William Dean Howells (The Dean of American Letters) Quotes
The mortality of all inanimate things is terrible to me, but that of books most of all.
Quotes to Explore
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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.
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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.
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I think that every so-called history book and film biography should be prefaced by the statement that what follows is the author's rendition of events and circumstances.
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I haven't found it to be particularly enjoyable... ninety percent of the time when I go on dates, I'm thinking, 'I could be reading my book instead.'
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For me, the whole process involves envisioning this book in my head as I'm working.
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On the streets, hanging out with the fellows, there are things you learn that no book can teach you.
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Every time I got 'Amazing Spider-Man' or 'Fantastic Four' or another book firmly on the rails, we got pulled into some big event book or crossover and it cost momentum and messed badly with the pacing and structure of the book.
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Black people were very angry with me for writing the book. A lot of people didn't believe me, or didn't want to believe me, and that used to really bother me. It was a very painful and difficult time.
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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.
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I don't read horror, ever. When I was 15, I made the mistake of reading part of 'The Exorcist.' It was the first and last horror book I've ever opened.
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I like to believe, as a writer, that anybody who isn't a reader yet has just not found the right book.
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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.
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Let us remember: One book, one pen, one child, and one teacher can change the world.
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I want a platform that, like a book or a magazine, I can carry into the bath or leave at the beach.
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'Perfect' is about a set-up that looks perfect from the outside - beautiful country house, beautiful wife and mother, everything where it should be - and the deep fissures that, in fact, lie beneath that. 'Perfect' was partly a response to the shock of my first book, 'The Unlikely Pilgrimage Of Harold Fry,' being a success.
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I was a top-notch cartoon model for Hanna Barbera, and they made me into a cartoon series called 'Devlin,' which ran for seven years, and I was on lunch pails and coloring books and all of that. It's really interesting being a coloring book when you're young – most kids colored in coloring books, but I made money off coloring books.
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I think my printing to this day looks like the printing right out of a comic book. Actually, I always wanted to be in a comic book. I watched cartoons when I was a kid, too, and both comics and cartoons lit fire in my imagination. This realm holds a lot of interest for me, a lot of passion for me. So to be comic-ized, yeah, that's cool.
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I have two daughters: One an open book, one a locked box. So the question of privacy is a challenging one. How much do kids need? How much should we give? How do we prepare them to live in a world where the very notion of privacy opens a generational chasm?
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I have considered rap music stars, and there is one in my new book, Lovers and Players, and there is also a hip-hop music mogul who I think you will like a lot.
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I think the trick of writing a good picture book manuscript is to leave that space for illustration. An illustrated novel can do the same thing.
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Many times, we spend so much time on policy, but we don't explain how the policy affects and makes the heart even grow bigger. And I think that's a place that we have to look inside.
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Something is worth what somebody will pay for it. Nothing else, nothing more, nothing less.
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The mortality of all inanimate things is terrible to me, but that of books most of all.
