Best culture & book Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“I've always loved books by the Bronte sisters. I love Jane Austen, too. I'm more influenced by people like her than by pop culture.”

People Book Culture Pops Jane Pop Culture Like Her Austen Bronte

Author:Laura Marling

“If you write chick lit, and if you're a New Yorker, and if your book becomes the topic of pop-culture fascination, the paper might make dismissive and ignorant mention of your book. If you write romance, forget about it. You'll be lucky if they spell your name right on the bestseller list.”

Ifs Writing Book Might Romance Culture Names Forget Lucky Paper Pops Lists Ignorant Spells Topics Lit Fascination Pop Culture Chicks New Yorkers

Author:Jennifer Weiner

“Culture, like the kingdom of heaven, lies within us, and not in foreign galleries and books.”

Book Lying Culture Heaven Kingdoms Deceit Gallery Kingdom Of Heaven

Book:History of a Literary Radical and Other Essays

Source: History of a Literary Radical and Other Essays

“Books and newspapers assume a "common reader" that is, a person who knows the things known by other literate persons in the culture. Obviously, such assumptions are never identical from writer to writer, but they show a remarkable consistency”

Knows Persons Book Shows Culture Common Known Knowledge Reader Assuming Newspapers Assumption Remarkable Consistency Identical

Author:Edward Hirsch

“My first book, Fast Forward, was about growing up in the shadow of Hollywood and how kids are affected by the culture of materialism and the cult of celebrity, and I've often felt the reason my work has an audience in the UK is because it's everything the British love to hate about the Americans.”

Firsts Book Reason Kids Hate Culture Felt Audience Growing Up Growing Shadow Hollywood British Materialism Affected Cult Love Hate

Author:Lauren Greenfield

“The weekly cartoons, as were my plays, came from a sense of criticism, criticism of the times, critical of the culture, of our manners and attitudes towards each other. The children's books come from the reverse. They're more supportive, since we're living in a time where we talk more about kids and do less, we talk about balancing the budget and we do it by cutting education.”

Children Book Play Kids Culture Attitude Cutting Criticism Critical Manners Budgets Reverse Cartoon Supportive Children's Books

Author:Jules Feiffer

“The Greek word euphuia, a finely tempered nature, gives exactly the notion of perfection as culture brings us to perceive it; a harmonious perfection, a perfection in which the characters of beauty and intelligence are both present, which unites "the two noblest of things" - as Swift most happily calls them in his Battle of the Books, "the two noblest of things, sweetness and light."”

Giving Two Book Character Light Culture Battle Perfection Notion Perceive Greek Sweetness Harmonious

Author:Matthew Arnold

“While much of modern behavioral and social science treats individuals as autonomous agents, it is absolutely clear that the way we think and act is enormously influenced by the culture in which we live. It also is clear that the major elements of modern culture-science, technology, law, music, and religion-have evolved over time in a quite concrete sense of the term. Mesoudi makes these arguments very well and his book is a very good read.”

“Horror hostess, bondage goddess, Charles Addams cartoon comes to life, Vampire was every first-generation fanboy's wet dream. Scott Poole takes us on an unforgettable ride through the overlapping underworlds of B&D magazines, Hollywood noir, and early political liberation movements that inspired actress Maila Nurmi to challenge a postwar culture bent on stifling women's choices, bodies, and desires. This book is a subversive masterpiece.”

“Susan Bordo’s Unbearable Weight is a masterpiece of complex an nuanced thinking not only about a significant problem that faces women but about our culture. A very valuable book.”

Thinking Book Problem Faces Culture Weight Complexes Valuable Significant Masterpiece Unbearable

Author:Susan Griffin

“Books are the way that we communicate with the dead. The way that we learn lessons from those who are no longer with us, that humanity has built on itself, progressed, made knowledge incremental rather than something that has to be relearned, over and over. There are tales that are older than most countries, tales that have long outlasted the cultures and the buildings in which they were first told.”

Way Firsts Long Made Book Country Humanity Culture Building Lessons Built Communicate Tales Learning Lessons

Book:The View from the Cheap Seats: Selected Nonfiction

Source: The View from the Cheap Seats: Selected Nonfiction

“But once a culture develops sufficiently to become skeptical, the idea of censorship becomes less attractive. To suppress a book or a picture or a sculpture or a play or a film is a terrible act of aggression against the artist who created it. This is a miming of capital punishment; it destroys the life that has been emanated by a life.”

Has Beens Book Ideas Play Film Artist Culture Terrible Speech Punishment Attractive Censorship Aggression Skepticism Sculpture Skeptical Capital Punishment

Author:Rebecca West

“You asked if I thought my fiction had changed anything in the culture and the answer is no. Sure, there's been some scandal, but people are scandalized all the time; it's a way of life for them. It doesn't mean a thing. If you ask if I want my fiction to change anything in the culture, the answer is still no. What I want is to possess my readers while they are reading my book if I can, to possess them in ways that other writers don't. Then let them return, just as they were, to a world where everybody else is working to change, persuade, tempt, and control them.”

