Big Book Quotes

• I don't believe any of you have ever read Paradise Lost, and you don't want to. That's something that you just want to take on trust. It's a classic ... something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.

  Mark Twain

  Trust, Believe, Book

  1900 Speech on'The Disappearance of Literature' at the Nineteenth Century Club, 20 Nov. Quoted in Albert Bigelow Paine (ed) MarkTwain's Speeches (1910).

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  Don’t you love the Oxford Dictionary? When I first read it, I thought it was a really really long poem about everything.

  David Bowie

  Book, Reading, Oxford

  "FMO’s Final Interview With David Bowie". Interview with Johnnny, fmobserver.com. March 4, 2016.

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• A big book is like a serious relationship; it requires a commitment.

  Mick Foley

  Book, Commitment, Serious

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• If you want to get together in any exclusive situation and have people love you, fine - but to hang all this desperate sociology on the idea of The Cloud-Guy who has The Big Book, who knows if you've been bad or good - and CARES about any of it - to hang it all on that, folks, is the chimpanzee part of the brain working.

  Frank Zappa

  Atheist, Book, Love You

  Frank Zappa, Peter Occhiogrosso (1990). “Real Frank Zappa Book”, p.301, Simon and Schuster

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• I finished a big book the other day. 421 pages. That's a lot of coloring when you think about it.

  Adam Sandler

  Book, Thinking, Pages

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• There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance-that principle is contempt prior to investigation.

  Herbert Spencer

  Wisdom, Ignorance, Science

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• I fancy mankind may come, in time, to write all aphoristically, except in narrative; grow weary of preparation, and connection, and illustration, and all those arts by which a big book is made.

  Samuel Johnson

  Art, Book, Writing

  Samuel Johnson (2010). “Journey to the Hebrides: A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland & The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides”, p.183, Canongate Books

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• I'd never have written the big books in London.

  Jilly Cooper

  Book, London, Bigs

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• I have learned to do more with less, so you don't see the big books anymore.

  Terry Brooks

  Book, Bigs, I Have Learned

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• Virginia Woolf came along in the early part of the century and essentially said through her writing, yes, big books can be written about the traditional big subjects. There is war. There is the search for God. These are all very important things.

  Michael Cunningham

  War, Book, Writing

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• I really love poetry. I'm a big E.E. Cummings fan and a big Walt Whitman fan, and I have a big book of poetry.

  Mae Whitman

  Book, Fans, Love Poetry

  "Mae Whitman Interview PARENTHOOD and SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD". Interview with Christina Radish, collider.com. August 12, 2010.

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• A good writer cannot avoid having social consciousness. I don't mean this about small pieces of writing, but about a big book. If it's a big book, there has to be more than one undertow.

  Marguerite Young

  Book, Mean, Writing

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• A big book is a big misfortune.

  Callimachus

  Book, Bigs, Misfortunes

  Fragment 465; translation by A. W. Bulloch, in P. E. Easterling and B. M. W. Knox (eds.) "The Cambridge History of Classical Literature" (1989) vol. 1, part 4, p. 30,

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• I always sent my mother all these huge books I made. When my mother died, I was cleaning her cupboard, and these big books were only 20 pages long. She edited out, maybe burned, every single photograph where I'm naked.

  Marina Abramovic

  Mother, Book, Long

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• Aunt Loretta has something that maybe you could call class. It's not the made-up kind that Grandma has, fake pearls and Sunday hats, but something that comes to you as if you were born to the king and queen. Aunt Loretta understands better than Grandma that reading a big book is more classy than wearing fake pearls watching TV.

  Heidi

  Kings, Queens, Book

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• [With "Summer Sisters" the publisher] sent me on a big book tour. And it was the most wonderful professional experience of my life. I mean it was like Kleenex on every table wherever I was, friends patting friends on the back and they'd cry and I'd cry.

  Judy Blume

  Summer, Book, Mean

  Source: www.teachingbooks.net

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• Writing is a bit like walking into a big bookstore. It's the bookstore of your brain, and you know you're never going to read all those books. It makes you happy you're in the bookstore, and you're nervous because you know you're never going to read all those books. So the nervousness is also happy. Once I get going writing poetry is one of the happiest things I do, but it is also fraught with all of these anxieties.

  Mary Jo Salter

  Book, Writing, Anxiety

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• Get off the cross, we need the wood.

  Tori Amos

  Jesus, Recovery, Needs

  Song: Big Wheel, Album: American Doll Posse, 2007

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• They have this big book called the 'DSM-IV,' you know, that is supposedly written about crazy people, but I think it is a book that is written by crazy people!

  William Glasser

  Crazy, Book, Thinking

  Myrtle Beach Conference on Reality Therapy, March 28, 2008.

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• I am sick and tired of being sick and tired.

  Fannie Lou Hamer

  Recovery, Tired, Health

  "'I Question America' — Remembering Fannie Lou Hamer’s Famous Speech 50 Years Ago" by Peter Dreier, www.huffingtonpost.com. August 26, 2014.

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• God has the Big Book, the beautiful proofs of mathematical theorems are listed here.

  Paul Erdos

  Beautiful, Book, Math

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• In America, you’re allowed to justify almost any kind of bigotry, sexism, or intolerance if you source it to God’s big book of bad ideas.

  Bill Maher

  Book, Ideas, America

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• Still, I wonder if we shall ever be put into songs or tales. We're in one, of course; but I mean: put into words, you know, told by the fireside, or read out loud of a great big book with red and black letters, years and years afterwards. And people will say: 'Let's hear about Frodo and the Ring' and they'll say 'Oh yes, that's one of my favorite stories.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Song, Book, Mean

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• A big book is like a serious relationship; it requires a commitment. Not only that, but there's no guarantee that you will enjoy it, or that it will have a happy ending. Kind of like going out with a girl, having to spend time every day with her - with absolutely no guarantee of nailing her in the end. No thanks.

  Mick Foley

  Girl, Book, Commitment

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• I look at life like a big book and sometimes you get half way through it and go 'Even though I've been enjoying it, I've had enough. Give us another book.'

  Karl Pilkington

  Book, Giving, Looks

  "The Ricky Gervais Show" podcast (Season 2, Episode 2), March 2006.

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