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Lines Quotes

“Catch me on a good day, I think half of my books aren't too bad. Catch me on a bad day, I think I've never written a good line.”

Thinking Book Lines Half Written Good Day Bad Day Catch Me

Author:Dennis Lehane

“All we need to do, reader or writer, from first line to final page, is be as open as a book, and be alive to the life in language - on all its levels.”

Needs Firsts Book Language Lines Levels Alive Reader Pages Finals

Author:Ali Smith

“I just focus on getting the first scene right, with a few lines about the overall plot, and then the book grows organically.”

Firsts Book Grows Lines Focus Scene Plot

Author:Alexander McCall Smith

“A book sometimes seems to impose a through-line to life that real life doesn't actually have.”

Book Real Sometimes Seems Lines Real Life

Author:Chris Ware

“Creativity doesn’t come from glancing quickly at your Twitter feed while in line at Starbucks. It comes from deep thought. It comes from voraciously reading books—long books that require focused attention. It comes from meaningful discourse with other intellectually curious people. It comes from listening and asking good questions.”

People Long Book Reading Lines Attention Creativity Listening Asking Focused Meaningful Curious Reading Books Discourse Deep Thought Starbucks Good Questions Long Book Focused Attention

Author:Joshua Rogers

“My dad liked more macho adventure books like Shogun or spy novels. My mother reads murder mysteries. In fact, so does her mother, my grandma. That's where I trace the familial line of murder mystery obsession.”

Doe Book Facts Mother Lines Novel Mystery Adventure Dad Murder My Dad Obsession Spy Grandma Macho My Grandma Murder Mysteries Adventure Books Shoguns

Author:Christopher Bollen

“A book may lie dormant for fifty years or for two thousand years in a forgotten corner of a library, only to reveal, upon being opened, the marvels or the abysses that it contains, or the line that seems to have been written for me alone. In this respect the writer is not different from any other human being: whatever we say or do can have far-reaching consequences.”

“The art of reading between the lines is as old as manipulated information.”

Art Book Reading Lines Information Communication Books And Reading Between The Lines Read Between The Lines

Author:Serge Schmemann

“From Obama's book, "The Audacity of Hope:" "I am not willing to have the state deny American citizens a civil union that confers equivalent rights on such basic matters as hospital visitation or health insurance coverage simply because the people they love are of the same sex - nor am I willing to accept a reading of the Bible that considers an obscure line in Romans to be more defining of Christianity than the Sermon on the Mount."”

“You'll accidentally find in barrows of books wrought-iron lines of long-buried poems, handle them with the care that respects ancient but terrible weapons.. .”

Long Book Care Lines Terrible Weapons Ancient Accidents Handle Iron Buried

Author:Bill Vaughan

“Women are books, and men the readers be, Who sometimes in those books erratas see; Yet oft the reader's raptured with each line, Fair print and paper, fraught with sense divine; Tho' some, neglectful, seldom care to read, And faithful wives no more than bibles heed. Are women books? says Hodge, then would mine were An Almanack, to change her every year.”

Men Years Book Sometimes Care Women Lines Wife Mines Divine Reader Paper Fairs Faithful Print Heed Faithful Wife

Book:Poor Richard's Almanack

Source: Poor Richard's Almanack

“The simplest comment on my book came from my ballet teacher. She said, "I wish you hadn't made every line funny. It's so depressing."”

Made Said Book Wish Lines Teacher Comment Ballet Depressing Simplest Wish You Ballet Teachers

Author:Quentin Crisp

“I know of one semibarbarous zone whose librarians repudiate the "vain and superstitious habit" of trying to find sense in books, equating such a quest with attempting to find meaning in dreams or in the chaotic lines on the palms of one's hand.”

Knows Trying Book Dream Hands Lines Habit Vain Zone Quests Palms Attempting Find Me Librarian Chaotic Superstitious

Book:The secret books

Source: The secret books

“I claim that this bookless library is a dream, a hallucination of on-line addicts; network neophytes, and library-automation insiders...Instead, I suspect computers will deviously chew away at libraries from the inside. They'll eat up book budgets and require librarians that are more comfortable with computers than with children and scholars. Libraries will become adept at supplying the public with fast, low-quality information. The result won't be a library without books--it'll be a library without value.”

