Book Quotes - Page 407

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What I had to do was learn how to tell stories with my pictures. At first I didn't even know what that meant because I thought I was already doing it. After all these years of drawing stories and trying to teach it, I think it boils down to a pretty simple rule: it takes time to get to know the characters in a book and the world they inhabit. My first sketches are always horrible. Stereotypical. Contrived. Generic. I have to put in the time in order to deepen them and have it all mean something.

To be honest, I didn't want to get inside Jones's head. Every time I wrote about Jim Jones I practically had to tie myself to my chair to force myself to do it; I hated him so much. He wanted to go down in history and he did. He's had hundreds of books and articles written about him. I was much more interested in the stories of the rank-and-file members of Peoples Temple, what drew them to Jones, and what they did once they were trapped in Jonestown and realized Jones was intent on killing them.

I seem to have three categories of readers. The first is nonbelievers who are glad that I am reading the Bible so they don't have to bother. The second group, which is quite large, is very Biblically literate Jews. And the third, which is also very large, is Christians, most of them evangelical. The evangelical readers and the Jewish readers have generally been very encouraging, because they appreciate someone taking the book they love so seriously, and actually reading it and grappling with it.

It makes it easier, if you can't do an American accent. I don't know. It's different. I played a character in Never Let Me Go where the script for my character was very sparse, and I enjoyed it. With Never Let Me Go, I had a whole book written from my character's point of view, so I always knew where I was. But, with Ryan [Gosling], it was just easy. He's such a brilliant actor and he is so prepared. He doesn't have to warm himself up to be in a scene. He's just in it. It draws you in, in a way.

There really are two Americas, one for the grifter class and one for everybody else. In everybody-else land, the world of small businesses and wage-earning employees, the government is something to be avoided, an overwhelming, all-powerful entity whose attentions usually presage some kind of financial setback, if not complete ruin. In the grifter world, however, government is a slavish lapdog that the financial companies that will be the major players in this book use as a tool for making money.

If you take a book with you on a journey," Mo had said when he put the first one in her box, "an odd thing happens: The book begins collecting your memories. And forever after you have only to open that book to be back where you first read it. It will all come into your mind with the very first words: the sights you saw in that place, what it smelled like, the ice cream you ate while you were reading it... yes, books are like flypaper—memories cling to the printed page better than anything else.

Look, Mrs. McGillicuddy, it's not my fault your son jumped out a dorm room window on Christmas eve. I've written over fifty books as a Columbia professor, all right? You don't do that by holding hands with every at-risk undergraduate who says he's homesick, or he's turning gay, or the dog ate his term paper. I write about Lincoln, and freedom, and great ideas. I don't always have time for students. It's like Dean Martin used to say: if you want to talk, go to a priest. Hey -- what's the gun for?

The Tipping Point is the biography of an idea, and the idea is very simple. It is that the best way to understand the emergence of fashion trends, the ebb and flow of crime waves, or, for that matter, the transformation of unknown books into bestsellers, or the rise of teenage smoking, or the phenomena of word of mouth, or any number of the other mysterious changes that mark everyday life is to think of them as epidemics. Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread just like viruses do.

There are two keys to productive missionary work -- (1) family-to-family friendshipping (when a member family shares the gospel with a nonmember family) and (2) cooperation between members and the missionaries to reach people...Every member knows of nonmembers he or she can refer to the missionaries. Every father, mother, and youth in this church should share the gospel by giving a Book of Mormon, telling the account of the Prophet Joseph Smith, or inviting our acquaintances to a special meeting.

I either wrote at the end of the night or sometimes in the morning. Sometimes they were full entries, or others I just wrote notes about things that happened that day or funny thoughts I'd had. If I had a truly eventful day, I'd take the time to write it all down in great detail. I edited a lot of content out once it was all finished - there was way too much, and I didn't want to bore anyone. I like to keep the book [Superficial: More Adventures from the Andy Cohen Diaries] moving at a fast pace.

In my couple of books, including Going Clear, the book about Scientology, I thought it seemed appropriate at the end of the book to help the reader frame things. Because we've gone through the history, and there's likely conflictual feelings in the reader's mind. The reader may not agree with me, but I don't try to influence the reader's judgment. I know everybody who picks this book up already has a decided opinion. But my goal is to open the reader's mind a little bit to alternative narratives.

In this age of space flight, when we use the modern tools of science to advance into new regions of human activity, the Bible... remains in every way an up-to-date book. Our knowledge and use of the laws of nature that enable us to fly to the Moon also enable us to destroy our home planet with the atom bomb. Science itself does not address the question whether we should use the power at our disposal for good or for evil. The guidelines of what we ought to do are furnished in the moral law of God.

