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"530 Books Quotes

Authors change publishers because it's like being married for a long time and suddenly you want to go out and have a wild affair! No, not seriously, sometimes the deal is more interesting with a new publisher, and other times they have more enthusiasm for your books.

Affair Authors Because Being
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All of my books have the potential to become movies, it's just a question of finding a studio who wants to get behind me and put up the money to make the movie.

Become Behind Books Finding
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There's no better book with which to defend the Bible than the Bible itself.

Bible Defend Better Book
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The best books... are those that tell you what you know already.

Been Facts Foresee Future
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Whatever is funny is subversive, every joke is ultimately a custard pie... a dirty joke is a sort of mental rebellion.

Dirty Every Funny Joke
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A single conversation across the table with a wise man is better than ten years mere study of books.
Across Better Books Conversation
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What I felt was, if you spend your life just writing fiction, you are going to falsify your material. And the fictional form was going to force you to do things with the material, to dramatize it in a certain way. I thought nonfiction gave one a chance to explore the world, the other world, the world that one didn't know fully.

Certain CertainWay Chance Explore
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But everything of value about me is in my books.

About Books Everything Me
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Whatever extra there is in me at any given moment isn't fully formed. I am hardly aware of it; it awaits the next book. It will - with luck - come to me during the actual writing, and it will take me by surprise.

Actual Am Any AnyGivenMoment
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That element of surprise is what I look for when I am writing. It is my way of judging what I am doing - which is never an easy thing to do.

Am Doing Easy EasyThing
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I will say I am the sum of my books.
Am Books IAm Say
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Each book, intuitively sensed and, in the case of fiction, intuitively worked out, stands on what has gone before, and grows out of it. I feel that at any stage of my literary career it could have been said that the last book contained all the others.

Any Been Before Book
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Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.

Bayonets Feared Four Hostile
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One always writes comedy at the moment of deepest hysteria.
Always Comedy Deepest Hysteria
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I've never abandoned the novel.
Abandoned Never Novel
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I had no student friends to talk to about literature. My tutor was a really nice man, very charming - but he had no literary judgment

About Charming Friends Had
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Making a book is such a big enterprise.
Big Book Enterprise Making
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There's no more to Holden Caulfield. Read the book again. It's all there. Holden Caulfield is only a frozen moment in time.

Again Book Frozen Moment
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What I like best is a book that's at least funny once in a while. What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though.

Author Best Book Call
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As much as I love to dive into the action early, I think the hero's journey is important - the idea that the reader needs to experience the protagonist's everyday life before you turn that world upside down.

Action Before Dive Down
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I start with a beat sheet, which is more of an abbreviated outline. It hits all the major plot points. From there, I move to note cards. But the most important part of my process is my inspiration board.

Beat Board Cards Hits
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At the beginning of a new project, often before I do any actual writing, I collect photos, quotes, song lyrics, and even objects that relate to the characters or the world I'm creating.

Actual Any Before Beginning
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I couldn't live a week without a private library - indeed, I'd part with all my furniture and squat and sleep on the floor before I'd let go of the 1500 or so books I possess.

Before Books Floor Furniture
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Great, big, serious novels always get awards. If it's a battle between a great, big, serious novel and a funny novel, the funny novel is doomed.

Always Awards Battle Between
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I loved writing a book in which, in some ways, it's very, very classical, and in some ways I'm breaking lots of rules about what you can do and what you can't do.

About Book Breaking Classical
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I was always so relieved that anyone wants to publish anything I've written.
Always Anyone Anything Publish
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I'll agonize over sentences. Mostly because you're trying to create specific effects with sentences, and because there are a number of different voices in the book.

Because Book Create Different
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I'm a fairly undisciplined writer.

Fairly Book Undisciplined Writer
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In many ways, it was much, much harder to get the first book contract. The hardest thing probably overall has been learning not to trust people, publicists and so forth, implicitly.

Been Book Contract First
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Rock and roll stars have it much better than writers when they're on a tour.
Better Much Rock Roll
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So the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund is out there preserving and fighting for, and sometimes winning and sometimes losing, the fight for First Amendment rights in comics and, more generally, for freedom of speech.

Amendment Amendment Rights Book Comic
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Write your story as it needs to be written. Write it honestly, and tell it as best you can. I'm not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter.

Any Best Honestly Matter
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I don't think there is such a thing as a bad book for children.
Bad Book Children Such A Thing
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It is paradoxical, yet true, to say, that the more we know, the more ignorant we become in the absolute sense, for it is only through enlightenment that we become conscious of our limitations. Precisely one of the most gratifying results of intellectual evolution is the continuous opening up of new and greater prospects.

Paradoxical True Ignorant Absolute
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When I was 7, my proudest possession would have been my bookshelf 'cause I had alphabetized all of the books on my bookshelf.

Been Books Cause Had
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Let the future tell the truth, and evaluate each one according to his work and accomplishments. The present is theirs; the future, for which I have really worked, is mine

Future Truth Evalute Accomplishment
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I like reading. I prefer not reading on my computer, because that makes whatever I am reading feel like work. I do not mind reading on my iPad.

Am Because Computer Feel
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I believe if God doesn't give you a miracle, you are a miracle of God for somebody else's salvation.

Believe Else Give God
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I'm the world 'Guinness Book of Records' holder of 1,749 hugs in one hour. My arms fell off.

Arms Book Fell Guinness
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Books are all right, but dead men's brains are no good unless you mix a live one's with them.

Books Right Brain Dead
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Upon books the collective education of the race depends; they are the sole instruments of registering, perpetuating and transmitting thought.

Books Collective Depends Education
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I don't read books by people who have betrayed the Motherland.
Read Book People Motherland
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I don't know how many good books I still have in me; I hope there are another four or five.

Another Books Five Four
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I am suspicious of writers who say their work is original and influenced by nobody. If it is, it is probably uninteresting. The biggest source of novels is other novels.

Am Biggest I Am Influenced
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In 'Open City,' there is a passage that any reader of Joyce will immediately recognise as a very close, formal analogue of one the stories in 'Dubliners.' That is because a novel is also a literary conversation.

Also Any Because City
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I'd like to meet fewer people who say 'Oh, I want to write a book, here are 10 pages I've written,' and more 'Oh, I want to write a book, here are 300 pages I've written.'

Book Fewer Here Like
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For purposes of marketing, writers are designated as poets, novelists, or something else. But writing is about matchmaking, an attempt to marry sensations with apt words.

About Apt Attempt Else
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I'm not trying to be a poet on Twitter; I'm trying to be aware of the fact that a very simple sentence, well written, can have a very moving effect without that person knowing why. There's a deep genetic part of you that somehow, even without your permission, recognizes good language when it arrives.

Aware Deep Effect Even
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The greatest scholars are not usually the wisest people.
Greatest People Scholars Wisest
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I know many books which have bored their readers, but I know of none which has done real evil.

Book Bored Readers Done
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