Children Book Dream Values Lines Results Quality Information Comfortable Computer Lows Claims Library Budgets Suspects Scholar Addict Librarian Hallucinations Insiders Adept Automation

Author:Clifford Stoll

“an Autobiography is the truest of all books; for while it inevitably consists mainly of extinctions of the truth, shirkings of the truth, partial revealments of the truth, with hardly an instance of plain straight truth, the remorseless truth is there, between the lines, where the author-cat is raking dust upon it which hides from the disinterested spectator neither it nor its smell... the result being that the reader knows the author in spite of his wily diligences.”

Knows Book Lines Results Reader Truth Is Cat Smell Instance Dust Spite Autobiography Extinction Spectators Diligence Truest Disinterested Between The Lines Remorseless

Book:The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain

Source: The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain

“We like books that have a lot of dreck in them, matter which presents itself as not wholly relevant (or indeed, at all relevant) but which, carefully attended to, can supply a kind of "sense" of what is going on. This "sense" is not to be obtained by reading between the lines (for there is nothing there, in those white spaces) but by reading the lines themselves looking at them and so arriving at a feeling not of satisfaction exactly, that is too much to expect, but of having read them, of having "completed" them.”

Kind Book Matter Feelings Reading Lines Space White Too Much Satisfaction Relevant Arriving Between The Lines White Space

Author:Donald Barthelme

“Over this country, when the giant Eagle flings the shadow of his wing, the land is darkened. So compact is it that the wing covers all its extent in one pause of the flight. The sea breaks on the pale line of the shore; to the Eagle's proud glance waves run in to the foot of the hills that are like rocks planted in green water.”

Book Country Running Water Lines Break Sea Feet Land Rocks Proud Shadow Green Wings Wave Flight Hills Giants Shore Pale Pauses Glances Eagles Fling Compact

Book:The Herries Chronicles

Source: The Herries Chronicles

“Mark Tobey fills his canvases with elliptical, calligraphic lines, beautiful whirls that seem at first glance to be completely abstract and to come from nowhere at all except his own subjective musing. But I shall never forget how struck I was, on visiting Tobey's studio one day, to see strewn around books on astronomy and photographs of the Milky Way. I knew then that Tobey experiences the movement of the stars and solar constellations as the external pole of his encounter.”

“When people say "How do you write a book, how does it all happen?" I say, you line things up, and you line them up as actually as you possibly can, but sooner or later the book has got momentum and it's moving along under that momentum. It's like a sculpture, if you're working with the grain of the wood, the wood will start defining what shape it's going to become.”

People Ifs Writing Doe Book Happens Moving Lines Shapes Woods Grain Sooner Or Later Sculpture Defining Momentum

Author:Terry Pratchett

“I was raised on the good book Jesus Till I read between the lines Now I don't believe I ever wanna see the morning”

Believe Book Jesus Lines Morning Raised Don't Believe Good Book Between The Lines Read Between The Lines

Author:Laura Nyro

“I have said, and I repeat, at the risk of appearing sacrilegious, that the gas chambers are a detail of the history of the Second World War... If you take a book of a thousand pages on the Second World War, in which 50 million people died, the concentration camps occupy two pages and the gas chambers ten or 15 lines, and that's what's called a detail.”

“How often does it happen that an obscure line finds its way into a periodical... is requoted in every book that comes out during the next three months, and "sleeps again!”

Way Doe Book Happens Three Next Lines Sleep Months Obscure Three Months

Author:Samuel Laman Blanchard

“I'm opening a store at the end of the month in the New York meatpacking district. I'm launching a line of bedding this summer, and I am writing a book that will be out next January.”

Writing Book Ends Artist Next Lines New York Months Summer Stores Opening Writing A Book January Launching Bedding

Author:Genevieve Gorder

“I write books that way - I put a first line down and say, "Where does this go?"”

Way Writing Firsts Doe Book Lines Down And

Author:Carl Reiner

“Isn't it curious how one has only to open a book of verse to realise immediately that it was written by a very fine poet, or else that it was written by someone who is not a poet at all. In the case of the former, the lines, the images, though they are inherent in each other, leap up and give one this shock of delight. In the case of the latter, they lie flat on the page, never having lived.”

