Quotes About Books

I always carry a book with me to read on the bus, and I tend to arrive everywhere early.

I tend to think of stories and books as being for everyone, just with an 'entry reading age' rather than an age range.

I tend to read more nonfiction, really, because when I'm writing I don't like to read other fiction.

I'm trying to start reading books that you gain knowledge from in order to challenge myself more. As a rule, I tend to read easy reading/populist-type books, but I don't feel like I'm learning enough.

I've been told, and I think I recognize it, that there's a cinematic quality to my writing, with a sense of image and place and scene - and, some would say, my tendency to finish my books the way Hollywood finishes its films.

I think, especially when you're in college, each book that you're reading tends to tell you who you are.

I do have trouble starting books. I have ideas that I have trouble starting to write. But I'm the kind of person who tends to finish everything she starts out of sheer stubbornness.

When I do read, it tends to be serious books like autobiographies and if I've met a famous person, I'll read up on them.

I learned how to read in second grade, and I entered a summer contest at my local library in Chattanooga, Tennessee. If you read more books than anybody else, you got your Polaroid up on the bulletin board, and I did.

Books that do a tenth of what Left Behind has done are smashing successes.

With my first few books, I was aiming at an academic audience, basically, to get tenure. You can presuppose a certain amount of knowledge; you can expect that there is this common background.

I honestly don't read that much. Obviously I read chess books - in terms of favorites, Kasparov's 'My Great Predecessors' is pretty good.

In terms of the way people see me, it breaks down into two very clear and distinct groups: those who think they know me from reading the papers and those who really know me by reading my books.

A writer could spend years reading already-published books just to gain a grasp of the historical terrain.

Fiction is able to encompass books that are bleak and which dwell on the manifold and terrible problems of our times. But I don't think that all books need to have that particular focus.

The mortality of all inanimate things is terrible to me, but that of books most of all.

There is a lot of talk in publishing these days that we need to become more like the Internet: We need to make books for short attention spans with bells and whistles - books, in short, that are as much like 'Angry Birds' as possible. But I think that's a terrible idea.

My parents took an interest in nothing, at home no books, no records. My mother and my father are the emblem of indifference, dryness and bad taste. My father is also terribly stingy, in life as well as in feelings: I have never seen him filling up the bathtub.

I'm not terribly conversant with children's literature in general. I tend to read books for adults, being an adult.

I'm not terribly well read. My wife forces books into my hands and insists I read them, which I'm grateful to her for. She made me read 'War and Peace.' The whole thing. It was amazing, but I had to hide it. You can't walk round reading 'War and Peace' - it's like you're in a comedy sketch and you think you're smart.

I like terrific writing, but I also like a terrific story. My favorite books have both, and they're by contemporary, commercial American writers.

My friend Josh Glenn compiles terrific lists of genre novels from the mid-20th century. His latest is a list of the ten best adventure novels of 1966. Josh also includes the cover art of early editions of the books, which are always much better than the art on newer editions. I want to read every book in this list!

Sometimes a book I'm reading is so terrific that when I finish, I simply turn back to page one and start all over again to see what I've missed, to experience it again, more deeply, or because I don't want to let it go.

I didn't read a book until I was 31 years old when I was diagnosed with dyslexia. Books terrified me. They made me nervous. Now I know you can travel to the bottom of the ocean or to outer space or anywhere in between without leaving your armchair, and I'm so, so sorry I couldn't read when I was younger.