Quotes About Books

As a youth, I always did a good deal of reading in the summer months, having suffered since birth from an allergy to athletic activity.

I'm a classic stress-eater, so I know a lot about how eating can become a way of hiding from what's really wrong. I escape into food. But some people escape into books. Some into relationships that might not be good for them. The three main characters in 'The Sugar Queen' struggle with each of these comforts-turned-crutches.

I do lament how many investors focus on all the short-term sugar buzz of some marginal improvement in something - nothing history books are ever going to be written about. In many cases, these are quick and easy ways to make money.

'The Canon' is a film podcast that also has much in common with books podcast 'Backlisted.' Both suggest you can get a lot of pleasure out of things that aren't new.

A friend suggested that I get a job at a children's book store so I could meet kids and read books, and that turned out to be the single best bit of advice I've ever gotten.

I was read to as a small child, I read on my own as soon as I could, and I recall being more or less overwhelmed again and again - if not by what the books actually said, by what they suggested, what they helped me to imagine.

No one ever committed suicide while reading a good book, but many have tried while trying to write one.

My house is filled with books, most of which I have read, some of which I intend to eventually get to. I'm always reading at least one work of fiction and one work of non-fiction simultaneously. Whatever mood I'm in, there's always a book nearby to suit it.

I've never written specifically for children as such. I write to please myself, and if it is suitable, it gets printed as a children's book.

My advice is this. For Christ's sake, don't write a book that is suitable for a kid of 12 years old, because the kids who read who are 12 years old are reading books for adults. I read all of the James Bond books when I was about 11, which was approximately the right time to read James Bond books.

In the days before I had kids I used to take six books with me for a fortnight's holiday. My suitcase used to be full of big trashy novels, maybe a bikini and some flip-flops. It was all I needed.

I love books; my suitcases are always full of them. Books and shoes. I read when I am sad, when I am happy, when I am nervous. My favourite British author is Jane Austen, and my favourite American one is John O'Hara.

I can't sum up my books. They're all rather complicated. Sometimes I think they're too complicated. But that's the way I am. When I start to write a book, my head gets full of all kinds of detail.

As a kid, I spent every summer bent over a stack of books, obsessively writing detailed reports on each one.

My ideal summer day was reading on the porch.

Honestly, my entire childhood could be summed up with one word: Reader. I was always hunched over a book; in fact, I was the only kid in the world who got paler in the summer, because I'd sneak down into our cool, dank cellar and sit alone with a book for hours.

Typically, a book is published and gets one season in the sun. Eventually, you write another book, and maybe your old books get a bump, but my books seem to keep being discovered and recommended to new people of all ages.

Scotland is so gorgeous that every time I'm there, I start to dream of living there. I want to buy one of those whitewashed cottages with the thatch roofs and gaze out at the sea and read my books. I want to be away from the Internet and the news and lawn mowers at 7 A.M. on Sunday mornings.

My mother always kept library books in the house, and one rainy Sunday afternoon - this was before television, and we didn't even have a radio - I picked up a book to look at the pictures and discovered I was reading and enjoying what I read.

Some Sundays, I read it quickly - other Sundays, I savor it. I generally spend most of my time in 'The New York Times Book Review,' 'Sunday Business,' 'Sunday Review,' and 'The New York Times Magazine.' I turn all the other pages, only stopping when I find a headline that interests me.

New York is the place where they bind books and write blurbs and arrange the publicity and print the galleys... But Chicago is the place where the book is lived out before it is bound and the song is sung before it is recorded.

Oh, I was super serious about practicing and rudiments, and still am. I still have all my books.

I'd read books in Russian, and they would take me forever. I wanted to write a book that would last and would not be superficial. Siberian-travel writing is its own genre.

There are a large number of people in the room, but one is unaware of them. They are in the books. At times they move among the pages, like sleepers turning over between two dreams. Ah, how good it is to be among people who are reading.