Giving Book Lying Poetry Lines Cases Written Poet Fine Pages Delight Curious Former Shock Latter Flats Leap Realising Inherent Verses

Author:Edith Sitwell

“Along this particular stretch of line no express had ever passed. All the trains--the few that there were--stopped at all the stations. Denis knew the names of those stations by heart. Bole, Tritton, Spavin Delawarr, Knipswich for Timpany, West Bowlby, and, finally, Camlet-on-the-Water.”

Heart Book Names Water Lines Particular Train West Stations

Book:Crome Yellow

Source: Crome Yellow

“A romp in the hay lingers like the first line of a song, but your true love is the one you make a life with and write more than a line about, you write a whole book.”

Writing Firsts Book Whole Song Lines Love Is True Love True Love Is Hay

Book:Love Me

Source: Love Me

“The Book, this Holy Book, on every line, Mark'd with the seal of high divinity, On every leaf bedew'd with drops of love Divine, and with the eternal heraldry And signature of God Almighty stamp'd From first to last; this ray of sacred light, This lamp, from off the everlasting throne, Mercy took down, and in the night of time Stood, casting on the dark her gracious bow; And evermore beseeching men With tears And earnest sighs, to read, believe and live.”

“The great dividing line between books that are made to be read and books that are made to be bought is not the purely modern thing it seems. We can trace it, if we try, back to the first printing-presses.”

Ifs Trying Firsts Made Book Seems Lines Modern Presses Printing Dividing Printing Press

Book:A Happy Half-century: And Other Essays

Source: A Happy Half-century: And Other Essays

“It was the last generation of writers [ the Cheers] that had grown up reading books instead of watching TV. So you weren't getting anything that was derivative of I Love Lucy or Happy Days. You were getting real characters [like those] they read in P.G. Wodehouse or Dickens or somewhere along the line, because they had all grown up with a love of literature.”

Book Real Character Lasts Reading Literature Lines Generations Tvs Cheer Reading Books Lucy Dickens Derivatives Watching Tv Happy Day Real Character

Author:John Ratzenberger

“No one, who is familiar with the bustle and activity of an American commercial town, would recognise, in the repose which now reigns in the ancient mart of Rhode Island, a place that, in its day, has been ranked amongst the most important ports along the whole line of our extended coast.”

Has Beens Important Book Whole Lines Activity Towns Ancient Familiar Islands Reign Coast Recognise Repose Port Bustle Rhode Island

Author:James F. Cooper

“Recently while browsing in a secondhand bookstore I bought a paperback copy of The Intellectual and the City, but I was unable to read it. When I got home I discovered that the original owner had highlighted the entire book - literally. Every line on every page had been drawn through with a bright green Magic Marker. It was a terrifying example of a mind that had lost all power of discrimination.”

Mind Book Home Lost Lines Cities Magic Example Pages Intellectual Originals Green Discrimination Owners Copies Bookstores Markers Browsing

Book:Reflections In A Jaundiced Eye

Source: Reflections In A Jaundiced Eye

“Before the railroad's thin lines of steel bit their way up through the wilderness, Athabasca Landing was the picturesque threshold over which one must step who would enter into the mystery and adventure of the great white North.”

Way Book Bits Lines White Steps Mystery Adventure Wilderness Steel Threshold Landing Railroads Picturesque

Book:The Valley of Silent Men

Source: The Valley of Silent Men

“To what or whom does Lizzie Harris direct the imperative title of her startling first book, Stop Wanting? To the reader, the narrator, to desire itself, or to lack? This is a work of complexly, ambiguously layered narratives and identities. The opening poem asserts I want to say what happened / but am suspicious of stories. These lines become an ars poetica for the whole of this painful and exceptional collection in which the unspeakable is stubbornly confronted by a searing eloquence. This is a commanding debut.”

“I do think, where would kids be if it weren't for you and for the good pediatricians, and for the good parents? I passionately believe in sitting a child on your lap and tracing the lines of the book with your finger, and they can read before they know they can, if you bother enough. I did it with my kids, and they're doing it with their kids now.”

Ifs Thinking Knows Believe Children Book Enough Kids Parent Lines Sitting Fingers Bother Lap Good Parent Tracing Pediatrician

Author:Julie Andrews

“Books should confuse. Literature abhors the typical. Literature flows to the particular, the mundane, the greasiness of paper, the taste of warm beer, the smell of onion or quince. Auden has a line: "Ports have names they call the sea." Just so will literature describe life familiarly, regionally, in terms life is accustomed to use -- high or low matters not. Literature cannot by this impulse betray the grandeur of its subject -- there is only one subject: What it feels like to be alive. Nothing is irrelevant. Nothing is typical.”

