Quotes about Books

I stay out of politics because if I begin thinking too much about politics, I'll probably... drop writing children's books and become a political cartoonist again.

I've met men who've stood in long lines on my book tours, and they've said things like, 'I've read your books and they've changed the direction in my life, and I want to thank you.' I think they're standing in line for their wife or their mother or their sweetheart or somebody, but no.

If children haven't been read to, they don't love books. They need to love books, for books are the basis of literature, composition, history, world events, vocabulary, and everything else.

Colonel L., in whose eyes I was a first-rate Riot Acter or, worse, an intellectual—in his phrase, "someone who reads books"—the most damning appraisal that could be made of a junior lieutenant.

The Internal Revenue Service wants a record of how you spend your money, but that is nothing compared to the books God is keeping.

as I reflected upon the matter, I discovered that these authors, in their books, were, after all merely making use of their own experiences or expressing ideas which they had worked out in actual life, and that to make use of their language and ideas was merely to get life second hand.

In a word, literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourse of my book-friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or awkwardness.

Everyone seems to see bleakness and despair in my books. I don't read them that way. I see myself as writing comic books, books about ordinary people trying to live ordinary, dull, happy lives while the world is falling to pieces around them.

I've written a number of books that have to do with the evolution of humans, human intelligence, human emotions.

Christ himself wrote nothing, but furnished endless material for books and songs of gratitude and praise.

Sometimes it appears that we're reaching a period when our senses and our minds will no longer respond to moderate stimulation. We seem to be approaching an Age of the Gross. Persuasion through speeches and books is too often discarded for disruptive demonstrations aimed at bludgeoning the unconvinced into action.

But how does it happen, if their books and rituals are true, and Felicity is a goddess, that she herself is not appointed as the only one to be worshipped, since she could confer all things, and all at once make men happy? For who wishes anything for any other reason than that he may become happy?