People Ifs World Way Want Mean Stills I Can Book Culture Reading Asks Answers Fiction Changed Return Reader Scandal

Book:Conversations with Philip Roth

Source: Conversations with Philip Roth

“When you read a book, you generate beta waves irrespective of the book's content. But if you look up from it, and start watching TV - it doesn't matter what the content of the program is - the beta waves disappear and you start processing alpha and theta waves. These are the same waves that you generate during meditation. Reading is primarily left hemisphere and watching television is primarily right hemisphere. Now how could that not have a major effect on our culture?”

Ifs Looks Book Matter Culture Reading Left Meditation Effects Television Tvs Majors Program Wave Disappear Look Up Processing Hemisphere Alphas Watching Tv Watching Television Beta Theta

Author:Leonard Shlain

“Where has this book been? The Culture Engine demystifies the what and how of driving your company's culture to produce transformational business outcomes. Chris Edmonds operationalizes culture while offering practical tools necessary to align your people and gain profound competitive advantage.”

People Book Culture Company Produce Gains Advantage Tools Profound Driving Practicals Outcomes Engines Offering Competitive Advantage

Author:Joseph Michelli

“Today we hear a great deal about Organizational Men, Mass Culture, Conformity, the Lonely Crowd, the Power Elite and its Conspiracy of Mediocrity. We forget that the very volume of this criticism is an indication that our society is still radically pluralistic. Not only are there plenty of exceptionalists who take exception to the stereotyping of the mass culture but that very string of epithets comes from a series of books that have been recent best-sellers, symptoms of a popular, living tradition of dissent from things as they are.”

“As a kid growing up in the 1950s I became acutely aware of the changes taking place in American culture and I must say I didn't much like it. I witnessed the debasement of architecture, and I could see a decline in the quality of things like comic books and toys, things made for kids. Old things seemed to have more life, more substance, more humanity in them.”

Made Book Kids Humanity Culture Quality Growing Up Growing Architecture Comic Substance Decline Toys Comic Book American Culture Old Things Kids Growing Up

Author:Robert Crumb

“The success [of the X-Men], I think, is for two reasons. The first is that, creatively, the book was close to perfect ... but the other reason is that it was a book about being different in a culture where, for the first time in the West, being different wasn't just accepted, but was also fashionable. I don't think it's a coincidence that gay rights, black rights, the empowerment of women and political correctness all happened over those twenty years and a book about outsiders trying to be accepted was almost the poster-boy for this era in American culture.”

“"The meaning of culture" is nothing less than the conduct of life itself, fortified, thickened, made more crafty and subtle, by contact with books and with art.”

Art Made Book Culture Contact Subtle Crafty

Author:John Cowper Powys

“A culture-bearing book, like a mule, bears the culture on its back. No one should sit down to write one deliberately. Culture-bearing books appear almost accidentally, like a sudden surge in the stock market. There are books of high quality that are a part of the culture, but that is not the same. They are a part of it. They aren't carrying it anywhere. They may talk about insanity sympathetically, for example, because that's the standard cultural attitude. But they don't carry any suggestion that insanity might be something other than sickness or degeneracy.”

Should Writing May Book Might Culture Attitude Quality Example Bears Standards Independence Insanity Sickness Suggestions High Quality Mules

Author:Robert M. Pirsig

“As I've indicated, most books go out of print within one year. The same is true of music and film. Commercial culture is sharklike. It must keep moving. And when a creative work falls out of favor with the commercial distributors, the commercial life ends.”

Years Book Ends Film Moving Fall Culture Creative Favors Print Keep Moving Creative Work Distributors

Book:Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity

Source: Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity

“The men who are not interested in philosophy need it most urgently: they are most helplessly in its power. The men who are not interested in philosophy absorb its principles from the cultural atmosphere around them-from schools, colleges, books, magazines, newspapers, movies, television, etc. Who sets the tone of a culture? A small handful of men: the philosophers. Others follow their lead, either by conviction or by default.”

Source: The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z

“Many books condemn 'secular' culture, just as many books advocate (consciously or unconsciously) accommodating ourselves to culture. Brett has written something much different: a biblically informed and culturally savvy approach to consuming culture in a God-honoring, community-building, and mission-advancing way.”

Way Book Different Culture Community Written Building Approach Missions Secular Consuming Advancing Savvy Community Building

Author:Mike Erre

“Superheroes are also about immigrants. Superman, the prototype of all superheroes, is a prototypical immigrant. His homeland was in crisis, so his parents sent him to America in search of a better life. He has two names, one American, Clark Kent, and the other foreign, Kal-El. He wears two sets of clothes and lives in between two cultures. He loves his new country, but a part of him still longs for his old one.”

