Book Quotes
-
Kansas City Lightning succeeds as few biographies of jazz musicians have. . . This book is a magnificent achievement; I could hardly put it down.
-
Hemingway hated me. I sold 200 million books, and he didn't. Of course most of mine sold for 25 cents, but still... you look at all this stuff with a grain of salt.
-
Books! tis a dull and endless strife: Come, hear the woodland linnet, How sweet his music! on my life, There's more of wisdom in it.
-
Sometimes I'll ask the book writer to write a monologue, not to be performed, just as if they were notes for the character.
-
I love books that rhyme. And I love books that are clever and have little lines in them that are meant to amuse the parents who will no doubt be reading the book over and over and over again.
-
All that he has to do is to write and publish a very little book. Its title should be simple -- a few plain words -- My Heart Laid Bare. But -- this little book must be true to its title.
-
What I don't like is constructing a book that fits in with any kind of generic template, whether it's fiction or nonfiction.
-
A good book is a good book, and there are a lot of different ways to approach writing or reading one.
-
That freedom of writing you don't get in other formats, I'd rather leave it to someone else to deal with the headache of drafting my book into a screenplay.
-
I can read in any book and newspaper about the city of Detroit, but I want to hear what the people in Detroit have to say about Detroit. My best education is actually talking to people.
-
I much prefer working with kids whose life could be completely upended by a reading of a book over a weekend. You give them a book to read - they go home and come back a changed person. And that is so much more interesting and exciting.
-
I sometimes get up at night when I can't sleep and walk down into my library and open one of my books and read a paragraph and say, 'My God, did I write that?
-
It took seven years from the day I decided I wanted to write fiction to actually getting a book published.
-
One day I want to write a full-on horror book.
-
When you feel your book is the height of irrelevance you can return to the excitement of the daily news.
-
The way I've talked about my research process is that it was like magpies. I was just sort of moving through all these books and when something shiny would pop out I'd be like, Ooh, I love it! and I'd pluck it out. It's fun to figure out how to use those bits you really love - like I'd read about gold shoes with cork heels. Obviously, Margaret would have to wear those shoes.
-
People only become writers if they can't find the one book they've always wanted to read.
-
Carnegie Hall is as good as they say it is. It's not like Stonehenge which looks great in books but then you go there and it's a pile of rocks next to a highway. There's actually a highway right next to it, but you don't see that in pictures.
-
Preface to second edition. I am satisfied that if a book is a good one, it is so whatever the sex of the author may be.
-
I've just finished my 20th book this past year and I'm working on my 21st book about the Middle East right now that I'll finish this year. And I get up early in the morning and when I get tired of the computer and tired of doing research, I walk 20 steps out to my woodshop and I either build furniture or paint paintings. I'm an artist too.
-
Only one book is worth reading: the heart.
-
Writing prejudicial, off-putting reviews is a precise exercise in applied black magic. The reviewer can draw free-floating disagreeable associations to a book by implying that the book is completely unimportant without saying exactly why, and carefully avoiding any clear images that could capture the reader's full attention.
-
I have the same fantasy every time I read a book I love, no matter who wrote it, no matter when it was written. That the author has written his book only for me.
-
Did I say the book of nature is a catechism? Yes, But, after it answers the first question with "God," nothing but questions follow.
