„I think of Neuromancer as being, in a good sense, an adolescent book. It's a young man's book. It was written very young-man's-book. It was written by a man who was not very young, when he wrote it, but who was sufficiently immature.“

„This book is the story of a young man who came to America to make a living, and simply happened to do so in a profession which he helped to create.“

—  Raymond Loewy industrial designer 1893 - 1986

Introduction
Never Leave Well Enough Alone (1951)

„God has, in fact, written two books, not just one. Of course, we are all familiar with the first book he wrote, namely Scripture. But he has written a second book called creation.“

—  Francis Bacon English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, and author 1561 - 1626

„I remember very well, when I was at Oxford, an old gentleman said to me, "Young man, ply your book diligently now, and acquire a stock of knowledge; for when years come upon you, you will find that poring upon books will be but an irksome task."“

—  Samuel Johnson English writer 1709 - 1784

July 21, 1763, p. 126
Vol I

„You are being dishonest if you are not writing about sex in your book. It is very natural and normal. Well, I have earned the name of 'dirty old man' but there is not much sex in my books. What I have written is very serious stuff - biography, history, religious texts, etc.“

—  Khushwant Singh Indian novelist and journalist 1915 - 2014

„The Bible is different from all other books; other books are written by man, but the Bible not only contains the sayings and commandments of God, but was also written entirely under divine inspiration. So we might say that it is God's book, which he gave to man to lead him to everlasting life.“

—  Matta El Meskeen Egyptian monk 1919 - 2006

Orthodox Prayer Life: The Interior Way

„When I was young I longed to write a great novel that should win me fame. Now that I am getting old my first book is written to amuse children.“

—  L. Frank Baum Children's writer, editor, journalist, screenwriter 1856 - 1919

Personal inscription on a copy of Mother Goose in Prose (1897) which he gave to his sister, Mary Louise Baum Brewster, as quoted in The Making of the Wizard of Oz (1998) by Aljean Harmetz, p. 317
Letters and essays
Контексте: When I was young I longed to write a great novel that should win me fame. Now that I am getting old my first book is written to amuse children. For aside from my evident inability to do anything "great," I have learned to regard fame as a will-o-the-wisp which, when caught, is not worth the possession; but to please a child is a sweet and lovely thing that warms one's heart and brings its own reward.

„The only reason I read a book is because I cannot see and converse with the man who wrote it.“

—  Woodrow Wilson American politician, 28th president of the United States (in office from 1913 to 1921) 1856 - 1924

Speech in Kansas City (12 May 1905), PWW (The Papers of Woodrow Wilson) 16:99
Unsourced variant: I would never read a book if it were possible for me to talk half an hour with the man who wrote it.
1900s

„The writer probably knows what he meant when he wrote a book, but he should immediately forget what he meant when he's written it.“

—  William Golding British novelist, poet, playwright and Nobel Prize for Literature laureate 1911 - 1993

As quoted in Novelists in Interview (1985) edited by John Haffenden

„(intro) Well, here we go. This is the first book I've written since 1975, when I was in the 7th grade and wrote Boogers Are Good Eatin'.“

—  Larry the Cable Guy American stand-up comedian, actor, country music artist, voice artist 1963

Источник: Git-R-Done (book), p. 1

„There is no such thing, wrote Oscar Wilde, as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. Presumably, then, Mein Kampf would have been all right had it been better written.“

—  Theodore Dalrymple English doctor and writer 1949

Trash, Violence, and Versace: But Is It Art? http://www.city-journal.org/html/8_1_urbanities-trash.html (Winter 1998).
City Journal (1998 - 2008)

„A good book isn't written, it's rewritten.“

—  Phyllis A. Whitney American writer 1903 - 2008

Источник: Guide to Fiction Writing

„There is much for a young writer to learn from our poorest writers. It is very destructive to burn bad books, almost more destructive than to burn good ones.“

—  William Saroyan American writer 1908 - 1981

The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze (1934), A Cold Day

„Years ago I read a man named Machado de Assis who wrote a book called Dom Casmurro.“

—  Maya Angelou American author and poet 1928 - 2014

Machado de Assis is a South American writer — black father, Portuguese mother — writing in 1865, say. I thought the book was very nice. Then I went back and read the book and said, Hmm. I didn’t realize all that was in that book. Then I read it again, and again, and I came to the conclusion that what Machado de Assis had done for me was almost a trick: he had beckoned me onto the beach to watch a sunset. And I had watched the sunset with pleasure. When I turned around to come back in I found that the tide had come in over my head. That’s when I decided to write.
Paris Review Interview (1990)

„The advice of the elders to young men is very apt to be as unreal as a list of the hundred best books.“

—  Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. United States Supreme Court justice 1841 - 1935

1890s, The Path of the Law (1897)

„There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book.
Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.“

—  Oscar Wilde, книга Портрет Дориана Грея

Вариант: There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.
Источник: The Picture of Dorian Gray

„The problem of knowledge is that there are many more books on birds written by ornithologists than books on birds written by birds and books on ornithologists written by birds“

—  Nassim Nicholas Taleb, книга The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Источник: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

„Every word of Truth proceeds from God, whether that Truth be written in the rocks and read by the geologist or written in the heavens and read by the astronomer or written in the heart of man or written in this old book“

—  Benjamin Fish Austin Nineteenth-century Canadian educator/Methodist Minister/Spiritualist 1850 - 1933

Sermon (1899)

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

—  Elizabeth Barrett Browning English poet, author 1806 - 1861

„Atlas, the man who carries the world, becomes the book of the maps of the world. An example of man, or God, into book. Few have that honour.“

—  Peter Greenaway British film director 1942

Flying Out of This World