A Quote by Russell Banks

Lists of books we reread and books we can't finish tell more about us than about the relative worth of the books themselves.

Russell Banks

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About Books Finish Lists More Relative Tell Than Themselves Us Worth

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Russell Banks
American - Novelist
Born: March 28, 1940

A man's bookcase will tell you everything you'll ever need to know about him," my father had told me more than once. "A businessman has business books and a dream has novels and books of poetry. Most women like reading about love, and a true revolutionary will have books about the minutiae of overthrowing the oppressor. A person with no books is inconsequential in a modern setting, but a peasant that reads is a prince in waiting.

Walter Mosley

Only idiots or snobs ever really thought less of 'genre books' of course. There are stupid books and there are smart books. There are well-written books and badly written books. There are fun books and boring books. All of these distinctions are vastly more important than the distinction between the literary and the non-literary.

Stephen Marche

Fiction allows for moral questioning, but through the back door. Personally, I like books that make you think - books you're still wondering about three days after you finish them; books you hand to a friend and say "Read this, so we can talk about it."

Jodi Picoult

Accolades and lists may tell us about accomplishments, but life is meant to be experienced, not just accomplished. It's like the difference between reading books for the sake of reading and reading books just to get a good grade.

LZ Granderson

Live life and write about life. Of the making of many books there is indeed no end, but there are more than enough books about books.

Will Self

People talk about books that write themselves, and it's a lie. Books don't write themselves. It takes thought and research and backache and notes and more time and more work than you'd believe.

Neil Gaiman

What I did do a lot as a child was read, and I particularly remember reading all the 'Hardy Boys' books, a set of history books called the 'Landmark Books,' and a series of science books called the 'All About Books.'

Martin Chalfie

People always ask what a book is about, as if it has to be about something. I don't want to write books that lend themselves to that sort of description. My books are more a kind of breaking-down.

Jonathan Safran Foer

The books we think we ought to read are poky, dull, and dry The books that we would like to read we are ashamed to buy The books that people talk about we never can recall And the books that people give us, oh, they're the worst of all.

Carolyn Wells

I reread "Ball Four" by Jim Bouton, the father of all sports books. Aside from that, and books like?"Out of Their League" by Dave Meggyesy, sports books generally pull their punches.

David Duchovny

I do send out information about my books. Very few people buy the books that way, but I always feel that if they want to know more about the process, they can get the information from my books.

Richard Curtis

And tell them all about the books you've read. Better still, buy some more books and read them. That's an order. You can never read too many books.

P.B. Kerr

Books may not change our suffering, books may not protect us from evil, books may not tell us what is good or what is beautiful, and they will certainly not shield us from the common fate of the grave. But books grant us myriad possibilities: the possibility of change, the possibility of illumination.

Alberto Manguel

For Borges, the core of reality lay in books; reading books, writing books, talking about books. In a visceral way, he was conscious of continuing a dialogue begun thousands of years before and which he believed would never end.

Alberto Manguel

All books can be indecent books, though recent books are bolder. For filth, I'm glad to say, is in the mind of the beholder. When correctly viewed, everything is lewd. I could tell you things about Peter Pan and the Wizard of OZ, there's a dirty old man!

Tom Lehrer

Electronic books are ideal for people who value the information contained in them, or who have vision problems, or who like to read on the subway, or who do not want other people to see how they are amusing themselves, or who have storage and clutter issues, but they are useless for people who are engaged in an intense, lifelong love affair with books. Books that we can touch; books that we can smell; books that we can depend on.

Joe Queenan

A Quote by Russell Banks

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