Stills Two Book Country America Culture Names Parent Clothes Crisis Comic Immigrants Comic Book Superhero Better Life Homeland Prototype Kent Two Cultures

Author:Gene Luen Yang

“An American has invented a remote control that will turn off any telly within a 20ft radius. What a marvellous device! What a splendid invention! What a really helpful and improving way of devoting your time to building something that turns off culture. Next week, I'm instigating Burn a Book Week, to encourage even more conversation. I've come up with a fantastic little device which I'll call a box of matches.”

“I always thought that television was the way to go in my goal to invade pop culture because it got to towns in which there were no bookstores. That's how I used to think of it: How do I reach kids who not only don't read but probably have no access to much in the way of books?”

Thinking Way Book Kids Used Culture Goal Television Towns Pops Access Pop Culture Bookstores

Author:Matt Groening

“If you want to have a creative culture, you can't get it by reading books. You get it by example.”

Ifs Want Book Culture Reading Creative Example Reading Books

Author:Barbara Corcoran

“After the pleasure of possessing books there is hardly anything more pleasant than that of speaking of them, and of communicating to the public the innocent richness of thought which we have acquired by the culture of letters.”

Book Culture Pleasure Letters Communicate Innocent Pleasant Richness Possessing

Author:Charles Nodier

“It is quite reasonable to subscribe both to the old saw that no good girl was ever ruined by a book and to the perception that it is not good for children to be constantly exposed to the sexual violence in our popular culture. Protecting children seems to me logically, legally, and rather easily differentiated from censorship.”

Children Book Seems Culture Girl Saws Violence Perception Reasonable Exposed Censorship Ruined Pornography Popular Culture Good Girl Protecting Children

Author:Molly Ivins

“When I first encountered the poems of Jon Woodward, I was stunned into the state that is my life's joy-I was in the presence of the inimitable. Uncanny Valley extends that experience-almost into another dimension. These apocalyptic, pixilated poems forge a mythology of our ravaged culture, one that might have been written in the future. If you want poetry to give you a persimmon on a plate, look elsewhere; if you want to know what happens when seven trees fall on the highway and the story is told by a stutterer, this is the book, and it could only have been written by Woodward.”

“I think most Native American literature is unreadable by the vast majority of Native Americans. Generally speaking Indians don't read books. It's not a book culture. That's why I'm trying to make movies. Indians go to movies; Indians own video recorders.”

Thinking Trying Book Culture Literature Majority Video Native Native American American Literature Recorders

Author:Sherman Alexie

“They've been screaming about the death of literacy for years, but I think TV is the Gutenberg [printing] press. I think TV is the only thing that keeps us vaguely in democracy even if it's in the hands of the corporate culture. If you're an artist you write in your time. Moaning about the fact that maybe people read more books a hundred years ago - that's not true. I think the same percentage has always read.”

“I think our culture has gotten so skewed. People assume that because you're an actor you want to write a book to exploit your celebrity, but my celebrity is only a byproduct of me making movies. I have no intention of being a celebrity.”

People Thinking Want Writing Book Culture Actors Assuming Intention Exploits

Author:Jonah Hill

“Well, we look for sources of inspiration in pop culture in general. It's very important for us that, when it comes to storytelling, we don't look into other video games. We'd rather look into other mediums - movies, television series and books - for sources of inspiration.”

Wells Looks Important Book Inspiration Culture Games Television Source Series Pops Video Storytelling Mediums Pop Culture Source Of Inspiration

Author:Sam Lake

“A lot of comic conventions go way beyond comic books and include other parts of pop culture, like celebrities and science fiction and movies and books. So I go to them either as a celebrity, or as a fan, because I'm a big sci-fi geek.”

Way Book Bigs Culture Fiction Fans Science Fiction Pops Comic Sci Fi Conventions Comic Book Geek Pop Culture

Author:Jane Wiedlin

“Early on my career, I figured out that I just have to write the book I have to write at that moment. Whatever else is going on in the culture is just not that important. If you could get the culture to write your book, that would be great. But the culture can't write your book.”

Ifs Writing Important Book Moments Would Be Culture Careers That Moment

Author:Colson Whitehead

“We live in a church culture that has a dangerous tendency to disconnect the grace of God from the glory of God. Our hearts resonate with the idea of enjoying God's grace. We bask in sermons, conferences, and books that exalt a grace centering on us. And while the wonder of grace is worthy of our attention, if that grace is disconnected from its purpose, the sad result is a self-centered Christianity that bypasses the heart of God.”

