World's Best Known Books

Written by: Mark Z. Danielewski

Published: March 7, 2000

Publishers: Pantheon, Random House

Number of Pages: 709

“It may be the wrong decision, but fuck it, it's mine.”

Written by: Harlan Ellison

Cover by: Leo Dillon and Diane Dillon

Published: March, 1967

Published in: IF: Worlds of Science Fiction

Publisher: Galaxy Publishing Corp.

Number of Pages: 134

"The explanations a writer gives himself for having written any particular book are more often not the real reasons why that book has been written. Honesty is not the issue. Understanding is. A man does not write one novel at a time or even one quatrain at a time. He is engaged in the long process of putting his whole life on paper. He is on a journey and he is reporting in: ‘This is where I think I am and this is what this place looks like today.’” The”

Written by: David Wong

Published: November 15, 2007

Published by: Permutted Press

Number of Pages: 362

"There,' said the large man. 'The kittens will make your sad go away.”

Written by: Joe Hill

Published: February 16, 2010

Published by: William Morrow

Number of Pages: 370

"You think you know someone. But mostly you just know what you want to know.”

Written by: Robert Cormier

Published: 1974

Publisher: Pantheon Books

Number of Pages: 272

“They don't actually want you to do your own thing, not unless it's their thing too.”

Written by: James Frey

Published: September 22, 2005

Publisher: Archer Books

“Sometimes skulls are thick. Sometimes hearts are vacant. Sometimes words don't work. ”

Written by: R.J. Palacio

Cover by: Tad Carpenter

Published: February 14, 2012

Publisher: Knopf

"I won’t describe what I look like. Whatever you’re thinking, it’s probably worse."

Written by: Truman Capote

Cover by: S. Neil Fujita

Published: 1966

Publisher: Random House

Number of pages: 343

“As long as you live, there's always something waiting; and even if it's bad, and you know it's bad, what can you do? You can't stop living.”

Written by: Anonymous

Published: 1971

Publishers​: Prentice Hall, Simon & Shuster

Number of Pages: 213

"Why is life so difficult? Why can't we be just ourselves and have everyone accept us the way we are?”

Written by: Stephen King

Published: September 24, 2014

Publisher: Scribner

Number of pages: 531

“The good thing about being old, is you don’t have to worry about dying young.”

Written by: Lois Lowry

Cover by: Cliff Nielsen

Published: 1993

Publisher: Houghton Mifflln

Number of Pages: 224

“Of course they needed to care. It was the meaning of everything.”

Written by: Maya Angelou

Published: 1969

Publisher: Bantam Books

Number of Pages: 246

“The caged bird sings with a fearful trill,
of things unknown, but longed for still,
and his tune is heard on the distant hill,
for the caged bird sings of freedom.”

Written by: Edith Nesbit

Cover by: H.R. Miller

Published: 1904

Publisher: Newnes

Number of Pages: 289

"'I wish they taught magic at school,' Jane sighed. 'I believe if we could do a little magic it might make something happen."

Written by: Madeleine L'Engle

Cover by: Ellen Raskin (1960's edition), Leo and Diane Dillon (current edition)

Published: January 1, 1963

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Number of Pages: 203

"Life, with its rules, its obligations, and its freedoms, is like a sonnet: You're given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself. - ..."

Written by: Katherine Paterson

Illustrator: Donna Diamond

Published: October 21, 1977

Publisher: Cromwell

Number of Pages: 143

"You think it's so great to die and make everyone cry and carry on. Well it ain't.”

Written by: Stan Lee and Steve Ditko

Cover by: Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko

Editor: Stan Lee

Penciler: Steve Ditko

Inker: Steve Ditko

Letterer: Artie Simek

Published: August 10, 1963

Publisher: Marvel Comics

"With great power, comes great responsibility."

Written by: Ernest Cline

Published: August 16, 2011

Publisher: Random House

Number of Pages: 374

"People who live in glass houses should shut the fuck up."

Written by: Robert Munsch

Illustrated by: Shelia McGraw

Published: October 1, 1986

Published: Firefly Books

Number of Pages: 31

“I'll love you forever, I'll like you for always, As long as I'm living, my baby you'll be.”

Written by: Jon Stone

Cover by: Michael Smollin

Illustrated by: Michael Smollin

Published: 1971

Publisher: Golden Books

“I told you and told you there was nothing to be afraid of.”

Number of Pages: 24

Written by: A.A. Milne

Illustrated by: Ernest H. Shepard

Published: October 14, 1926

Publisher: Methuen Publishing Ltd.

Number of Pages: 176

"People say nothing is impossible, but I do nothing every day.”

“I think we dream so we don’t have to be apart for so long. If we’re in each other’s dreams, we can be together all the time.”

“Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there some day.”

Written by: Beatrix Potter

Illustrated by: Beatrix Potter

Published: October, 1902

Publisher: Frederick Warne & Co.

Number of Pages: 56

“Peter was not very well during the evening. His mother put him to bed, and made some chamomile tea: "One table-spoonful to be taken at bedtime.”

Written by: A.A. Milne

Illustrated by: Ernest H. Shepard

Published: 1928

Publisher: Methuen Publishing Ltd.

Number of Pages: 192

“But, of course, it isn't really Good-bye, because the Forest will always be there... and anybody who is Friendly with Bears can find it.”

"Promise you won't forget me, ever. Not even when I'm a hundred.”

Written by: Scott Spencer

Published: 1979

Publisher: HarperCollins

Number of Pages: 432

"If my mind could have made a sound, it would have burst a row of wineglasses.”

