Book Quotes
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While we read a novel, we are insane—bonkers. We believe in the existence of people who aren't there, we hear their voices... Sanity returns (in most cases) when the book is closed.
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Young men, of course, don't want to be guided by old back numbers, but at the same time I know that in my own case I gained a lot by studying the characters of the chiefs under whom I served from time to time. Lord Wolseley, for instance, said: "Use your common sense rather than book instructions."
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I can see he's not in your good books,' said the messenger. 'No, and if he were I would burn my library.
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When I write a book... it's the same essential approach to music as with books. It has to be something I want to hear or read. Hopefully the audience comes along, since that's the only way you can write righteously. I have to ask, 'What do I want to hear?' not 'What do people want to hear?'
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I don't know what will happen to the physical book and what it will mean for authors. I worry whether it will mean people can still make their careers this way. Will whatever comes next allow people to be able to own their ideas and be able to take time to develop them?
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The first sentence of a book is a handshake, perhaps an embrace. Style and personality are irrelevant. They can be formal or casual. They can be tall or short or fat or thin. They can obey the rules or break them. But they need to contain a charge. A live current, which shocks and illuminates.
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I am not like Stephen King, who writes one book, then writes another. I finish a book and go off and... look for wrecks. Then, six months later, I might start another book.
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Aside for the dream of writing the core X-Men team, I think I would love to write an Excalibur book.
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Every book has an intrinsic impossibility, which its writer discovers as soon as his first excitement dwindles.
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I guess my most prized pop culture possession is a signed first edition of the book 'Fight Club' by Chuck Palahniuk.
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As I leafed through the book in front of me and watched the dust swirl in the air, I wondered if maybe there was some evil dormant virus in the pages that would infect me, like the mummy dust that used to kill archaeologists. Death by research. That was not a glorious end.
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I don't look at it as writing a book in a videogame universe. I look at it as writing for 'Halo', which for me, transcends being just a great video game. It's evolving into a whole new mythology.
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The book of the moment often has immense vogue, while the book of the age, which comes in its company from the press, lies unnoticed; but the great book has its revenge. It lives to see its contemporary pushed up shelf by shelf until it finds its final resting-place in the garret or the auction room.
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Awful film adaptations follow novelists for the rest of their lives. An atrocious movie of 'We Need to Talk About Kevin' could have stigmatised the book, aggrieved the novel's fans, and blighted my reputation forever.
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Here’s the million-dollar question: how are you going to write this book if you’re afraid to start writing? Give your friend Doubt a name, and then block his calls.
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I wrote one book, signed with a good agent, and sat back and waited for the phone to ring. I was sure that the great news would come at any moment. Four books later, I finally got that call.
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There aren't that many people who have written seven-book series, taken them 17 years. Actually finishing was (the) most remarkable feeling I've ever had. (I) couldn't tell you which was uppermost - euphoria or feeling devastated.
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The 'Grace of Kings' begins as a very dark, complicated world filled with injustices - among them the oppressed position of women - but gradually transforms into something better through a series of revolutions. But since real social change takes a long time, even by the end of the book, only the seeds of deep change have been planted.
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It is important to find a publisher and equally important not to be noticed until your third or fourth book.
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This book and I have become indivisible. I have placed my feet on this book's last pages, confident of standing so much higher in the world than I ever stood before.
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It's not a case of: 'Read this book and then you'll think differently. I've written this book, and I don't think differently.
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What a pity when editors review a woman's book, that they so often fall into the error of reviewing the woman instead.
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I once knew a house rather like The Land of Smiles - an old house occupied by a varied collection of young people, mainly students. However none of these people were true models for the characters in the book, though their way of life may have been.
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She became politically conscious thanks to Studs Terkel and the radio. She started reading all the books we brought home from college and was a great fan of Noam Chomsky. She was a real lefty and yet was not able to meet her dream of becoming an artist. She got drafted into motherhood big time - seven kids - and that wasn't the life that she had planned. So she opened the path so that I could be the artist that she wanted to be.
