#books

"Books are a hard-bound drug with no danger of an overdose. I am the happy victim of books."

"It is time to float on the waters of the night. Time to wrap my arms around this book and press it to my chest, life preserver in a sea of unremarkable men and women, anonymous faces on the street, a hundred thousand unalphabetized things, a million forgotten hours."

"She reads a lot of books. Good things, books."

"Think before you speak. Read before you think."

"His hands were weak and shaking from carrying far too many books from the bookshop. It was the best feeling."

"Literary detection and firearms don't really go hand in hand; pen mighter than the sword and so forth."

"There are essentially two things that will make you wise -- the books you read and the people you meet."

"A successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out of it."

"Someone once wrote that a novel should deliver a series of small astonishments. I get the same thing spending an hour with you."

"Shelving books incorrectly is as good as stealing them. It's almost worse."

"Authors like cats because they are such quiet, lovable, wise creatures, and cats like authors for the same reasons."

"I know the X’s and O’s of football. I just don’t know the other 24 letters. And as a writer, this bothers me."

"I wrote a book. It sucked. I wrote nine more books. They sucked, too. Meanwhile, I read every single thing I could find on publishing and writing, went to conferences, joined professional organizations, hooked up with fellow writers in critique groups, and didn’t give up. Then I wrote one more book."

"I guess there are never enough books."

"The love of learning, the sequestered nooks,And all the sweet serenity of books"

"A homeless man visited my store today. The few quarters that he had in his pocket he invested on books. I offered him free books, but he insisted on giving me his quarters. He walked away filled with joy as if he possessed the world's riches in his hands. In a way, he did. He left me smiling and knowing that he was wealthier than many others... (01-21-10)"

"If you want to really know something you have to observe or experience it in person; if you claim to know something on the basis of hearsay, or on happening to see it in a book, you'll be a laughingstock to those who really know."

"Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures."

"Picking five favorite books is like picking the five body parts you'd most like not to lose."

"A tough life needs a tough language—and that is what poetry is. That is what literature offers—a language powerful enough to say how it is."