Best Shelves Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings Page 3

“And, indeed, is there not something holy about a great kitchen?... The scoured gleam of row upon row of metal vessels dangling from hooks or reposing on their shelves till needed with the air of so many chalices waiting for the celebration of the sacrament of food. And the range like an altar, yes, before which my mother bowed in perpetual homage, a fringe of sweat upon her upper lip and the fire glowing in her cheeks.”

“... when you make it a moral necessity for the young to dabble in all the subjects that the books on the top shelf are written about, you kill two very large birds with one stone: you satisfy precious curiosities, and you make them believe that they know as much about life as people who really know something. If college boys are solemnly advised to listen to lectures on prostitution, they will listen; and who is to blame if some time, in a less moral moment, they profit by their information?”

“If the United States is promoting the development of exploits, of vulnerabilities, of insecurity in this critical infrastructure, and we're not fixing it when we find it, instead we put it on the shelf so we can use it the next time we want to launch an attack against some foreign country. We're leaving ourselves at risk.”

“Fiorito has all the right stuff. His splendid memoir about his relationship with his dying father belongs on that small shelf with Philip Roth's Patrimony and Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes.”

Father Stuff Dying Memoir Frank Ashes Shelves Splendid Philip Angela Right Stuff Patrimony

Author:Mordecai Richler

“Hyesims poems: transformative as walking high granite mountains by moonlight, with fragrant herbs underfoot and a thermos of clear tea in the backpack. Their bedrock is thusness, their images beauty is pellucid and new, their view without limit. The shelf of essential Zen poets for American readers grows larger with this immediately indispensable collection.”

Grows Views Clear Poet Reader Walking Mountain Limits Essentials Tea Collections Shelves Indispensable Moonlight Herbs Bedrock Granite Thermos

Author:Jane Hirshfield

“I don't mind if my skull ends up on a shelf as long as it's got my name on it.”

Ifs Mind Long Ends Names Nature Shelves Skulls Blondie

Author:Debbie Harry

“The pursuit of happiness is enshrined in the Declaration of Independence as a right of all Americans, as well as on the self-improvement shelves of every American bookstore. Yet the scientific evidence makes it seem unlikely that you can change your level of happiness in any sustainable way. It suggests that we each have a fixed range for happiness just as we do for weight. And just as dieters almost always regain the weight they lose, sad people don't become lastingly happy, and happy people don't become lastingly sad.”

Source: Authentic Happiness

“Quotology disdains no quotations whatsoever, a duty it bears stoutly, with bloodshot eyes and sagging shelves.”

Eye Duty Bears Quotations Shelves Disdain Sagging Bloodshot Eyes

Book:Quotology

Source: Quotology

“Aside from the posters, wherever there was room, there were books. Stacks and stacks of books. Books crammed into mismatched shelves and towers of books up to the ceiling. I liked my books.”

Book Rooms Towers Shelves Ceilings Posters

Author:Megan Crane

“When I was kid, they always used to tell me to keep notebooks. I look at my shelves now and it's just nothing but notebooks. And if I haven't gotten an idea but I have time to work, I'll pull one out and I bet there will be five or six sentences that will kick me off.”

Ifs Looks Ideas Kids Used Five Havens Six Sentences Kicks Shelves Notebook

Author:John Darnielle

“Most - and I mean maybe 99% or more - graphic novels are simply fat comicbooks. The term is a bogus, cocked-up concept some marketing whizkid conceived to get comics on the shelves of bookstores.”

Mean Term Novel Concepts Marketing Fats Shelves Graphic Bookstores Graphic Novels

Author:Jim Steranko

“You can think whatever you want to and laugh, but I believe if I would have never learned to put my stuff back on the right grocery store shelves, and I would have never learned to put my cart back where God told me to, I don't believe I would be standing here today preaching this message to you. And I think there are literally millions of people who miss the will of God for their life because they think little things don't make any difference.”

“Theres a constant struggle going on about how much will be illegal and how much you will be free to take. Can we open the pharmacies? Can we put Valium and Percodan and those sorts of things out on the shelves? I wouldn't take it. I don't know.”

