Top 1200 Book Review Quotes & Sayings

Perhaps in a book review it is not out of place to note that the safety of the state depends on cultivating the imagination.

I never read a book I must review; it prejudices you so.

A writer writes a book. People read it. You don't know what they're reading, really. You read a review and think, "That is so inaccurate. You can't have been reading my book with any kind of attention, because that is all wrong, that's even the wrong name you're including there." But these reviewers have been diminished in importance, the work is so little respected. If you're reviewed by a real critic, by James Wood or Louis Menand, then you get something that is informed, interesting, and highly articulate. But the average review doesn't have that kind of depth anymore.

A week or so ago I did a two hour book review in Baltimore Maryland.

I built a career on negative reviews. I didn't get a good review ever until Fran Lebowitz gave me a good review in Interview. That was the first good review I got in 10 years.

My main qualm about TV criticism has been when people review TV the way they review movies. They watch the pilot, and write a definitive review of the show. The obvious analogy is that you don't read the first eight pages of a book and then talk about whether the book works or not. People want so desperately in this day and age to declare something thumbs-up or thumbs-down that they declare it immediately.

I have an enduring, very robust infatuation with dictators. I have an infatuation with Stalin, Mao, and Mussolini. In the Paris Review interview I did (in 2013), I said my next book, this one, was going to be about Mussolini. I wound up only having a Mussolini cameo in the book.

If I do decide to review a product, I sometimes negotiate with a company the timing of the review but never its outcome or tone. I sometimes strive to be the first to publish a review, but I never promise a good review in exchange for that timing.

We conduct a safety review of all images, audio, and video files through a combination of human review and machine detection prior to them becoming available on our platform.

Piece by piece I sent my first book of poems to American Poetry Review and was rejected one by one.

Attacking bad books is not only a waste of time but also bad for the character. If I find a book really bad, the only interest I can derive from writing about it has to come from myself, from such display of intelligence, wit and malice as I can contrive. One cannot review a bad book without showing off.

Sad to say, multi-tasking is beyond me. I read one book at a time all the way through. If I'm reviewing the book, I have to write the review before I start reading any other book. I especially hate it when the phone rings and interrupts my train of thought.

E-books are great for instant gratification - you see a review somewhere of a book that interests you, and you can start reading it five minutes later.

[To the critic who wrote a negative review:] I am sitting in the smallest room of the house. Your review is before me. Soon it will be behind me.

What a pity when editors review a woman's book, that they so often fall into the error of reviewing the woman instead.

When a parent comes into school waving a book and saying, 'Take this book away. I don't like this book.' I won't say in all cases, but in many cases, that will not happen anymore. It has to go through a proper review board. The complaining parent will have to fill out a complaint, you know, put it in writing.

What is a budget review? A personal review with numbers

It is always dishonest for a reviewer to review the author instead of the author's book.

Writers are funny about reviews: when they get a good one they ignore it-- but when they get a bad review they never forget it. Every writer I know is the same way: you get a hundred good reviews, and one bad, andyou remember only the bad. For years, you go on and fantasize about the reviewer who didn't like your book; you imagine him as a jerk, a wife-beater, a real ogre. And, in the meantime, the reviewer has forgotten all about the whole thing. But, twenty years later, the writer still remembers that one bad review.

A mom reads you like a book, and wherever she goes, people read you like a glowing book review.

Few Amazon punters will explore a book with the depth of an 800-word review.

Barring some national security concern, I see no valid reason to keep peer-reviewed research from the public. To be clear, by 'peer review,' I mean scientific review and not a political filter.

The first function of a book review should be, I believe, to give some idea of the contents and character of the book.

The people who review my books, generally, are kind of youngish culture writers who aspire to write books. When someone writes a book review, they obviously already self-identify as a writer. I mean, they are. They're writers, they're critics, and they're writing about a book about a writer who's a critic. So I think it's really hard for people to distance themselves from what they're criticizing.

Sometimes literary critics review the book they wanted you to write, not the book you wrote, and that's very irksome.

So, you see, it's a real chore for me to write a book review because it's like a contest. It's like I'm writing that book review for every bad book reviewer I've ever known and it's a way of saying [thrusts a middle finger into the air] this is how you ought to do it. I like to rub their noses in it.

One thing I noticed over time is that if I got a bad review, usually the bad part of it was at the very end. I could tell that nobody read the whole review because they would just say, "It was great to see the review!" In a way, my brain shuts down at the end of an article. It doesn't really want to go to the end.

Like many of the people quoted on this dust-cover, I have not read Carl King's book. I am confident, however, that my review still applies: So, You're a Creative Genius is the best book available on modern cartography.

It was my third Second City review before I even got mentioned in the review. It was the third review where it finally was like, 'And Lauren Ash is here.' Thank God, it's about time!

When I wrote about Mary Wollstonecraft, I found that here she was, in the late 18th century, going to work for the 'Analytical Review.' What was the 'Analytical Review?' It was a magazine that dealt with politics and literature.