The Bible is forbidding when you start to read it. The language is odd. The stories start and stop herkily-jerkily. The characters behave in inexplicable ways. It takes a little bit of time to get into the rhythm of the book. I found reading the first 15 chapters of Genesis very very difficult. Once I got past there, I loved reading, and found it very easy. When you get used to the Bible, it becomes thrilling to read (like any great book - I just had exactly the same experience with the Odyssey).

We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books – mine included – because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn’t happened. The climate is doing its usual tricks. There’s nothing much really happening yet. We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world now. The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium. Twelve years is a reasonable time. The temperature has stayed almost constant, whereas it should have been rising - carbon dioxide is rising, no question about that.

Only one time in my career I had that feeling [that this is not gonna get made], it was for this movie [Life of Pi]. It was right before we started the physical pre-production. I pre-visualized the whole ocean part before we made the movie, I was that prepared. At one point they seemed to want to drop it because it was really risky. The budget we proposed was a lot higher than they expected, they wanted to [drop it]. After all, it's a philosophical book and a literature property, it's not Batman.

We're really delving into so many stories that are comic book based, so I like that we have a woman as part of that production. We haven't really explored that too much. Wonder Woman has had so many different connotations over the years because she's so beloved as a character, and it's been interesting to see how she's evolved - to see how her outfits have changed, and going from having her invisible plane to starting to fly herself, and sort of be on par with the physical attributes of Superman.

One of the glories of doing the book So You Want to Be President? was the shifts in tone, where I was able to be humorous and then very serious. And the impeachment page is certainly the best example of that. I didn't have to think too much about how to present this one. I got the idea right away that a good way of showing the shame of President Nixon would be to put him down in the shadows under the Lincoln Monument, with Lincoln sort of glaring down at him from an elevated, better-lit position.

It's funny - for a long time, I didn't know I was writing a book. I was writing stories. For me, each story took so long and took so much out of me, that when I finished it, I was like, Oh my gosh, I feel like I've poured everything from myself into this, and then I'd get depressed for a week. And then once I was ready to write a new story, I would want to write about something that was completely different, so I would search for a totally different character with a different set of circumstances.

People like ourselves may see nothing wondrous in writing, but our anthropologists know how strange and magical it appears to a purely oral people - a conversation with no one and yet with everyone. What could be stranger than the silence one encounters when addressing a question to a text? What could be more metaphysically puzzling than addressing an unseen audience, as every writer of books must do? And correcting oneself because one knows that an unknown reader will disapprove or misunderstand?

Many of my sharpest critics have decided to take a position of ignoring me - because they feel that by attacking me, they would draw attention to my book and give me more publicity and help me sell more books. So I think that they decided that the best thing for them to do is to say nothing. Also, I think that some of my critics simply can't refute my argument - and so it's easier for them to ignore it as well, so that they're not forced to confront the logical contradiction in their own position.

Would it not be prudent to get our civilization tools together, and see how much stock is left on hand in the way of Glass Beads and Theology, and Maxim Guns and Hymn Books, and Trade Gin and Torches of Progress and Enlightenment (patent adjustable ones, good to fire villages with, upon occasion), and balance the books, and arrive at the profit and loss, so that we may intelligently decide whether to continue the business or sellout the property and start a new Civilization Scheme on the proceeds.

It's not a matter of whether the reviews of your books are good or bad, it's about being taken seriously, both as a woman writer and as a writer of color. Also, it worries me when people point to a couple of women writers or writers of color who get some attention - and I am sometimes pulled into that category - to prove that others are getting a fair shot. It's like those people who keep saying that racism no longer exists in this country because Barack Obama was a President of the United States.

We are interested in stifling the sale of this book. We believe that this can be best accomplished by refusing to be stampeded into giving it publicity...The less discussion there is concerning it the more sales resistance will be created. We therefore appeal to you to refrain from comment on this book...It is our conviction that a general compliance with this request will sound the warning to other publishing houses against engaging in this type of venture. (Signed) Richard E. Gutstadt, Director.

My father was a very good amateur pianist, and he had a collection of books on technique. One of the things he had was a small volume of exercises by Rudolf Ganz, in which Ganz mentions the pedagogical work of the Swiss composer, Émile-Robert Blanchet, who wrote a ton of polyphonic exercises for one-hand. These exercises were a great help for finger independence, which I acquired early on. This might have given me somewhat of an edge, a facility to be able to knock any obstacle that was in my way.

One time, the Library of Congress was giving books to local libraries around the country on Islam. The library of a guy named Walter Jones, who's a member of Congress from North Carolina, got some books and resource materials, and he got up in the press and said he didn't want any Muslim books in the library. And the people said, "Wait a minute, that's kind of anti-Muslim." He said, "Oh no, Keith Ellison is a friend of mine." And I said, "You know what? We are friends, but you're wrong about this.

