"Books, like men their authors, have no..." - Quote by Jonathan Swift
Books, like men their authors, have no more than one wayofcoming intothe world, but there areten thousand to go out of it, and return no more.
More by Jonathan Swift
“Exploding many things under the name of trifles is a very false proof either of wisdom or magnanimity, and a great check to virtuous actions with regard to fame.”
“Whoe'er excels in what we prize,Appears a hero in our eyes;Each girl, when pleased with what is taught,Will have the teacher in her thought.. . . .A blockhead with melodious voice,In boarding-schools may have his choice.”
“The example alone of a vicious prince will corrupt an age; but that of a good one will not reform it.”
More on Books
“Reading brings us unknown friends”
“If the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a fist hammering on our skull, why then do we read? So that it shall make us happy? Good God, we should also be happy if we had no books, and such books as make us happy we could, if need be, write ourselves. But what we must have are those books which come upon us like ill fortune, and distress us deeply, like the death of one we love better than ourselves; like suicide. A book must be an ice-axe to break the sea frozen inside us.”
“I should infinitely prefer a book.”
More on Authorship
“It doesn't matter to me whether I write in a man's voice or a woman's, or first or third person for that matter. Those choices come down to the story and I just go with it.”
“We who have been true readers all our life fully realize the enormous of our being which we owe to authors.”
“John Barth, I think, was really a writer of my own age and somewhat of my own temperament, although his books are very different from mine, and he has been a spokesman for the very ambitious, long, rather academic novel. But I don't think that what he is saying, so far as I understand it, is so very different from what I'm saying.”