Jacques Barzun Quotes

The most technologically efficient machine that man has ever invented is the book.

I grew up around books. When I first held the book and it was a substantive, tangible thing, and I thought of all the work that went into it, not just my work but everybody else's and the research and so forth, there's a sense of really have done something worthwhile.

I like to hold a book. When someone sends me a script, I ask for a hard copy or print one out.

The best way to learn to write is to read in the genre you might be interested in; then, you need to actually sit down and write. In a lot of cases, the first book you write will not get published. Do not get hung up on that. Start a second book.

Books woke me up. Books are my favorite man-made objects. I fetishize their design, smell, feel. And that they can contain such burning, complex communications is a miracle to me.

Authors have a greater right than any copyright, though it is generally unacknowledged or disregarded. They have a right to the reader's civility. There are favorable hours for reading a book, as for writing it, and to these the author has a claim. Yet many people think that when they buy a book they buy with it the right to abuse the author.

There is nothing on earth more exquisite than a bonny book, with well-placed columns of rich black writing in beautiful borders, and illuminated pictures cunningly inset. But nowadays, instead of looking at books, people read them. A book might as well be one of those orders for bacon and bran.

I learned to write by reading the kind of books I wished I'd written.

I should have written books instead of reading them.

I love the book. I love the feel of a book in my hands, the compactness of it, the shape, the size. I love the feel of paper. The sound it makes when I turn a page. I love the beauty of print on paper, the patterns, the shapes, the fonts. I am astonished by the versatility and practicality of The Book. It is so simple. It is so fit for its purpose. It may give me mere content, but no e-reader will ever give me that sort of added pleasure.

I love to read. I remember hearing that the average author takes two years to write a book. So when I read a book, I feel like I am getting two years of life experiences.

I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book! -- When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.

People don't understand how hard it is to get recognized, how hard it is to get people to read your books. How hard it is to get people to even to understand what they're reading when they're talking to you about their books.

I have loved books all my life. There is nothing more beautiful in our material world than the book.

I know that the way to be a really successful writer is to write the same kind of book over and over again. Find the kind of thing that people like and just write one of those over and over again. I don't do that. I just keep doing different things.

The intellectual is, quite simply, a human being who has a pencil in his or her hand when reading a book.

Read a thousand books, and your words will flow like a river.

I want an infinitely blank book and the rest of time.

books have been my greatest comfort, castle-building a never-failing delight, and scribbling a very profitable amusement.

I guess there are never enough books.

Will you lie to me and promise to read them? Books need to be read. The pages need to be turned.

I get hundreds of emails daily and a lot of feedback from people that are reading or have read my books. When I'm writing, or in my daily life, I just think of the work. I love to tell a story, but I might work with a story to make it the best I can without thinking of how many people will read it or if it will influence anybody.

I was under twenty when I deliberately put it to myself one night after good conversation that there are moments when we actually touch in talk what the best writing can only come near. The curse of our book language is not so much that it keeps forever to the same set phrases . . . but that it sounds forever with the same reading tones. We must go out into the vernacular for tones that haven't been brought to book.

The most important thing for any aspiring writer, is to read! And not just the sort of thing you're trying to write, be that fantasy, SF, comic books, whatever. You need to read everything.

To me, the most perfect screenplay ever written will be one word, when you finally reduce it down to that. Until then, writing will be an imperfect form of communication.