And when I look at a history book and think of the imaginative effort it has taken to squeeze this oozing world between two boards and typeset, I am astonished. Perhaps the event has an unassailable truth. God saw it. God knows. But I am not God. And so when someone tells me what they heard or saw, I believe them, and I believe their friend who also saw, but not in the same way, and I can put these accounts together and I will not have a seamless wonder but a sandwich laced with mustard of my own.

I've been asked before, "Who are your heroes?" and these types of questions. I always find it hard to identify a single person or a single book or this sort of thing. I've always been forward looking. I was raised with the notion that you can do pretty much anything you want. You're able to accomplish anything you set out to accomplish. I was given a sense of confidence and I never really felt the need to - or I've never had the benefit, I should probably say - of being inspired by outside heroes.

Instead of looking at books and pictures about the New Testament I looked at the New Testament. There I found an account, not in the least of a person with his hair parted in the middle or his hands clasped in appeal, but of an extraordinary being with lips of thunder and acts of lurid decision, flinging down tables, casting out devils, passing with the wild secrecy of the wind from mountain isolation to a sort of dreadful demagogy; a being who often acted like an angry god — and always like a god.

Having a book is somewhat like having a baby, as many woman writers have observed before me: the conception, the long preparation, the wait, the growing heaviness (not of body in this case but of the spirit and the manuscript) toward the end, the initial delight at the sight of the product, fully formed and seemingly perfect, and then the usual postpartum depression. What will people whose opinion I care about, and those whose views I don't value but have weight in the world of reader, think of it?

A writer, or at least a poet, is always being asked by people who should know better: “Whom do you write for?” The question is, of course, a silly one, but I can give it a silly answer. Occasionally I come across a book which I feel has been written especially for me and for me only. Like a jealous lover I don’t want anybody else to hear of it. To have a million such readers, unaware of each other’s existence, to be read with passion and never talked about, is the daydream, surely, of every author.

Harvey sought for truth in Truth's own book- Creation - which by God himself was writ;And wisely thought 'twas fitNot to read comments only upon it,But on th' original itself to look.Methinks in Art's great circle others standLock'd up together hand in hand:Every one leads as he is led,The same bare path they tread,A dance like that of Fairies, a fantastic round,With neither change of motion nor of ground.Had Harvey to this road confined his wit,His noble circle of the blood had been untrodden yet.

Whatever we may say against collections, which present authors in a disjointed form, they nevertheless bring about many excellent results. We are not always so composed, so full of wisdom, that we are able to take in at once the whole scope of a work according to its merits. Do we not mark in a book passages which seem to have a direct reference to ourselves? Young people especially, who have failed in acquiring a complete cultivation of mind, are roused in a praiseworthy way by brilliant passages.

No other serial publications carry a number on them that is of any weight to their readership. The number is there to serve a function, but it has no intrinsic value in and of itself. It's comfort food and nostalgia at best. On this, we follow what you and your fellow readers do more than what you say. We hear complaints about renumbering every time we do it, but every time we do it it results in higher sales, which is the whole ballgame - so if it were your time and your effort, what would you do?

I was born in England and brought up in London. When I was 18 I read a book and came across the Dharma. I was halfway through the book when I turned to my mother and said, "I'm a Buddhist," to which she replied, "Oh are you dear? Well finish the book and then you can tell me about it." I realised I'd always been Buddhist but I just hadn't known it existed, because in those days not even the word 'Buddha' was ever spoken. This was in in the 1960s, so there wasn't that much available, even in London.

John Steinbeck's 'The Grapes of Wrath' also speaks urgently to today's concerns: the cratered trail of dreams for Mexican immigrants seeking a promised land in the Western [United States]; the perfidy of banks in foreclosing on poor people's homes; and the insurgent urge of the book's protagonist, Tom Joad, to speak truth to police power. 'Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy,' Tom promises, 'I'll be there.' In Salinas, Calif., Ferguson, Mo., or Staten Island, N.Y., Tom's truth goes marching on.

I always tell people, "There's a book on everyone." I get some of that book before I do anything. If I want to deeply understand someone's reputation, I'll talk to their friends, their former bosses, their peers, and I'll learn a lot about them. I want them to be trusted. I want them to be respected. I want them to give a s - -. Then there are the intangibles: physical and emotional stamina, the ability to confront issues. I can ask all I want about those things, but I also have to see a lot of it.

As an advocate for kids for over twenty years, I have watched things change since I was in school. Thankfully, this book made me face what I intuitively knew was real but pretended wasn't: The youth of our culture have been deeply wounded by our collective neglect and adult-driven self-focus. Young people need adults to understand what they are going through and people to care about them without a personal agenda. This book was very helpful to me, and my attitude toward teens will never be the same.

