Henry David Thoreau Quotes

Only those works which are well-written will pass to posterity: the amount of knowledge, the uniqueness of the facts, even the novelty of the discoveries are no guarantees of immortality ... These things are exterior to a man but style is the man himself.

I should as soon think of swimming across Charles River, when I wish to go to Boston, as of reading all my books in originals, when I have them rendered for me in my mother tongue.

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

The big problem with literature is people tend to take the dialogue from the book, forgetting that everything that surrounds it is literate, therefore not knowing quite how to put that on screen.

Books have their destinies like men. And their fates, as made by generations of readers, are very different from the destinies foreseen for them by their authors. Gulliver's Travels, with a minimum of expurgation, has become a children's book; a new illustrated edition is produced every Christmas. That's what comes of saying profound things about humanity in terms of a fairy story.

Fashion changes, but style endures.

There is no reader so parochial as the one who reads none but this morning's books. Books are not rolls, to be devoured only when they are hot and fresh. A good book retains its interior heat and will warm a generation yet unborn.

Nearly all the writing of our time is likely to disappear in a hundred years. Certainly most readers - and nearly all critics - feel that [Kurt] Vonnegut started to repeat himself, to grow increasingly self-indulgent and meandering, and to sometimes just blather in his later work. But his books up to "Slaughterhouse-Five" do possess a distinctiveness that will insure some kind of permanence, if only in the history of the 1960s and of science fiction.

I interviewed - no - had lunch with Harper Lee several years ago, trying to convince Harper Lee to do "To Kill a Mockingbird" for the book club. She wouldn't do it. She said, "Honey, I said everything I wanted to say."

Sometimes if a script is based on a book, that's what you should do: represent the book.

It's a difficult thing when you try and make a film of a book that you really love. You have about two hours to tell the story, and it's never going to be enough.

I was in Los Angeles making 'Dead Again' and the producer, Lindsay Doran , asked me if I'd be interested in adapting this book, .. Austen is my favorite author and I thought, 'Well, of course, I'd be very interested, but I don't know how. I don't know where to start, A, writing a screenplay and B, sort of adapting it from a great novel.

I've made movies that were adaptations and I've been kind of frustrated by the process because, you know that old axiom, 'It's never as good as the book'? It's often true because nothing competes with your own imagination. When you're reading a book and you imagine something in your head, nothing's going to compete with that.

Adapting a book is essentially a collaboration, whether the author is alive or dead.

Good books, written by men or women, are ones in which you lose consciousness of the person writing the sentences.

An artist's career doesn't happen in the cycle of one week of news. An artist's career happens in a lifetime, and if you're a true artist you're willing to die for what you believe in.

I've never read a script that I've loved equally and differently to the book.

What I would really love to happen to me would be if I came upon an idea that would keep me busy until I die so I wouldn't have to go through the business of thinking up a new book. But I wouldn't mind writing a long book which is going to occupy me for the rest of my life.

It's hard when you make a film from a book that so many people love, because there's no way to get the entire story into a two-hour movie. But I was pleased with the reaction [for Kite Runner].

And what would happen if we never read the classics? There comes a point in life, it seems to me, where you have to decide whether you're a Person of Letters or merely someone who loves books, and I'm beginning to see that the book lovers have more fun.

Breezy, sophisticated, hilarious, rude and aching with sweetness: LOVE, NINA might be the most charming book I've ever read.

The history of books shows the humblest origin of some of the most valued, wrought as these were out of obscure materials by persons whose names thereafter became illustrious. The thumbed volumes, now so precious to thousands, were compiled from personal experiences and owe their interest to touches of inspiration of which the writer was less author than amanuensis, himself the voiced word of life for all times.

How many books there are whose reputation is made that would not obtain it were it now to make?

I should say that I'm not conscious of any particular style or any particular literary device when I am writing. I have written 22 books, and they are all very different. I have tried all kinds of genres.

We're just like a movie based on a book-- almost, but not quite as good.