Knows Struggle Constant Illegal Shelves Pharmacy Constant Struggle Valium

Book:Bare bones: conversations on terror with Stephen King

Source: Bare bones: conversations on terror with Stephen King

“It's not progress to take books off shelves. If one more person says this [ebooks] is the new Gutenberg, I will probably commit homicide, because the whole point of Gutenberg was to put books on shelves, not to take them off.”

Ifs Persons Book Whole Progress Commit Shelves Homicide Gutenberg

Author:Jeanette Winterson

“Seeing one's books on the shelf tells you so much about the way somebody has, over the years, put together their private library, which is a reflection of their minds and their selves.”

Way Years Mind Book Self Together Seeing Reflection Library Shelves

Author:Jeanette Winterson

“Some people are happy when they are at the sea; I'm happy when I'm standing in front of a shelf of books. It feels like the known place and also the beginning of a new adventure. It has that simultaneous paradoxical effect of making me feel absolutely calm and very excited.”

People Feels Book Known Sea Effects Fronts Adventure Standing Calm Excited Shelves Paradoxical Simultaneous New Adventure

Author:Jeanette Winterson

“For me, the most painful thing is the thought of shelves without books. This is the problem with the digital thing. I do not want to see it on electronic. I do not want to see all of those indices on Kindle. I don't want this physical object to disappear, because when it's there and it's present, it's continually suggesting new relationships in a way that an electronic index couldn't.”

Way Want Book Problem Objects Painful Disappear Digital Shelves Suggesting Kindles New Relationship Painful Things

Author:Jeanette Winterson

“I have a lot of ideas and I want to be able to work. To me, it's like one of these contests where you get five minutes in a supermarket to take anything off the shelves you want and try to fill your cart up as much as you can. That's the way I look at my work.”

Way Want Trying Looks Ideas Able Five Minutes Shelves Contests Five Minutes Supermarkets Carts

Author:George Lucas

“One day some people came to the master and asked: How can you be happy in a world of such impermanence, where you cannot protect your loved ones from harm, illness or death? The master held up a glass and said: Someone gave me this glass; It holds my water admirably and it glistens in the sunlight. I touch it and it rings! One day the wind may blow it off the shelf, or my elbow may knock it from the table. I know this glass is already broken, so I enjoy it - incredibly.”

“I just read everything I could get my hands on. I taught myself to read or my mother taught me. Who knows how I learned to read? It was before I went to school, so I would go to the library and just take things off the shelf. My mother had to sign a piece of paper saying I could take adult books.”

Knows Book Hands School Mother Know How Pieces Taught Paper Adults Library Shelves

Author:Joan Didion

“The shelf life of molecules is very short. Ninety-eight percent of all the atoms in my body are gone by next year.”

Years Body Next Gone Percent Eight Atoms Shelves Ninety Next Year Molecules Shelf Life Ninety Eight

Author:Deepak Chopra

“I used to have weird practices in crowded used-book stores in New York where I'd go in and just stomp my foot and see what fell from the shelf. And of course, because it's an unexpected encounter, there's always some magic that comes from it.”

Book Used Courses Practice Magic Feet New York Stores Encounters Unexpected Shelves Crowded Used Books

Author:Saul Williams

“My novels are never truly finished, even if they're published and sitting on the shelf. While I may no longer be interested in spending time with that particular set of characters, I can't help but think about all the ways the book could be different, the small, insignificant tweaks that no one but me would ever notice.”

Ifs Thinking Way May I Can Book Different Character Helping Novel Particular Sitting Spending Finished Shelves Insignificant Spending Time Tweak

Author:Jillian Medoff

“The nice thing about programming at the RDF level is that you can just say, I'll ask for all the books. You can ask for all the shelves. You can ask for a given shelf whether a book was on it. And you're not worrying so much about the underlying syntax.”

Book Asks Given Levels Worry Nice Programming Shelves Nice Things Syntax Not Worrying

Author:Tim Berners-Lee

“Stacking shelves in a supermarket. The reason I didn't like it is because I'm very clumsy. We had a floor polisher you'd push up and down the aisles, and klutz me would always knock the bottles over in the drinks aisle. Unsurprisingly I got fired.”

Reason Drink Bottles Shelves Up And Down Supermarkets Clumsy Aisle Push Ups Stacking

Author:Peter Andre

“There is space in the supermarket shelf for all of us.”