Source: Brown: The Last Discovery of America

“People think, 'Oh, well how can 'The Hobbit,' which is one book, become three films?' But you can take one line from an appendice and it turns into a whole sequence.”

People Thinking Wells Book Whole Film Turns Three Lines Sequence One Line Oh Well

Author:Andy Serkis

“As in all Abercrombie's books, friends turn out to be enemies, enemies turn out to be friends; the line between good and evil is murky indeed; and nothing goes quite as we expect. With eye-popping plot twists and rollicking good action, Half a King is definitely a full adventure.”

Book Eye Action Turns Evil Lines Half Enemy Adventure Kings Good And Evil Plot Twists Popping Good Actions Plot Twists

Author:Rick Riordan

“I found Uriah reading a great fat book, with such demonstrative attention, that his lank forefinger followed up every line as he read, and made clammy tracks along the page (or so I fully believed) like a snail.”

Made Book Character Reading Found Lines Interesting Attention Pages Track Fats Interesting Characters Snail

Book:Charles Dickens's works. Charles Dickens ed. [18 vols. of a 21 vol. set. Wanting A child's history of England; Christmas stories; The mystery of Edwin Drood].

Source: Charles Dickens's works. Charles Dickens ed. [18 vols. of a 21 vol. set. Wanting A child's history of England; Christmas stories; The mystery of Edwin Drood].

“Most of the books and films I love walk a knife edge between romance and cynicism, and I wanted 'One Day' to stay on that line. I wanted it to be moving, but without being manipulative.”

Book Wanted Film Romance Moving Lines Walks One Day Edges Knives Cynicism Manipulative

Author:David Nicholls

“Inside the book between the lines, was a place to rest and absorb the magic”

Book Lines Magic Between The Lines

Author:Sark

“Scholars and artists thrown together are often annoyed at the puzzle of where they differ. Both work from knowledge; but I suspectthey differ most importantly in the way their knowledge is come by. Scholars get theirs with conscientious thoroughness along projected lines of logic; poets theirs cavalierly and as it happens in and out of books. They stick to nothing deliberately, but let what will stick to them like burrs where they walk in the fields.”

Way Book Happens Together Artist Lines Walks Fields Poet Logic Sticks Thrown Scholar Puzzles Annoyed Thoroughness Burrs

Author:Robert Frost

“There is room enough in human life to crowd almost every art and science in it. If we pass ""no day without a line""-visit no place without the company of a book-we may with ease fill libraries or empty them of their contents. The more we do, the more busy we are, the more leisure we have.”

Ifs Humans May Art Book Enough Lines Rooms Company Empty Library Busy Crowds Ease Human Life Leisure Art And Science

Author:William Hazlitt

“Perhaps the worst example of Smithsonian contempt for Jesus Christ is seen in its 1994 publication of a coffee-table book entitled Smithsonian Time Lines of the Ancient World ... This flagrant display of religious bigotry and discrimination in a book officially sponsored by the Smithsonian is intellectually and academically dishonest.”

“[the best advice about women] was from Robert Evans. The line was in his book, but he told me, "When it comes to a woman's mind, I know nothing."”

Knows Mind Book Lines Advice Best Advice

Author:Slash

“Quality. That's the first word, the one word that comes to mind when I think of the books published by Abrams. In a world where so many companies are willing to cut corners, to do things the easy way in order to enhance the bottom line, it's gratifying to know that there's one company that obviously takes such pride in its finished product, one company that can always be counted on to design and produce a book that is, itself, as much a work of art as the illustrations on its pages.”

“You go into the office and take a book or two from the shelves. You read a few lines, like your life depended on reading 'em right. But you know your life doesn't depend on anything that makes sense, and you wonder where in the hell you got the idea it did; and you begin to get sore.”

Knows Two Book Ideas Reading Lines Wonder Hell Like You Depends Office Make Sense Ems Shelves

Book:Crime novels: American noir of the 1950s

Source: Crime novels: American noir of the 1950s

“don't mean to sound weird but I get so immersed in the source material when I'm working on a movie that I kind of lose the line between what I thought of and what was in the book.”

Kind Mean Book Sound Loses Lines Materials Source

Author:Zack Snyder