Book Quotes
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The fact that books today are mostly a string of words makes it easier to forget the text. With the impact of the iPad and the future of the book being up for re-imagination, I wonder whether we'll rediscover the importance of making texts richer visually.
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There's only one thing more frightening than being asked to do a book tour, and that's not being asked to do a book tour.
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You can't write a children's book that takes more than five or six minutes to read, because it will drive the parents batty. It has to be compact. Nobody thinks about the parents when they write these stupid books. I could write longer children's books, but it would actually be bad if I did.
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I stared at the reproduced mural in the book--but I was more interested in his finger as he tapped the book with approval. That finger had pulled a trigger in a war. That finger had touched my mother in tender ways I did not fully comprehend. I wanted to talk, to say something, to ask questions. But I couldn't. All the words were stuck in my throat. So I just nodded.
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Overall, Id say I was an awesome bookseller, but probably not the best book shelver. I loved recommending books and helping people find books.
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On the other hand, I still approach each book with the same basic plan in mind - to put some people under severe stress and see how they hold up.
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The books leapt and danced like roasted birds, their wings ablaze with red and yellow feathers.
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An unread book does nobody any good.
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I'm grateful for the likes of Kundera, Murnane, Markson, Berger, and, in his recent work, Coetzee. But no matter how celebrated they are, critics still consider them askance. Elizabeth Costello, for example, is a great novel, but it got quite a critical panning when it was published. The complaint was that it was simply a book of speeches, without the machinery of conventional fiction. Markson's books are compilations of facts and alleged facts, very artfully.
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I wanted to read immediately. The only fear was that of books coming to an end.
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We grew up as this family of deniers. And people who knew us for years were stunned when "The Great Santini" came out because we had this appearance of being this happy, large, smiling family. We were taught to smile, put the best face forward. And so when the book ended up - Dad swatting us around the room, no one believed me.
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Every five, six, seven, eight, 10 years I do a raisonné. When it's printed in the book, it's finished.
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The art, the new, the ability to connect the dots and to make an impact - sooner or later, that can only come from one who creates, not from a teacher and not from a book.
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It is one thing to write a good sentence, another to write a good book.
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These days it seems like any idiot with a laptop computer can churn out a business book and make a few bucks. That's certainly what I'm hoping. It would be a real letdown if the trend changed before this masterpiece goes to print.
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Publication is rather like pushing the boat out; then the boat/book turns into a melting ice floe and you have to conjure a second boat which again turns into a melting floe under your feet. All the stepping stones that you conjure disappear under the water behind you.
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There must be something in books, something we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don’t stay for nothing.
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I wanted to write a book that talked about the emotions of children, which is the rainbow. We all have moods. We talk about being blue when we're sad, and being yellow when we're cowards, and when we're mad, we're red.
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A book is worth a few francs; we Germans can afford to destroy those. We all may not appreciate artistic merit, but cash value is another matter.
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I'm incredibly flattered when people tell me that my books helped them through high school. Because of my own experience, the thought that something I wrote might help someone who felt the way I did when I was a teen...that's huge. It awes me.
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This book fills a much-needed gap.
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But it doesn't stop at school. We can all enjoy books throughout our lives - as I certainly continue to do.
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I dream of writing a book like LOVERS some day. It is so spare but so rich. It is history made intimate, and a masterpiece of compression.
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I don't see how it could possibly be made into a movie unless the entire book was scrapped and Shirley Temple cast as 'Bonnie,' Mae West as 'Belle,' and Stepin Fetchit as 'Uncle Peter.'
