A Quote by Flann O'Brien

Having placed in my mouth sufficient bread for three minutes' chewing, I withdrew my powers of sensual perception and retired into the privacy of my mind, my eyes and face assuming a vacant and preoccupied expression. I reflected on the subject of my spare-time literary activities. One Beginning and one ending for a book was a thing I did not agree with. A good book may have three openings entirely dissimilar and inter-related only in the prescience of the author, or for that matter one hundred times as many endings.

Flann O'Brien

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Activities Agree Assuming Author Beginning Book Bread Chewing Did Ending Endings Entirely Expression Eyes Face Good Good Book Having Hundred Hundred Times Literary Many Matter May Mind Minutes Mouth Of My Mind Only Openings Perception Placed Powers Preoccupied Privacy Reflected Related Retired Sensual Spare Subject Sufficient Thing Three Time Times Vacant

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Flann O'Brien
Irish - Novelist
October 5, 1911 - April 1, 1966

If you are interested in happy endings, you would be better off reading some other book. In this book, not only is there no happy ending, there is no happy beginning and very few happy things in the middle. This is because not very many happy things happened in the lives of the three Baudelaire youngsters.

Daniel Handler

Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts the book of their deeds, the book of their words, and the book of their art. Not one of these books can be understood unless we read the two others; but of the three, the only quite trustworthy one is the last. The acts of a nation may be triumphant by its good fortune; and its words mighty by the genius of a few of its children: but its art, only by the general gifts and common sympathies of the race.

John Ruskin

I want my books to exist in the literary world, not only in the art world. I am interested in having a dialogue with other writers, and the readers of those writers. Someone who is reading a book of mine might not have visited my exhibitions related to it, but can still have a full, literary experience with that book. This would be a completely different experience from stepping into the show, not having read the book. One form is not illustrative of the other.

Jill Magid

Only bad books have good endings. If a book is any good, it's ending is always bad - because you don't want the book to end.

Pseudonymous Bosch

Reading a book should be a conversation between you and the author. Presumably he knows more about the subject than you do; if not, you probably should not be bothering with his book. But understanding is a two-way operation; the learner has to question himself and question the teacher, once he understands what the teacher is saying. Marking a book is literally an expression of your differences or your agreements with the author. It is the highest respect you can pay him.

Mortimer Adler

"The best is oftentimes the enemy of the good;" and without claiming for an instant that title of good for my book, I do not doubt that many a good book has remained unwritten, or, perhaps, being written, has remained unpublished, because there floated before the mind's eye of the author, or possible author, the ideal of a better or a best, which has put him out of all conceit with his good.

Richard Chenevix Trench

I have the same fantasy every time I read a book I love, no matter who wrote it, no matter when it was written. That the author has written his book only for me.

Adam Langer

There is a difference between a book of two hundred pages from the very beginning, and a book of two hundred pages which is the result of an original eight hundred pages. The six hundred are there. Only you don't see them.

Elie Wiesel

You read about these oyster-shucking contests: Somebody did 100 oysters in three minutes, three seconds. I'm lucky if I can open one in three minutes, three seconds.

Mark Kurlansky

You may write twenty lines one day--or even three like Euripides in three days--and a hundred lines in one more day--and yet on the hundred, may have been expended as much good work, as on the twenty and the three.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

The problem is that in order to publish a book in mainland China, you have to agree to be subject to censorship. That's the nature of the system. I don't challenge that system on its face. It's their system. But as an author, I have a choice to make whether I'll participate or I won't.

Evan Osnos

For a lot of readers these days, a book is something you have to agree or disagree with. But you can't agree with a novel. For my generation, it was assumed that a book is a dramatic thing, that the eye of the book is not telling you what to think.

Howard Jacobson

October knew, of course, that the action of turning a page, of ending a chapter or of shutting a book, did not end a tale. Having admitted that, he would also avow that happy endings were never difficult to find: "It is simply a matter," he explained to April, "of finding a sunny place in a garden, where the light is golden and the grass is soft; somewhere to rest, to stop reading, and to be content.

Neil Gaiman

Hmph," said Sharon . "Did you know that the numbers three and seven are sacred to vampires? There are seven vampire sects." "Seven sacred sects," I repeated. "Say that three times fast." "How about I spank you instead?" asked Patrick in a benign tone that belied the flare of irritation in his gaze. "Only if you tie me to a bed and use a paddle." His silver eyes went molten. Uh-oh. Me and my big smart-aleck mouth. "I… uh, sorry. I didn't mean that. I saw Secretary a few too many times. I'm impressionable.

Michele Bardsley

Man's life is entirely in his operations, which may all be classed under three heads: he thinks, he feels, and he acts -- these three modes of activity exhaust his powers.

William Batchelder Greene

Every three or four years I pick a new subject. It may be Japanese art; it may be economics. Three years of study are by no means enough to master a subject but they are enough to understand it. SO for more than 60 years I have kept studying one subject at a time.

Peter Drucker

A Quote by Flann O'Brien

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