Book Quotes - Page 55

The angels laugh at old Karl. They laugh at him because he tries to grasp the truth about God in a book of Dogmatics. They laugh at the fact that volume follows volume, and each is thicker than the previous ones. As they laugh, they say to one another, ‘Look! Here he comes now with his little pushcart full of volumes of the Dogmatics!’—and they laugh about the persons who write so much about Karl Barth instead of writing about the things he is trying to write about. Truly, the angels laugh.

When I am reading a book, whether wise or silly, it seems to me to be alive and talking to me.

It matters not the subject taught, nor all the books on all the shelves, What matters most, yes most of all, is what the teachers are themselves.

Dance is low on the totem pole of the arts, because you're not left with a painting... a book that will stay there, a score you can read.

Buy ammunition! Remember that a man cannot have too many books, too many wines, or too much ammunition. Our adversaries on the other side are reaching for the excuse of lead poisoning. If they can push that idea through, you may wind up still owning your guns but without anything to shoot in them.

Books, for me, are a home. Books don’t make a home – they are one, in the sense that just as you do with a door, you open a book, and you go inside. Inside there is a different kind of time and a different kind of space.

If your book doesn't keep you up nights when you are writing it, it won't keep anyone up nights reading it.

Every once in a while, a cookbook comes along that simply knocks me out.

It is better to hide ignorance, but it is hard to do this when we relax over wine.

I'm sure someone out there has a workable solution. But what do I know? I make comic books and write about jazz. I do know the difference between right and wrong, though.

No, Groucho is not my real name. I am breaking it in for a friend. I never forget a face, but in your case I'll be glad to make an exception. I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book. I have had a perfectly wonderful evening, but this wasn't it. I didn't like the play, but then I saw it under adverse conditions - the curtain was up.

Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in my pocket. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.

A book is a friend. You can never have too many.

If you would tell me the heart of a man, tell me not what he reads, but what he rereads.

Mary is the Mysterious Book of Predestination to glory.

Then began an experience that turned my life around-working on a book with a black kid as hero. None of the manuscripts I'd been illustrating featured any black kids-except for token blacks in the background. My book would have him there simply because he should have been there all along. Years before I had cut from a magazine a strip of photos of a little black boy. I often put them on my studio walls before I'd begun to illustrate children's books. I just loved looking at him. This was the child who would be the hero of my book.

I think that there are empty ecological niches in the literary landscape crying to be filled and when a book more or less fills a niche it's seized on, even when it's a far from perfect fit...

The worst advice I ever received from my dad was to play by the book.

I gave my decisions on the principles of common justice and honesty between man and man, and relied on natural born sense, and not on law, learning to guide me; for I had never read a page in a law book in all my life.

I suppose I tend to like slightly darker things - people have levelled that on me before and I accept that because in my opinion, if I mention the best movies or the best books, there's always something that's involving slightly darker element of out psyche. I like seeing people under pressure. I like seeing what happens to people when they're under pressure.

The waitress comes over to me like, 'What'chu readin' for?' I had never been asked that. Not 'What am I reading?' but 'What am I reading for?' Goddammit, you stumped me. Hmm, why do I read? I suppose I read for a lot of reasons, one of the main ones being so I don't end up being a... waffle waitress.

You don't have to gaze into a crystal ball when you can read an open book.

Only one book is worth reading: the heart.

You could tell a lot about a man by the books he keeps - his tastes, his interest, his habits.

I will not allow a Delia Smith cookbook in my house! It's all so precise with Delia, and it makes cooking seem so inaccessible.