“ Here's what I want from a book, what I demand, what I pray for when I take up a novel and begin to read the first sentence: I want everything and nothing less, the full measure of a writer's heart. I… Pat Conroy
“ All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they really happened and after you are finished reading one you feel that it all happened to you and after which it all belongs to you. Ernest Hemingway
“ The good, the admirable reader identifies himself not with the boy or the girl in the book, but with the mind that conceived and composed that book. Vladimir Nabokov
“ What amazes me is that most days feel useless. I don't seem to accomplish anything-just a few pages, most of which don't seem very good. Yet, when I put all those wasted days together, I somehow end u… Louis Sachar
“ Though dead is promised to me, when will I slumber, deep? Is there not an appointed time to man upon earth? Are not his days also like the days of an hireling? As a servant earnestly desires the shado… Compton Gage
“ To be a great warrior is not enough. Flesh and blood, however skilled, can be destroyed... you must be more than just a man in minds of your opponents. Compton Gage
“ You haven't rewarded evil unto them who were at peace with you; nor you have delivered them that without cause is your enemy. But they want to tread down your soul upon the earth, and lay your honour… Compton Gage
“ I applied mine heart to know, and to search, and to seek out wisdom, And the reason of things, And to know the wickedness of folly, even of foolishness and madness: And I find more bitter than death,… Compton Gage
“ Hear about the hidden time. Some think the hidden time is yet to come. The Kingdom of God does not come by Observation. It is hidden in the inner dimension. Compton Gage
“ It is not enough to be a man... you have to become an idea... a terrible thought... a wraith- indeed- Become one with the darkness. Compton Gage
“ Act correctly. Incorrect action cannot be justified by incorrect action. An incorrect action taken to cover an incorrect action is doubly incorrect. Compton Gage
“ You are judged many times more by what you give assent to others doing than what you do yourself. If one million of you give assent to the one thousand who participate in the murder of a child, then o… Compton Gage
“ Cleave to the common good. We are all responsible for bringing about the time of great suffering, for its continuing. Compton Gage
“ I wrote "David" because it seemed to me that children, who can love a book more passionately than any grown person, got such a lot of harmless entertainment and not enough real, valuable literature. Anne Holm
“ Reading a book is like re-writing it for yourself. You bring to a novel, anything you read, all your experience of the world. You bring your history and you read it in your own terms. Angela Carter
“ We are liable to miss the best of life if we do not know how to tingle, if we do not learn to hoist ourselves just a little higher than we generally are in order to sample the rarest and ripest fruit… Vladimir Nabokov
“ The bookshelves were lined with Joan Didion and Flannery O'Connor, a small, unexpected collection of musicalia, essay collections on Leonard Cohen and Neil Young. There was a framed poster of an exhib… Gary Shteyngart
