W. H. Auden Quotes
Quotes to Explore
-
If only one in 1,000 people that I talk to goes on to write a good book, that's one more good book that I've helped along... and maybe it will be a book I love myself five or 10 years down the line.
-
My favorite book is 'Go Away Big Green Monster.' I wrote it for my granddaughter Adrian, who was in the third grade at the time.
-
Readers want to have the confidence that you understand the era in which the book is set, so for 'The Perfumer's Secret,' I needed to know everything about the First World War from a French perspective. I had to understand those people and that town in 1914.
-
The 'Islam vs. the West' dialogue ceased to be about real people a long time ago.
-
Real luxury is having the time to read endless stories in bed with my children. And I get that all the time. I'm so blessed.
-
Being listened to and being heard is an experience that doesn't happen terribly often. To listen compassionately or nonjudgmentally to another person - not to get too heavy about it - but I once heard somebody say that was a form of real prayer.
-
One half who graduate from college never read another book.
-
I'm not expecting the American literary community to welcome me with open arms. To them I'm just some schmuck kid who wrote some book.
-
I know from an editor's point of view or a publisher's point of view it's easier to slot me into a particular niche. But I know that I'd be bored unless I wrote a book that in some senses was a challenge.
-
I was raised in the Baptist church... but I didn't really have a real committed experience with Christ until my father died.
-
You have to understand that while I pre-plot the meta story of a given book, I often have no idea of what will happen on the next page, let alone the next chapter. That's what makes it fun for me; I write the books the same way many people read them.
-
Its not stress that kills us, it is our reaction to it.
-
It's easier to release an ebook than a print book.
-
I've always been fascinated by the brain. I wrote a lot about brain-tech in my first non-fiction book, 'More Than Human.' So when I decided to write science fiction, that was the technology I gravitated towards.
-
Give us enough but with a sparing hand.
-
At 20 and 30, we are like travelers in a foreign country, reading the guide book to learn how to behave, to learn when the post office is open. Trivia looms important; critical issues fade into a pastel background, unrecognized.
-
In a typical history book, black Americans are mentioned in the context of slavery or civil rights. There's so much more to the story.
-
I think a generation ago, dads went to work, they came home, and they had their dinner, had a drink, and then went to bed. I don't know what it was like in your house, but that is how it was in mine. I think it is cool to have the dads in the trenches and doing the real parenting work.
-
Book sales and teens reading is always a fantastic thing, but we should also be celebrating and consuming the huge wealth of U.K. and U.K.-based writing and illustrating talent. Authors such as Charlie Higson, Darren Shan, Holly Smale, Tanya Byrne, Catherine Johnson, Sophie Mckenzie, to name but a few.
-
I love polished pop music, but stuff like Neil Young's Crazy Horse vibe or Waylon Jennings, that stuff is raw and real.
-
It took me a long time to adapt to the West Coast. I lived eight years in New York before California and might have gone back. Then I discovered surfing. It's the California equivalent of ice hockey, I guess. It gave me a real sense of place.
-
Women are nothing but machines for producing children.
-
There is no greater anesthetic than sport.
-
A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us.
