I'm a book guy first, and my education came from two encyclopedias. One was an encyclopedia of health, so I became morbidly obsessed with anatomy, and I thought I had trichinosis, an aneurism, jaundice! And then an encyclopedia of art.
Me, I'm an encyclopedia. I'm not a very smart guy, but I'm an encyclopedia. You can ask me about anything you want. Probably I have the book; probably I have a first edition.
I came to the idea of how fine it would be to think of an encyclopedia of an actual world, and then of an encyclopedia, a very rigorous one of course, of an imaginary world, where everything should be linked.
Will there ever be an encyclopedia? Possibly. I would say two things about the encyclopedia: firstly, I’ve always said and I stand by it, whenever I do do a printed encyclopedia I would like all the proceeds to go to charity. Back in 1998 I never dreamt I personally I would be in the position that I could set up a large charitable foundation and personally do things for charity, and I’ve done other charity books already.
The information that was contained in a cathedral was based upon a common culture - a common Christian culture - and the elements were chosen for a common symbolic meaning. Someone who knew everything that was represented in a cathedral had a sort of encyclopedia - you can indeed call it that - but it was a selective encyclopedia, like encyclopedias back when they were books and the people writing them were supposed to be specialists in their field. I think today the problem is that people don't know how to choose between different kinds of information.
I have been collecting recipes and information for over 20 years, but three years ago, my editor said to me, 'You're a walking encyclopedia of food, so why don't you do an encyclopedia?'
Dullard: Someone who looks up a thing in the encyclopedia, turns directly to the entry, reads it, and then closes the book.
I can clearly trace my passion for reading back to the Jonesboro, Georgia, library, where for the first time in my life I had access to what seemed like an unlimited supply of books. This was where I discovered 'Encyclopedia Brown' and 'Nancy Drew,' 'Gone With the Wind' and 'Rebecca.' This was where I became inspired to be a writer.
[My wife] liked to collect old encyclopedias from second-hand bookstores, and at one point we had eight of them. When I wrote my first historical novel---back in 1980, before I was online---I used them often as a research tool. For instance, I learned that the Bastille was either 90 feet high or 100 feet or 120 feet. This led me to formulate Wilson's 22nd Law: 'Certitude belongs exclusively to those who only look in one encyclopedia.'
The Book of Mormon is an inexhaustible encyclopedia of knowledge.
There's no encyclopedia or book about parenthood. You learn on the fly.
In maybe 1963, we had 'Collier's Encyclopedia,' and they sent us their yearly LP. I heard the Beatles talking on there. That was the first time I tried altering my voice, doing a Liverpudlian accent.
The cultivated person's first duty is to be always prepared to rewrite the encyclopedia.
I just signed to do my next book with Ecco Press, a new primer or encyclopedia. This will be my take on what classic Italian cooking is.
From the Vedas we learn a practical art of surgery, medicine, music, house building under which mechanized art is included. They are encyclopedia of every aspect of life, culture, religion, science, ethics, law, cosmology and meteorology.
I remember when I first found out I was having a boy, I became obsessed with buying boys' clothes. Then came my daughter, and I was obsessed with buying girls' clothes. Everything looks 10 million times cuter when it's teeny-tiny.
When I opened Wikipedia, it had three articles, yet it was called an encyclopedia.