“I started with the book Boardwalk Empire and then immersed myself in the history of Atlantic City, World War I, the temperance movement, Prohibition, pop culture. I even read the news and magazines of the period just to soak in it. That was before I even started thinking of the story.”

“A very enjoyable meditation on the curious thing called 'Zen' -not the Japanese religious tradition but rather the Western clich of Zen that is embraced in advertising, self-help books, and much more. . . . Yamada, who is both a scholar of Buddhism and a student of archery, offers refreshing insight into Western stereotypes of Japan and Japanese culture, and how these are received in Japan.”

“We live in a cluttered culture, a culture of information in which even our computers can't tell us what's worth knowing and what is merely cultural scrap. In such a society, we don't have the experience of contemplative space, of the time or mood to engage a book of poetry or even read a novel. Who can achieve the unconscious-conscious state of the reader when everything is stimulation, everything is movement and information?”

Book States Culture Space Novel Knowing Achieve Information Movement Reader Computer Conscious Mood Unconscious Scrap Contemplative Stimulation

Author:T.C. Boyle

“Every new book is a challenge. I could, of course, have stopped many years ago if it was only for money. But no, it is about building bridges among cultures, different cultures... When you want someone to understand something that is not forcefully in your culture, you use stories.”

Ifs Want Years Book Different Stories Use Culture Courses Challenges Building Years Ago Bridges Different Cultures New Books Building Bridges

Author:Paulo Coelho

“Before the birth of the New Woman the country was not an intellectual desert, as she is apt to suppose. There were teachers of thehighest grade, and libraries, and countless circles in our towns and villages of scholarly, leisurely folk, who loved books, and music, and Nature, and lived much apart with them. The mad craze for money, which clutches at our souls to-day as la grippe does at our bodies, was hardly known then.”

Doe Book Soul Country Body Culture Money Known Teacher Birth Intellectual Towns Mad Library Folks Circles Desert Grades Village Clutch Scholarly Our Town Craze Books And Music

Author:Rebecca Harding Davis

“... a phallocentric culture is more likely to begin its censorship purges with books on pelvic self-examination for women or bookscontaining lyrical paeans to lesbianism than with See Him Tear and Kill Her or similar Mickey-Spillanesque titles.”

Book Self Culture Tears Titles Censorship Examination Lyrical Mickey Self-examination Lesbianism

Book:The Word of a Woman: Feminist Dispatches

Source: The Word of a Woman: Feminist Dispatches

“The last publicized center of American writing was Manhattan. Its writers became known as the New York Intellectuals. With important connections to publishing, and universities, with access to the major book reviews, they were able to pose as the vanguard of American culture when they were so obsessed with the two Joes--McCarthy and Stalin--that they were to produce only two artists, Saul Bellow and Philip Roth, who left town.”

Source: God made Alaska for the Indians: selected essays

“I've just finished a series of Olivia Manning novels. She's best known for two trilogies: Balkan Trilogy and Levant Trilogy. The six novels are continuous and contain the same set of characters. They are based on Manning's experiences in Eastern Europe and Egypt during the Second World War. Each novel is a wonderful picture of the peculiar British expatriate culture and what was happening during the war. She's one of those brilliant women who write very well about domestic relationships. All the books are slim, and it's easy to gallop through them.”

“The nurturing flow of life, extreme intelligence, beauty, and perfect harmony are active in every one of us. Yoga was developed in ancient wisdom culture to gently reveal what we already have. Read this book.”

Book Culture Perfect Yoga Flow Harmony Ancient Extremes Active Nurturing Ancient Wisdom Perfect Harmony

Author:Mark Whitwell

“I sometimes have the sense that I live my life as a writer with my nose pressed against the wide, shiny plate glass window of the"mainstream" culture. The world seems full of straight, large-circulation, slick periodicals which wouldn't think of reviewing my book and bookstores which will never order it.”

Thinking World Book Sometimes Seems Order Culture Window Glasses Wide Noses Mainstream Plates Living My Life Bookstores Circulation I Live My Life Slick Mainstream Culture

Book:Books & Life

Source: Books & Life

“Madness in Civilization is a brilliant, provocative, and hugely entertaining history of the treatment and mistreatment of the mentally ill. Packed with bizarre details and disturbing facts, Andrew Scull's book offers fresh and compelling insights on the way medicine's inability to solve the mystery of madness has both haunted and shaped two thousand years of culture. Required reading for anyone who has ever gone to a shrink!”

“Every book purchase made from Amazon is a vote for a culture without content and without contentment.”

Made Book Culture Vote Contentment Amazon

Author:Ursula K. Le Guin

“The first step in liquidating a people is to erase its memory. Destroy its books, its culture, its history.”

People Firsts Book Culture Memories Steps First Steps Erase

Author:Milan Kundera

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