I started work on my first French history book in 1969; on 'Socialism in Provence' in 1974; and on the essays in Marxism and the French Left in 1978. Conversely, my first non-academic publication, a review in the 'TLS', did not come until the late 1980s, and it was not until 1993 that I published my first piece in the 'New York Review.'

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.

My husband and I are huge bibliophiles. He's always reading 'The New York Times Book Review' and then ordering 20 books online.

I was so long writing my review that I never got around to reading the book.

One cannot review a bad book without showing off.

Incidentally, the very, very first review that James Lavelle and I saw of Endtroducing was very negative! It was in The Wire, and the context of the review was that, you know, Mo'Wax was so far behind Ninja Tune. Heheheh. And people wonder why there was this sense of a feud between labels! We just kind of looked at each other and we were like, 'Oh, well, let the floodgates open!' But, not to be facile, that was literally the last bad review I ever saw for that album.

Reviewing books is all about coziness. It is all of it a kind of caucus race. Women review women, Jewish writers review and praise Jewish writers, blacks review blacks, etc.

I'd sit at my kitchen table and start scanning help-wanted ads on my laptop, but then a browser tab would blink and I'd get distracted and follow a link to a long magazine article about genetically modified wine grapes. Too long, actually, so I'd add it to my reading list. Then I'd follow another link to a book review. I'd add the review to my reading list, too, then download the first chapter of the book—third in a series about vampire police. Then, help-wanted ads forgotten, I'd retreat to the living room, put my laptop on my belly, and read all day. I had a lot of free time.

Just as the police review their operational tactics, so we in the Home Office will review the powers available to the police.

I prefer a good review. A bad review that dismisses us... I take it with a grain of salt. I go, 'Okay, they didn't even try.'

I have published in 'The New Yorker,' 'Holiday,' 'Life,' 'Mademoiselle,' 'American Heritage,' 'Horizon,' 'The Ladies Home Journal,' 'The Kenyon Review,' 'The Sewanee Review,' 'Poetry,' 'Botteghe Oscure,' the 'Atlantic Monthly,' 'Harper's.'

If a writer I represent gets a bad or unfair review, I suffer. I'm upset and outraged and do everything I can to try and change that. But I would never do that on behalf of my own book because I wouldn't expect my writers to do that.

There is a misconception of tragedy with which I have been struck in review after review, and in many conversations with writers and readers alike. It is the idea that tragedy is of necessity allied to pessimism.

When Paul Beatty's 'The Sellout' was first published in America in 2015, it was a small release. It got a rave review in the daily 'New York Times' and one in the weekly 'New York Times Book Review,' too, for good measure. But by and large, it was not a conversation-generating book.

When I post a review to book-blog.com it probably takes me - apart from writing the review, of course - 20 or 30 minutes to finish all my related tasks.But that's irregular, depending on how quickly I'm reading.

I thought, well I can do that. I couldn't be bothered writing a book review, because I'd have to read the book, I haven't got time to read a whole book for a fifty dollar write-up.

A critic can only review the book he has read, not the one which the writer wrote.

I'm accused of, and perhaps rightly so, of not being mean enough. I've been taken to task in many a book review; a good satirist has to, you know, has to kill.

The critic leaves at curtain fall To find, in starting to review it, He scarcely saw the play at all For starting to review it.

I was devastated when I got the review for my first book. The book came out a couple years before the women's movement broke through, and people were putting it down, asking, 'Why does the woman in this book need to get a divorce? Why can't she just shut up and be happy?'

When I read a review, 90% of the review is about my lifestyle, and the last two sentences are about the record.

What I really like is an intelligent review. It doesn't have to be positive. A review that has some kind of insight, and sometimes people say something that's startling or is so poignant.

It may sound a bit like an army barracks, but the truth of the matter is: there must be some time laid aside for arranging, time for working on either a book or an article - I've written two articles in the last four months for the New York Times book review section.

When someone writes a book review, they obviously already self-identify as a writer. I mean, they are. They're writers, they're critics, and they're writing about a book about a writer who's a critic. So I think it's really hard for people to distance themselves from what they're criticizing.

Usually, to promote a new work, I'll aspire to be published in the 'Columbia Law Review' or the 'Stanford Law Review' and to have at least five really enticing footnotes.

Is it ever worthwhile to buy a review? Not in my opinion. With independent paid review services, quality can be a problem; plus, there are plenty of non-professional book review venues out there that will review for free.

The first time I saw a review of one of my permaculture books was three years after I first started writing on it. The review started with, "Permaculture Two is a seditious book." And I said, "At last someone understands what permaculture's about."

And it's always possible that you will not get a nice review. So - and that's enraging of course, to get a bad review, you can't talk back, and it's sort of shaming in a way.

I rarely read or buy a book because of a review.

The hateful reviews are very funny. And sometimes you can enjoy a hateful review much more than a good review.