For a while I used to listen to those whispers about babies costing you books, and Cyril Connolly's loathsome quote that "There is no more somber enemy of good art than the pram in the hall." But it's rubbish. Absolute rubbish. A huge amount of your work is done when you're not at your desk. Knotty problems that you need your unconscious to solve. So it can be helpful to walk away and focus on other things and it can be helpful to be a bit harassed in your daily life, to be hungry for time to write.

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.

The Postman Always Rings Twice that's a book that I think every writer should read - that has to do with technique. But it's also a novel narrated by a guy who has decided by page 11 that he's fallen in love with a woman, and they're going to murder her husband so they can be together. There's nothing remotely likeable about him, but James M. Cain brings you so far into his head that, at a certain point, you have that uncomfortable but also thrilling sensation of seeing things exactly as he sees it.

When I am working on a book or a story I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you and it is cool or cold and you come to your work and warm as you write. . . .When you stop you are as empty, and at the same time never empty but filling, as when you have e made love to someone you love. Nothing can hurt you, nothing can happen, nothing means anything until the next day when you do it again. It is the wait until the next day that is hard to get through.

I want to see all the countries in the world and learn all the languages. I want to have thousands of friends and I want all my friends to be different. I want to play six instruments. I want to be the best in the world at two things. I want to be a great athlete and I want to be a great surgeon. I need to practice very hard every day. I need to sleep as little as possible. I need to read at least one major book every week. And I need to remember that my seventy years are going to go by too quickly.

Had I been present at the Creation, I would have given some useful hints for the better ordering of the universe. Remarking on the complexity of Ptolemaic model of the universe after it was explained to him. Footnote: Carlyle says, in his History of Frederick the Great, book ii. chap. vii. that this saying of Alphonso about Ptolemy's astronomy, 'that it seemed a crank machine; that it was pity the Creator had not taken advice,' is still remembered by mankind, - this and no other of his many sayings.

America is also the nameless foreigner, the homeless refugee, the hungry boy begging for a job and the black body dangling on a tree. America is the illiterate immigrant who is ashamed that the world of books and intellectual opportunities are closed to him. We are all that nameless foreigner, that homeless refugee, that hungry boy, that illiterate immigrant and that lynched black body. All of us, from the first Adams to the last Filipino, native born or alien, educated or illiterate-We are America!

Book critics or theatre critics can be derisively negative and gain delighted praise for the trenchant with of their review. But in criticisms of religion even clarity ceases to be a virtue and sounds like aggressive hostility. A politician may attack an opponent scathingly across the floor of the House and earn plaudits for his robust pugnacity. But let a soberly reasoning critic of religion employ what would in other contexts sound merely direct or forthright, and it will be described as a 'rant'.

With impeccable timing and a fine instinct for the telling detail, Francesca Abbate evokes the plenitudes and the deprivations of human habitation, the nurturing richness of landscape, and the soul-wound wrought by casual defacement. Abbate has a superb capacity for distillation and a mastery of poetic line, and her diction is remarkably flexible, accommodating both the demotic and the lyrical. Her poems are as consistent in quality as they are varied in pacing, surface, and tone. A fine first book.

As long as there are history books, Neil Armstrong will be included in them, remembered for taking humankind’s first small step on a world beyond our own. Besides being one of America’s greatest explorers, Neil carried himself with a grace and humility that was an example to us all. When President Kennedy challenged the nation to send a human to the moon, Neil Armstrong accepted without reservation. As we enter this next era of space exploration, we do so standing on the shoulders of Neil Armstrong.

We have endless books about whether Jesus existed, or whether the Jesus we have learned about is really accurate and historical or mythical. We have endless complicated tracts on fine technical issues, but we don't explore Jesus' way to happiness and peace, or try to understand his feelings about God and creation of how he views our relationship with God, or his attitude toward human weakness. Understanding these things could help us immensely in our own search for inner peace and a meaning to life.

Tegus, I'm leaving this book behind for you, so you will know the why of it all, and maybe you'll forgive me, or maybe you'll think me false and reprehensible. You'd be justified. I couldn't stand the thought of your reading all my words unless I knew for certain that I'd never have to face you again, so please don't look for me. If you read the book in its entirety, you'll know for truth who is Lady Saren. And I guess you'll also know that I'm a silly girl who writes down every word you said to me.

What you are lies with you. If you are lazy, and accept your lot, you may live in it. If you are willing to work, you can write your name anywhere you choose, among the only ones who live beyond the grave in this world, the people who write books that help, make exquisite music, carve statues, paint pictures, and work for others. Never mind the calico dress, and the coarse shoes. Work at you books, and before long you will hear yesterday's tormentors boasting that they were once classmates of yours.

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