Jeff Kinney Quotes

A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.

A "classic" is a book that everybody praises but nobody has read

A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.

A classic is a book which with each rereading offers as much of a sense of discovery as the first reading.

Definition of a classic: a book everyone is assumed to have read and often thinks they have.

Books are divided into two classes, the books of the hour and the books of all time.

Really important books to me are the classics. I try very hard to read them well - you know, especially once I got serious about writing. So, reading Tolstoy several times - 'War and Peace,' 'The Kreutzer Sonata' - all those were really important to me.

Literature is news that stays news.

A classic is a book that doesn't have to be written again.

I admire American literature, both contemporary and classic - 'Moby-Dick' is just about the best book in the world - and I admire British literature for its insistence on dealing with social class. It may have been an influence.

Only a few things are worth a second reading—rarely are things of such enduring quality that they are read many times and live to inspire a second or third generation.

He was slumped over, blood trickling from the side of his mouth. I shook his furry hip, thinking, No! Even if you are half barnyard animal, you're my best friend and I don't want you to die!

A classic is the term given to any book which comes to represent the whole universe, a book on a par with ancient talismans.

A classic is a book that remains in print

Really important books to me are the classics. I try very hard to read them well - you know, especially once I got serious about writing.

A classic is a successful book that has survived the reaction of the next period or generation. Then it's safe, like a style in architecture or furniture. It's acquired a picturesque dignity to take the place of its fashion.

Do you think that your fathers are watching? That they weigh you in their ledgerbook? Against what? There is no book and your fathers are dead in the ground.

A classic is a book that survives the circumstances that made it possible yet alone keeps those circumstances alive.

I think that the best literature has a core that you can't lock to a time or place but that can generate lots of meanings and translations.

The first of the Trainspotting crew to die. Out of the five of them like, Begbie, Renton, Spud, Sick Boy and [Margaret] Thatcher. Who'd have thunk she'd have been the first to go? She was the invisible author of the book, really. She created the conditions and the hubris whereby that whole culture flourished.

Wait. You think I'm going to die? That's why you slept with me?

The life of a wild animal always has a tragic end.

The Postman Always Rings Twice that's a book that I think every writer should read - that has to do with technique. But it's also a novel narrated by a guy who has decided by page 11 that he's fallen in love with a woman, and they're going to murder her husband so they can be together. There's nothing remotely likeable about him, but James M. Cain brings you so far into his head that, at a certain point, you have that uncomfortable but also thrilling sensation of seeing things exactly as he sees it.

It makes no difference to me whether I shoot you or you fall to your death.” “It does make a difference,” I said, my voice small but confident. “You and I share the same blood.” I lifted my hand precariously, showing him my birthmark. “I’m your descendant. If I sacrifice my blood, Patch will become human and you’ll die. It’s written in The Book of Enoch.

There's no doubt about it. Arcadia is Tom Stoppard's richest, most ravishing comedy to date, a play of wit, intellect, language, brio and, new for him, emotion. It's like a dream of levitation: you're instantaneously aloft, soaring, banking, doing loop-the-loops and then, when you think you're about to plummet to earth, swooping to a gentle touchdown of not easily described sweetness and sorrow.