Book Quotes
-
In America there's a tendency to write the same book over and over because that's what sells. So in a way, my success in America has come at the expense of what I do. I haven't sold out, and I haven't taken the popular road to writing a best-selling book. I've really bucked the system. So it was necessary for me not to go and find the easy fans, the ones who want something digestible and fast with a happy ending that they can read over and over again no matter how many different books it is. I had to find fans who really wanted to think. Worldwide they all have that in common.
-
What are you reading?" Owen asks. "Charlotte's Web," Liz says. "It's really sad. One of the main characters just died." "You ought to read the book from end to beginning," Owen jokes. "That way, no one dies, and it's always a happy ending.
-
I didn't write the book to sell the book, but to tell my experiences.
-
I read a lot of comic books and any kind of thing I could find. One day, a teacher found me. She grabbed my comic book and tore it up. I was really upset, but then she brought in a pile of books from her own library. That was the best thing that ever happened to me.
-
I often visit Maria Tatar's 'The Grimm Reader' for a cold dose of courage. Her translations come from the Brothers Grimm, whose now-famous collection of 'Kinder- und Hausmarchen' ('Children's and Household Tales') was first published in 1812. The book was not intended for young readers.
-
I collect books, and I love libraries. I love bookstores. And to me meeting a writer is important. And when I saw a book with my name on it I almost passed out.
-
I don't want to go slumming in somebody else's pain just to write a book. I want to go into those darker places to shine a light on that experience and come out with a story that validates the human spirit.
-
If you're studying from a book and trying to listen in on a conversation at the same time, those are two separate projects, each started and maintained by distinct circuits in the brain. Pay more attention to one for a moment and you're automatically paying less attention to the other.
-
I've had the experience of having a book praised but then it doesn't sell. Or not praised but then it sells.
-
Having the book-club army embrace you is a gift that keeps giving for years.
-
I felt that, in some ways, my novels lacked heart because of the distance between me and the subject matter. But no one wants to read a book based on good health, a happy upbringing, a long marriage.
-
Fundamentalism - of any variety - is a form of illiteracy, in that it asserts that it is necessary to read only one book.
-
One should live between extravagance and meanness. Don't save money by starving your mind. It is false economy never to take a holiday, or never to spend money for an evening's amusement or for a useful book.
-
Comic book readers tend to be pretty secular and anti-authoritarian; nothing is above satire in their eyes.
-
I maintain an ongoing survey of Internet Publishing and self publishing, so that it is now possible for any writer with a book to get it published at nominal cost or free, and to have it on sale at booksellers like Amazon.com.
-
I don't think people really understood what I did. And you know, in my book, 'A Helluva High Note' deals with my back story, that I was a songwriter, that I spent years trying to hone my craft and being rejected and then finally becoming a successful songwriter, record executive and publisher.
-
My days are filled with writing, reading, and being a mom. Some days, I get to visit schools around the country and talk about what it's like to be a writer. I often feel like I'm pretending, because it's still hard for me to believe it when I see someone holding a book that I've written.
-
I often get asked, 'Is the book dead?' It hasn't happened yet. It's different than music. Music was always meant to be pure sound - it started out as pure sound and now it's pure sound again. But books started out as things. Words on paper began as words on paper. The paperback book is the best technology to deliver that information to you.
-
I'm going to write a book, continue acting, continue motivational speaking and just share with people who I am and what I've learned in my second chance of life and pass it on to people in their first chance of life.
-
A book is like a man - clever and dull, brave and cowardly, beautiful and ugly. For every flowering thought there will be a page like a wet and mangy mongrel, and for every looping flight a tap on the wing and a reminder that wax cannot hold the feathers firm too near the sun.
-
My favourite all-time work of fiction: Lord of the Rings. My favourite all-time nonfiction book: Guns, Germs, and Steel. Ask me again next week, you'll get a different answer.
-
I really am an open book. I don't keep anything in at all, which is good and bad.
-
Sometimes, readers, when they're young, are given, say, a book like 'Moby Dick' to read. And it is an interesting, complicated book, but it's not something that somebody who has never read a book before should be given as an example of why you'll really love to read, necessarily.
-
A novelist's lack of awareness of and critical distance to his own body of work is due to a phenomenon that I have noticed in myself and many others: as soon as it is written, every new book erases the last one, leaving me with the impression that I have forgotten it.
