Book Quotes
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I don't think anyone wants a reader to be completely lost - certainly not to the point of giving up - but there's something to be said for a book that isn't instantly disposable, that rewards a second reading.
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All my books have been titled based on a piece of the prose from inside the book.
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The clue to book jacket photography is to look friendly and approachable, but not too glamorous.
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When a book comes from the publisher and you see it for the first time... Of course it's not remotely like seeing a baby for the first time, but I can remember with each book what room I was in when I opened it. That would be excitement, though, I think. Not pride.
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The Koran is a fascist book which incites violence. That is why this book, just like Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf, must be banned.
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It has historically been a comfort for the bourgeois and that you can read the most extreme books and not change. You can read A Christmas Carol and not change in any way.
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Which is the healthier kind of literary diversity: an un-gate-kept self-published book world, run substantially through Amazon? Or our current book world, which is part-gate-kept, part-not, with many different publishers and retailers and platforms? I'm not smart enough to figure it out, but if I had to guess I'd guess the latter.
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There's still a strange moment with every book when I move from the position of writer to the position of reader and I suddenly see my words with the eyes of the cold public. It gives me a terrible sense of exposure, as if I'd gotten sunburned.
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I receive emails from readers that both break my heart and give me a profound sense of connection. Several months ago, I received an email from a teacher who told me that 'Legend' was the first book one of her troubled young students had ever read to the end. He cried when he finished it. Stories like that stay with you forever.
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Each had his own business to think of. Each had his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart; and his friends could only read the title.
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No good book has ever been written that has in it symbols arrived at beforehand and stuck in. ... I tried to make a real old man, a real boy, a real sea and a real fish and real sharks. But if I made them good and true enough they would mean many things
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One night a friend lent me a book of short stories by Franz Kafka. I went back to the pension where I was staying and began to read The Metamorphosis. The first line almost knocked me off the bed. I was so surprised. The first line reads, “As Gregor Samsa awoke that morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. . . .” When I read the line I thought to myself that I didn’t know anyone was allowed to write things like that. If I had known, I would have started writing a long time ago. So I immediately started writing short stories.
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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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My dad is still the only Mraz in the Mechanicsville phone book, so he's getting calls from girls to see if I'm home!
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Calling a book 'young adult' is only important in that it can help get a book to the right reader. After that, it's a useless abstraction and should be discarded.
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Start with short stories. After all, if you were taking up rock climbing, you wouldn't start with Mount Everest. So if you're starting fantasy, don't start with a nine-book series.
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In doing your best serving others for free, a lot of eyebrows will raise and sneers will curve many a - faces. But in the end those incredulous to what you put up with to help, no longer matter. It's not between you and those snobs, but with whom you have given your hand to lift, and of course to God who Is watching and noting it in your book.
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People think writing a children's book is something you could do in an afternoon but it's actually really hard.
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Never let a day pass without looking at some perfect work of art, hearing some great piece of music and reading, in part, some great book.
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I don't know whether we Church members fully appreciate the Book of Mormon, one of our sacred scriptures, as we really should.
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The ones that were relevant while I wrote my book were books like "Beloved" by Toni Morrison, which is based on a historical fact, "Ragtime" by E.L. Doctorow, and "True History of the Kelly Gang" by Peter Carey.
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It seemed impossible that a scrappy book like 'Goon Squad' could win an award like that. It's such an iconic honor. I think what the Pulitzer means to me is that I'll need to work very, very hard to try to live up to it.
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I actually feel, when I get to about page 200, that it's going to be a book after all! It never gets easier - when you conquer one problem, another one rises up to take its place.
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I certainly think that the publishing houses have to learn more about this informal network of literary blogging and get over the idea that sending an author on a book tour - to Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles - is a successful model anymore.
