Ken Bruen Quotes

I entrench myself in my books equally against sorrow and the weather.

The first duty of the novelist is to entertain. It is a moral duty. People who read your books are sick, sad, traveling, in the hospital waiting room while someone is dying. Books are written by the alone for the alone.

Reading gives us someplace to go when we have to stay where we are.

I crawled into my book and pulled the pages over my head.

It was actually books that started to make those pockets of freedom, which I hadn't otherwise experienced. I do see them as talismans, as sacred objects. I see them as something that will protect me, I suppose, that will save me from things that I feel are threatening. I still think that; it doesn't change. It doesn't change, having money, being successful. So from the very first, if I was hurt in some way, then I would take a book -- which was very difficult for me to buy when I was little -- and I would go up into the hills, and that is how I would assuage my hurt.

I had to share a room with my sister, who is five and a half years older than I am. We didn't get along well, and I felt that I had no privacy. So books were my privacy, because no one could join me in a book, no one could comment on the action or make fun of it. I used to spend hours reading in the bathroom -- and we only had one bathroom in our small apartment!

The truth is, I can’t read anything with any distance. Every book is a self-help book to me. Just having them makes me feel better.

Immersing oneself in the problems of a book is a good way to keep from thinking of love.

She always carried a book, though, in case she needed to read a few pages to avoid unwanted conversation.

I lay on the bed and lost myself in stories. I liked that. Books were safer than other people anyways.

Since the choice of what we curl up with is often crucial for our solace and sanity, we need to learn how to nurture the talent of selection. Book browsing is a meditative art...Books are as essential as breathing.

Studies are the food of youth, the delight of old age; the ornament of prosperity, the refuge and comfort of adversity; a delight at home, and no hindrance abroad; they are companions by night, and in travel, and in the country.

It is perhaps sad books that best console us when we are sad.

Ten guards and the warden couldn't have torn me out of those books. Months passed without even thinking about being imprisoned....I had never been so truly free in my life.

The man whose bosom neither riches nor luxury nor grandeur can render happy may, with a book in his hand, forget all his torments under the friendly shade of every tree; and experience pleasures as infinite as they are varied, as pure as they are lasting, as lively as they are unfading, and as compatible with every public duty as they are contributory to private happiness.

I'm coming on home to you instead cause they're all too ugly tonight.

And you love to read, you love to escape, right?

One can only snort so many ants and have so much sex before one starts to long for the comfort and companionship of a good book.

I read books. Avidly, ardently! As if my life depended upon it.

A little known fact: I read all the time. books were the one thing that got me out of Gatlin, even if it was only for a little while.

I think there seems to be a need for escapism at the moment. Maybe that's the type of world we're living in. It's a sanctuary, in a way, where you can immerse yourself in something that doesn't exist, whether that's TV shows or comic books or novels. it's not solely down to magic and vampires - that's in at the moment. but escapism, being a part of other worlds, is very good for you.

Prescription: 'Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes. Take ten pages, twice a day, til end of course.

I went away in my head, into a book. That was where I went whenever real life was too hard or too inflexible.

music became my refuge and then my salvation.