Space Shelves Supermarkets

Author:Hugh Grant

“Wanting to know absolutely what a story is about, and to be able to say it in a few sentences, is dangerous: it can lead us to wanting to possess a story as we possess a cup... A story can always break into pieces while it sits inside a book on a shelf; and, decades after we have read it even twenty times, it can open us up, by cut or caress, to a new truth.”

Knows Book Stories Able Break Pieces Cutting Dangerous Twenties Sentences Decades Cups Shelves Caress

Book:Meditations from a Movable Chair

Source: Meditations from a Movable Chair

“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

“What is a great love of books? It is something like a personal introduction to the great and good men of all past times. Books, it is true, are silent as you see them on their shelves; but, silent as they are, when I enter a library I feel as if almost the dead were present, and I know if I put questions to these books they will answer me with all the faithfulness and fulness which has been left in them by the great men who have left the books with us.”

Ifs Knows Men Feels Has Beens Book Past Left Answers Silent Library Great Men Good Man Shelves Faithfulness Introduction Great Love

Author:John Bright

“Well, right now I'm not dead. But when I am, it's like...I don't know, I guess it's like being inside a book that nobody's reading. [...] An old one. It's up on a library shelf, so you're safe and everything, but the book hasn't been checked out for a long, long time. All you can do is wait. Just hope somebody'll pick it up and start reading.”

Knows Wells Long Book Reading Waiting Can Do Right Now Safe Long Time Picks Library Shelves

Book:The Things They Carried: A Work of Fiction

Source: The Things They Carried: A Work of Fiction

“Sylvia Day spins a gorgeous adventure in A Touch of Crimson that combines gritty, exciting storytelling with soaring lyricism. Adrian is my favorite kind of hero--an alpha male angel determined to win the heart of his heroine, Lindsay, while protecting her from his lethal enemy. Lindsay is a gutsy, likable woman with paranormal abilities of her own, as well as a dedication to protecting humanity against a race of demonic monsters. This is definitely a book for your keeper shelf.”

“It should be possible to exist with only a short shelf of books, to read and give away. After all - we may not open a book, once read, for ten years or more. But the act of reading has made it part of us - to relinquish it would be to lose an extension of our being.”

Giving Should Years May Made Book Would Be Reading Loses Ten Made It Shelves Extensions

Author:Pam Brown

“I pulled a book by Robinson Jeffers off the shelf one day. It was powerfully moving. Tears ran down my face. That's when I became a poet.”

Book Faces Moving Poetry Tears Poet One Day Ran Shelves

Author:William Everson

“Editors never buy manuscripts that are left on the closet shelf at home.”

Home Left Editors Shelves Closets Manuscripts Fiction Writing Fiction Writers Reading And Writing Writers Reading Writing And Reading Reading Writing

Author:John W. Campbell

“A ruling passion gives to a shelf of novels the unity of a system.”

Giving Passion Novel Unity Shelves Ruling Ruling Passion

Author:Graham Greene

“In our truly remarkable an unexampled civil peace, where there are rarely fist fights; where no one is born, is gravely ill, or dies; where meat is eaten but no one sees an animal slaughtered; where scores of millions of cars, trains, elevators, and airplanes go their scheduled way and there is rarely a crash; where an immense production proceeds in orderly efficiency and the shelves are duly clears and nevertheless none of this come to joy or tragic grief or any other final good it is not surprising if there are explosions.”

Source: Growing Up Absurd: Problems of Youth in the Organized Society

“Obviously it's easier when I' m doing the adapting myself. But my feeling is, your potential upside far outweighs the downside. Ultimately, they [moviemakers] can't change your book. Your book remains on the shelf the way you wrote it. If they make a great movie of your book, then you have the equivalent of millions and millions of dollars of advertising for your book. If the movie's not that good, that doesn't mean the book's not good. It doesn't change what you've already written. It has the potential to reach more people.”

People Ifs Way Mean Book Feelings Millions Written Easier Remains Dollars Advertising Shelves Can't Change Adapting

Author:Jonathan Tropper

“I source images and ideas from different parts of my experiences, and sometimes they are things that are made-up, or just appear out of nowhere, like out of a dream or an image that I've seen in a book, or even the title of a book that I'm staring at on a shelf. It's a good way to write songs, just stare at a bookshelf!”

