integral part of civilization as we know it, its presence in a home practically defining what it means to be civilized, educated, and refined.

Henry Rollins

Everyone should have the right to go off and do their music or do their books. The people who are in the position to censor they're really not down to reality where that certain artists are coming from.

Henry Ford

There are three things that grow more precious with age; old wood to burn, old books to read, and old friends to enjoy.