Book Quotes - Page 19

• Each book is a different staging post on the writer's journey, and each book stands by itself, regardless of the writer's relationship to it.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Journey, Different, Staging

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• We shall all die, and our lives will be irrelevant then. If we make anything that lasts, it outlives us, and it outlives its personal moment. All of my work is deep-dug from me, and every book has to stand or fall without me.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Fall, Lasts, Moments

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• When we learn to read, it's a real product of civilization and a civilized society. It affects your brain. It affects the way you think, and it gives you that capacity for self-reflection that you simply do not have without the agency of books.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Real, Thinking, Reflection

  Source: americanlibrariesmagazine.org

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• I learned capacity for self-reflection very early, finding it through interior monologues that books are so good at and that visual media is so bad at because it's so boring - nothing's happening. In a book, you can be inside the narrator's head for 50 pages, and nothing needs to happen. Then you learn to be inside your own head without something needing to happen. It's a very good antidote to a crazy, restless, "what's next?" culture - that you can just be in your own head and nothing is happening except that this is a rich place. I love that.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Crazy, Reflection, Self

  Source: americanlibrariesmagazine.org

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• I love the apparent quiet of reading a book. You sit there; you're not really moving. It looks very solitary. It looks very boring, but actually it's the most exciting place because it's going on for you, and you're in that relationship. In that sense, it's like being with a lover. Nobody else can intrude on that space. It's the two of you. It's your own world.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Reading, Moving, Two

  Source: americanlibrariesmagazine.org

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• We're living in a homogenized culture where everything is the same, and books are not a homogenized culture. They are extremely varied, and they're eccentric because they are the product of an individual mind. They are not, in any way, mediated.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Mind, Culture, Eccentric

  Source: americanlibrariesmagazine.org

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• We're in a strange situation where people either don't read at all or they read a lot. There's a huge gap in between. That's something that would be good to bridge so it doesn't have to be one thing or the other. Books could be part of life in a more relaxed way. I'd like to see that.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Bridges, People, Would Be

  Source: americanlibrariesmagazine.org

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• 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.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Progress, Gutenberg, Shelves

  Source: americanlibrariesmagazine.org

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• We have a generation of kids who may never see a bookshelf or never see books in houses. What are they going to think about books? How will books become meaningful in their lives except as yet another form of digitalized content? A book is not just digitalized content.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Meaningful, Kids, Thinking

  Source: americanlibrariesmagazine.org

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• 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.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Reflection, Self, Years

  Source: americanlibrariesmagazine.org

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• 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.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Adventure, Sea, People

  Source: americanlibrariesmagazine.org

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• Knowing that books are something that is hidden, that almost has that alchemical quality to it. There is a secret society in here, and if you belong to it, you'll be able to transform your lead into gold. I have that rather magical sense about books - that they do, somehow, have special powers.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Knowing, Secret, Special

  Source: americanlibrariesmagazine.org

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• 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.

  Jeanette Winterson

  New Relationship, Want, Way

  Source: americanlibrariesmagazine.org

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• The best language is always found in books because it's considered. It's a high language. Sometimes, it is complex and difficult. It's empowering and offers a way to speak about yourself that you don't have if all you are doing is reading the newspaper and watching TV.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Reading, Empowering, Watching Tv

  Source: americanlibrariesmagazine.org

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• You're never alone with a book, are you? It's a dialogue.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Dialogue

  Source: americanlibrariesmagazine.org

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• Nothing that readers say or do strikes me as a nuisance. Anyone who cracks open a book of mine is, to me, a gem.

  Garrison Keillor

  Cracks, Nuisance, Strikes

  Source: jonathanlowe.wordpress.com

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• I actually kind of like Janet Reno. She seems like a nice enough lady. But when you're basically going through the entire phone book trying to find women lawyers who don't have maids to pick the attorney general of the United States, how well can you do?

  Dave Barry

  Nice, Phones, Trying

  ""All I Think Is That It's Stupid": An Interview with Dave Barry". Interview with Glenn Garvin, reason.com. December, 1994.

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• I'm always writing new books so I don't dwell on the ones I've already done. I think that's a habit from being a newspaper guy because you're always writing columns and you can't reflect on the ones you've already done.

  Dave Barry

  Writing, Thinking, Guy

  Interview with McClain J., www.teenink.com.

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• I was the quiet kid in the corner, reading a book. In elementary school, I read so much and so often during class that I was actually forbidden from reading books during school hours by my teachers.

  Cassandra Clare

  Teacher, Reading, School

  "Author Interview: Cassandra Clare on City of Bones (Book One, The Mortal Instruments)". Interview with Cynthia Leitich Smith, cynthialeitichsmith.blogspot.com. March 8, 2008.

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• I love reading epic fantasies and big fat books and so I really wanted to write one. I think you always write what you want to read.

  Cassandra Clare

  Reading, Writing, Thinking

  Interview with Charles Packer, www.sci-fi-online.com.

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• A good adaptation of your book is worth it because it is such a wonderful experience to see your world translated onto the screen.

  Cassandra Clare

  World, Wonderful, Adaptation

  Interview with Helen Earnshaw, www.malextra.com. August 20, 2013.

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• When somebody tells you there's something wrong with your book they're almost always right, when they tell you how to fix it they're almost always wrong.

  Cassandra Clare

  Always Wrong

  Source: www.glamourmagazine.co.uk

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• I am drawn to writing books about magic and the supernatural because those are the types of books I like to read. I've written many short stories with realistic settings, and I certainly wouldn't rule out realistic novels in the future!

  Cassandra Clare

  Writing, Magic, Stories

  TheFandom.net Interview, www.thefandom.net.

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• Write what you want to read. So many people think they need to write a particular kind of book, or imitate a successful style, in order to be published. I've known people who felt they had to model their book on existing blockbusters, or write in a genre that's supposed to be "hot right now" in order to get agents and publishers interested. But if you're writing in a genre you don't like, or modeling yourself on a book you don't respect, it'll show through. You're your first, most important reader, so write the book that reader really wants to read.

  Cassandra Clare

  Writing, Successful, Thinking

  Source: cynthialeitichsmith.blogspot.com

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• Quit smoking in the hope of growing old. It takes a long time to write. People go to books for wisdom and older authors tend to have more of it.

  Barbara Kingsolver

  Writing, Long, People

  The Writers Write Interview, writerswrite.co.za. February 10, 2015.

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