All Quotes By Tag: Books

“Camomille: Fallible men write books. God writes in sunlight and rivers and planets. Isn’t the Universe a good book? I trust it above the printed kind.”

“Books never cease to astonish me. When I was a child, I knew–in the incontestable way that children know things–that God was an author who’d imagined me, which is why I (and everyone else) existed: to populate His narrative. My task was to imagine God in return: this was all He and I owed each other.”

“I was flipping channels, watching this cheerleading program on MTV. They took a field hockey girl and “transformed” her into a cheerleader by the end of the show. I was just wondering: what if she liked field hockey better?”

“Imagine a very long time passing – and I find my way out, following someone who already knows how to leave Hell. And God says to me on Earth for the first time, “Xas!” in a tone of discovery, as if I’m a misplaced pair of spectacles or a stray dog. And he puts it to me that he wants me in Heaven. But Lucifer has doubled back – it was him I followed – to find me, where I am, in a forest, smitten, because the Lord has noticed me, and I’m overcome, as hopeless as your dog Josie whom you got rid of because she loved me.’ Xas glared at Sobran. Then he drew a breath – all had been said on only three. He went on: ‘Lucifer says to God the He can’t have me. And at this I sit up and tell Lucifer that I didn’t even think he knew my name, then say to God no thank you – very insolent this – and that Hell is endurable so long as the books keep appearing.”

“In Western Civilization, our elders are books.”

“Well, it seems to me that there are books that tell stories, and then there are books that tell truths… The first kind, they show you life like you want it to be. With villains getting what they deserve and the hero seeing what a fool he’s been and marrying the heroine and happy endings and all that… But the second kind, they show you life more like it is… The first kind makes you cheerful and contented, but the second kind shakes you up.”

“It takes a certain ingenuous faith – but I have it – to believe that people who read and reflect more likely than not come to judge things with liberality and truth.”

“Writing fiction is the act of weaving a series of lies to arrive at a greater truth.”

“Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.”

“Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.”

“Books are mirrors: you only see in them what you already have inside you.”

“Sometimes if I don’t have a book to read, I put my imagination to work.”

“Imagination is a gift given to us from God and each one of us use it differently.”

“Was there ever a more horrible blasphemy than the statement that all the knowledge of God is confined to this or that book? How dare men call God infinite, and yet try to compress Him within the covers of a little book!”

“No man can be called friendless who has God and the companionship of good books.”