My first book was rejected nine times. It turned out to be a best seller, Battle Cry? in 1953.
Leon Uris

Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image, but thee who destroys a good book, kills reason its self.
John Milton

A good book is the precious lifeblood of a master spirit.
John Milton

It is very remarkable, that in the book of life, we find some almost of all kinds of occupations, who notwithstanding served God in their respective generations, and shone as so many lights in the world.
George Whitefield

What has influenced my life more than any other single thing has been my stammer. Had I not stammered I would probably... have gone to Cambridge as my brothers did, perhaps have become a don and every now and then published a dreary book about French literature.
W. Somerset Maugham

When I read a book I seem to read it with my eyes only, but now and then I come across a passage, perhaps only a phrase, which has a meaning for me, and it becomes part of me.
W. Somerset Maugham

My second book, Follow Me Down had some success, got good critical notices, went into a second printing and things like that, but Shiloh was by far the most successful of those first five novels.
Shelby Foote

It is no great art to say something briefly when, like Tacitus, one has something to say; when one has nothing to say, however, and none the less writes a whole book and makes truth into a liar - that I call an achievement.
Horace

After an author has been dead for some time, it becomes increasingly difficult for his publishers to get a new book out of him each year.
Robert Benchley

It's a very good historical book about history.
Dan Quayle

You never know what's going to happen. My mother was an English teacher. If someone had told her that I was going to write a book, she would never have believed that. So you can never say never.
Tony Dungy

I could never have pictured myself writing a book when I was 25 years old. My mom was an English teacher but I wasn't that way growing up.
Tony Dungy

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

A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us.
W. H. Auden

When I begin a book, I inevitably discover many things along the way, about the characters, their past histories and the political intrigues that surround them. This discovery process is vital, and I would not prejudice it by deciding too much in advance.
David Brin

In the book, America had already been weakened by bio terror plagues before waves of selfish violence took down the rest. But the real enemy was the kind of male human being who nurses fantasies of violent glory at the expense of his fellow citizens.
David Brin

I can't bear art that you can walk round and admire. A book should be either a bandit or a rebel or a man in the crowd.
David Herbert Lawrence

A good book, in the language of the book-sellers, is a salable one; in that of the curious, a scarce one; in that of men of sense, a useful and instructive one.
Oswald Chambers

Yes, but another writer I read in high school who just knocked me out was Theodore Dreiser. I read An American Tragedy all in one weekend and couldn't put it down - I locked myself in my room. Now that was antithetical to every other book I was reading at the time because Dreiser really had no style, but it was powerful.
Joan Didion

When I'm working on a book, I constantly retype my own sentences. Every day I go back to page one and just retype what I have. It gets me into a rhythm.
Joan Didion