Famous Quotes & Sayings

Edwina Currie

If a book doesn't grab me in the first chapter, I may not bother with it, ... As writers we're told that you have to catch readers in the first paragraph, but that is easier said than done.

Nigel Kneale

I'd written a book of short stories that had won the Somerset Maugham prize so I was respectable, but there was no money in short story writing.

Steve Finley

I don't think it's right -- you didn't hear anything about this until the book came out.

Mary Pope Osborne

I loved Frances Hodgson Burnett, who wrote 'The Little Princess' and 'The Secret Garden.' And I loved the 'Little House on the Prairie' books by Laura Ingalls Wilder.

I love bookstores and booksellers. In my novel 'Dirty Martini,' I thanked over 3,000 booksellers by name in the back matter.

Molly Antopol

I love being in the archives, traveling, sitting in dusty places and looking at books with brittle pages. I love reading biographies and researching, to make myself informed about whatever political or historical time I'm writing about. From there, a lot of the emotional truths about my characters emerge.

Susan Minot

I love 'Anna Karenina.' It's in the top five books on my list. Tolstoy is unsurpassed in combining the grand with the trivial, that is, the small details which make up life.

Mark Twain

I have studied it often, but I never could discover the plot

I have a French book with the period picked out, and I am working on something right now that I don't want to talk about at all.

Elizabeth McCracken

I have a memory of my fourth-grade self wanting to be the first woman president of the United States, but I think that has a lot more to do with my love of world records and reference books than a love of serving my country.

John Scales

I have a couple of lists that I can refer to throughout the day, but I don't have the official 'FAT' book yet. Yes, it really is called the FAT (Federal Acronym and Terms) book. And no, you can't speak a sentence around here without using an acronym,

I have an idea for a story, and if the idea is going to work, then one of the characters steps forward, and I hear her voice telling the story. This is what has happened with all the books I've written in the first person.

I have a piece of evidence the book doesn't have with regards to the Knights Templar. You'll have to come to the lecture to see what it is.

Jerry Weintraub

I have a very big phone book and a very long reach around the world. And I think - I don't think, I know - that 95 percent of the people who I know who weren't born into success who have become successful and done things that are different and made a lot of money and had a lot of excitement in their life are people who never hear the word 'no.'

George Bernard Shaw

I have made it so perfectly clear in my tracts, articles, and books what was to be done that all Parliament has had to do was read my works and do the opposite

I have never checked online. I've always used the bookstore because it's convenient.

Jenny Nimmo

I had written two or three books before my husband noticed that in every one of them a family member was missing. He suggested that it was because my father's death, when I was five, utterly changed my world. I can only suppose he is right and that this is the reason I am drawn to a narrative where someone's life is changed by loss.

I had written several books about Kansas railroads and related places to see.

John le Carre

If I had to put a name to it, I would wish that all my books were entertainments. I think the first thing you've got to do is grab the reader by the ear, and make him sit down and listen. Make him laugh, make him feel. We all want to be entertained at a very high level.

Markus Zusak

I feel like every other book has been a small piece of me. This is every piece of me.

Anne Frank

If I read a book that impresses me, I have to take myself firmly in hand before I mix with other people; otherwise they would think my mind rather queer.

Liam Hemsworth

I feel like the books were just written like a movie. You read it and you can just kind of see everything. Before I went in to read with the director, I read the first book and I loved it. I didn't realize how good the writing was. And then I went in and read with Gary Ross, and that was it.

Carl Sandburg

I feel like I'm drowning. Every night, I'm carrying home loads of things to read but I'm too exhausted. I keep clipping things and Xeroxing them and planning to read them eventually, but I just end up throwing it all away and feeling guilty.

I did my book to help other people, ... People are always struggling and they need help and something to give them courage, so that's why I did it.

James Hillman

I can't read all the books I want to read, I can't watch all the phenomena that interest me in the world. The work calls me, and sometimes I wonder whether this is an obsession and I should drop it, or it's a necessity I'm obliged to fulfill.

I forgot it. I'm happy and excited. I'm honored to have my name in the books with some other great players.

Raquel Welch

I found out a long time ago that if I indulged by stuffing my face with great food, lying about reading books and watching TV or talking on the phone, I was not a happy camper.

Dakota Blue Richards

I didn't really like reading much before I did 'The Golden Compass'. But then my teacher told me to read it. And I thought, 'Oh God, I'm going to have to read a whole book by myself!' It's not that I couldn't read, it's just that I didn't really like books very much. But the book that she lent me I really enjoyed.

I don't go into bookstores because it upsets me,

Mary Gordon

I don't have any great first job tales: I've never worked on a tramp steamer or in a coal mine or anything like that. I think the inspiration for my writing came largely from my father and the joy that life in books represented to me.

David Liss

I didn't want to write a book that suggested that magic good/technology bad.

I didn't write the book in sequence. If I got stuck I started a new chapter. I didn't know where it was going, but eventually I figured it out,

Julie Klausner

I didn't write my book, 'I Don't Care About Your Band,' in order to give women a brand-new set of dating rules they need to feel terrible about not abiding. I wrote my book to make the women who read it feel good about themselves, and a little more entitled to be treated well by the guys they go out with.