Way Writing Made Book Ideas Different Sometimes Dream Song Source Titles Staring Shelves Good Way Bookshelves

Author:Julia Stone

“Everything from a lifetime's worth of collecting things. You know as we go through life, and something stays and ends up on your shelf and lives there until you die? Just those little things.”

Knows Littles Ends Dies Lifetime Little Things Shelves Collecting Collecting Things

Author:PJ Harvey

“There's a long-standing (50 year old) flame war within the field over whether it's "sci-fi" or "SF".SF has traditionally been looked down on by the literary establishment because, to be honest, much early SF was execrably badly written - but these days the significance of the pigeon hole is fading; we have serious mainstream authors writing stuff that is I-can't-believe-it's-not-SF, and SF authors breaking into the mainstream. If you view them as tags that point to shelves in bricks-and-mortar bookshops, how long are these genre categories going to survive in the age of the internet?”

“When I write, I aim in my mind not toward New York but to a vague spot a little to the east of Kansas. I think of the books on library shelves, without their jackets, years old, and a countryish teen-aged boy finding them, and having them speak to him. The review, the stacks in Brentano's, are just hurdles to get over, to place the books on that shelf.”

Thinking Writing Years Mind Littles Book Speak Boys New York Findings Aim Library East Spots Reviews Vague Shelves Get Over Jackets Kansas Hurdle

Book:Picked-Up Pieces: Essays

Source: Picked-Up Pieces: Essays

“The puritanism of Christianity has played havoc with the moderation that an enlightened and tolerant critical spirit would have produced. I've noticed that in whatever country, county, town, or other region there is a regulation enjoining temperance, the population seems to be entirely composed of teetotallers and drunkards. There's a Bible on that shelf there. But I keep it next to Voltaire - poison and antidote.”

“In seventh grade...I found a place on the [library]shelf where my book would be if I ever wrote a book, which I doubted.”

Ifs Book Would Be Found Library Grades Shelves Doubted Seventh Grade

Author:Beverly Cleary

“My books are better thought about than read. They're insanely dull and unreadable.But they're wonderful to talk about and think about, to dip in and out of, to hold, to have on your shelf.”

Thinking Book Wonderful Dull Shelves Dip

Author:Kenneth Goldsmith

“A library is a home filled with our stories. On every shelf, we see ourselves, experience our collective conscious, describe our dreams and our great longing for times that have passed, the sterling moment of the present and the glorious future known only in our imaginations.”

Moments Stories Home Dream Imagination Known Conscious Filled Longing Library Glorious Collectives Shelves Our Dreams Sterling

Author:Adriana Trigiani

“You don't want to get rid of your experiences, because they're your experiences - good or bad - and you need them, but it would be great if they weren't on the video shelf!”

Ifs Want Needs Would Be Video Shelves

Author:Jennifer Connelly

“Larousse has a place of honor on every cookbook shelf in America.”

America Honor Shelves Cookbook

Author:Martha Stewart

“More than fifty-five years ago my father told me, "The Bible does not belong on the shelf but in your hand, under your eye, and in your heart."”

Years Heart Doe Hands Eye Father Five Years Ago Five Years Fifty Shelves

Author:Martin Niemoller

“The Library didn't only contain magical books, the ones which are chained to their shelves and are very dangerous. It also contained perfectly ordinary books, printed on commonplace paper in mundane ink. It would be a mistake to think that they weren't also dangerous, just because reading them didn't make fireworks go off in the sky. Reading them sometimes did the more dangeous trick of making fireworks go off in the privacy of the reader's brain.”

Thinking Book Sometimes Would Be Reading Mistake Brain Sky Dangerous Reader Paper Ordinary Library Tricks Privacy Shelves Ink Printed Mundane Commonplace Fireworks Chained

Book:Soul Music: (Discworld Novel 16)

Source: Soul Music: (Discworld Novel 16)

“My books standing there on the shelf do not know that I have written them.”

Knows Book Written Standing Shelves Standing There

Author:Jorge Luis Borges

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Shelves Quotes