Written by: Margery Williams

Illustrated by: William Nicholson

Published: 1922

Publisher: George H. Doran Publishing

Number of Pages: 48

“Once you are real you can't become unreal again. It lasts for always.”

Written by: Henry De Vere Stacpoole

Published: 1908

Publisher: T. Fisher Unwin

Number of Pages: 328

“Memory cannot produce a picture that Imagination has not retouched; and her pictures, even the ones least touched by Imagination, are no mere photographs, but the world of an artist.”

Written by: Dante Alighieri

Published: 1308-1320

Number of Lines: 14,233

“All hope abandon, ye who enter here.”

Written by: Anna Sewell

Published: November 24, 1887

Publishers: Jarrold & Sons, F.M. Lupton Publishing Company

Number of Pages: 255

"It is good people who make good places.'

Written by: Daniel Keyes

Published: April 1959, March, 1966

Published: Harcourt, Brace, & World

Number of Pages: 311

“Even in the world of make-believe there have to be rules. The parts have to be consistent and belong together.” 

Written by: William Shakespeare

Written: 1591 and 1595

First Performed: 1597

Number of Pages: 283

“For never was a story of more woe than this of Juliet and her Romeo.”

Written by: Robert Louis Stevenson

Published January 5, 1886

Published by: Longsman, Green, & Co.

Number of Pages: 144

“You must suffer me to go my own dark way.”

Written by: William Shakespeare

Written: 1599 and 1606

First Performed: April, 1611

Number of Pages: 249

"Life ... is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”

Written by: John Steinbeck

Cover by: Ross MacDonald

Published: 1937

Publisher: Covici Friede

Number of Pages; 187

“Trouble with mice is you always kill 'em. ”

Written by: Walter Farley

Illustrated by: Keith Ward

Published: 1941

Publisher: Random House

Number of Pages: 275

“You've never in your life seen a horse run so fast! He's all power-all beauty.”

Written by: Richard Matteson

Published: 1971

Publisher: Viking Press

Number of Pages: 288

"If you only knew the beauty which awaits you, Daniel. If you only knew how lovely are the realms which lie beyond this house. Would you keep yourself locked in a barren cell when all the beauties of the universe await you on the outside?”

Written by: Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Published: 1879–1880; separate edition 1880

Publisher: The Russian Messenger

Number of Pages: 795

“What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.”

Written by: Leo Tolstoy

Translated by: Haskell Dole

Published: 1865-1867, 18668 (book)

Publisher by: The Russian Messenger

Number of Pages: 1, 225

“If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war.”

Written by: Art Spiegelman

Illustrated by: Art Spiegelman

Published: 1980-1991

Publishers: Pantheon Books/Raw

Number of Pages: 296

"I cannot forget it…ever since Hitler I don’t like to throw out even a crumb”

Written by: Bill Watterson

Illustrated by: Bill Watterson

Published: 1991

Published by: Andrews McNeal Publishing

Number of Pages: 128

"You know, sometimes the world seems like a pretty mean place.'

'That's why animals are so soft and huggy.”

Written by: Katsuhiro Otomo

Illustrated by: Katsuhiro Otomo

Translated by: Jo Duffy

Published: December 6, 1982-June 11, 1990

Publishers: Kodansha, Kodansha USA, Titan Books

Published in: Young Magazine

Number of Pages: 352-440

“But...If that's true, then you're not...we thought you...Akira?”

Written by: H.P. Lovecraft

Published: September 16, 2008

Published by: Barnes and Noble

Number of Pages: 1098

"But of these things I must not now speak. I will tell only of the lone tomb in the darkest of the hillside thickets.”

Written by: Henry James

Published: January 27 – April 16, 1898, October, 1898

Publisher: The MacMillan Company, William Heinemann

Published in: Collier's

Number of Pages: 121

"If the child gives the effect another turn of the screw, what do you say to two children---? "We say, of course," somebody explained, "that they give two turns!"

Written by: Franz Kafka

Translated by: Stuart Corngold

Published: December, 1915

Publishers: Kurt Wolff Verlag

Number of Pages: 201

"How about if I sleep a little bit longer and forget all this nonsense",”

Written by: Alvin Schwartz

Illustrated by: Stephen Gammel

Published: October 14, 1981

Published by: Harper & Row

Number of Pages: 128

"Humans can lick, too."

Written by: John Grogan

Published: October 18, 2005

Published by: Harper & Collins, Hodder & Stoughton

Number of Pages: 304

“Dogs are great. Bad dogs, if you can really call them that, are perhaps the greatest of them all.”

Written by: Angela Carter

Cover by: Malcolm Ashman

Published: 1979

Publisher: Gollancz

Number of Pages; 128

“See! sweet and sound she sleeps in granny's bed, between the paws of the tender wolf.”

“We keep the wolves outside by living well.”

Written by: R.L. Stein

Illustrated/Cover by: Tim Jacobus

Published: September, 1993

Published by: Scholastics

Number of Pages: 121

“Noah — get off me!” she demanded, trying to push the big duck off her chest.”

Written by: David Wong

Published: 2012

Published by: Thomas Dunne

Number of Pages: 416

"You will dismiss this as ridiculous fearmongering. Dismissing things as ridiculous fearmongering is, in fact, the first symptom of parasitic spider infection-the creature secretes a chemical into the brain to stimulate skepticism, in order to prevent you from seeking a cure. That's just as well, since the "cure" involves learning what a chain saw tastes like."

Written by: H.G. Wells

Published: 1896

Publisher: Heinemann, Stone & Kimball

Number of Pages: 160

"Not to go on all-Fours; that is the Law. Are we not Men?”