Book Quotes
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By the end of the time I'm writing a book, I'm tearing my hair out and I want to go do stand-up. And then I want to do something else. I don't know why it is true with me that I can't just be satisfied doing the one thing, but I'm constantly flitting from one thing to another.
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Americans like fat books and thin women.
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It would have been a hard year if I'd spent it berating myself for not working on the book.
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Great books don't make great movies. There's too much information in there.
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Last night I thought about all the kerosene I've used in the past ten years. And I thought about books. And for the first time I realized that a man was behind each one of the books. A man had to think them up. A man had to take a long time to put them down on paper. And I'd never even thought that thought before...It took some man a lifetime maybe to put some of his thoughts down, looking around at the world and life, and then I come along in two minutes and boom! it's all over.
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There's no book that absolutely everyone loves.
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What a big book, captain, might be made with all that is known!" "And what a much bigger book still with all that is not known!
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We can all learn from every text. Reading the work that disgusts you can only strengthen your core beliefs. I could teach a semester-long course based only on reading the local telephone book. All stories can be taught in valuable ways.
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If you're going to undertake any project, like a book, you have to show up to give.
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It's so much better to hand over a finished book than having all these people waiting.
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If one reads enough books one has a fighting chance. Or better, one's chances of survival increase with each book one reads.
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I'm the minority in my house sometimes. My wife is Swedish, and we go to Sweden and everyone is rattling off in Swedish. It's like, 'OK, I can just read a book.'
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Ive written a book on gangs, taught a course on gangs at Occidental.
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So there you have it, a lifetime of first smelling the books, they all smell wonderful, reading the books, loving the books, and remembering the books.
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I don't really read children's books or deal with children's books, so I don't have any relationship with them other than my own.
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There are good books and there are bad books, period, that's the distinction.
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I just think, as writers, especially with a book that takes years to write, you sort of wake up every morning hoping and praying that you can make it work for the day.
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A book is judged, not by its reference to life, but by its reference to other books.
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There is no future for e-books, because they are not books. E-books smell like burned fuel.
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My process is surprisingly straightforward. I find myself with little to do over a stretch of time and I say, "I should write children's books today." Then I sit down and write a children's book, and if it takes more than, realistically, three hours, I feel like I've done something wrong.
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My first book was the book that changed my life.
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I have written 13 books, full of my ideas about a variety of issues - from black women, to hip-hop culture, to the civil rights struggle. Even when I address such figures as Tupac Shakur and Bill Cosby, my ideas are quite evident.
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The difference between a novelist and someone who tinkers around with writing is this: novelists finish their books.
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I read a lot of obscure books and it is nice to open a book.
