Book Quotes
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We've invented a new marketplace. There was no easy way to rent a person's bedroom over the Internet or book a vacation rental over the Internet. There was no guidebook for us to turn to as we defined this new marketplace.
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Most people remember the ending of the book more than the beginning and the middle.
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Robert Mapplethorpe asked me to write our story the day before he died. I had never written a book of nonfiction, and so it took me almost two decades to write that book.
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I feel that 'The Great Failure' is really a book written out of great love and a willingness to face all of who a human being is.
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The last book I read before I wrote my first book - 'Ghosts of Manhattan' - was 'The Gold Coast' by DeMille. I loved it, and it gave me a lot of energy to start into my own.
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I know that the last thing a book wants is to just sit around unread, serving as an element of interior decorating. So when I have people over, all they have to do is glance at my books, and I implore them to take a few home with them. If I am really ambitious, I pack books into boxes and donate them to prisons.
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I have become very critical of the whole book award system and could preach on that subject for quite a while, but I do know what an award can mean to a writer early in her career. It can give an essential validation.
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After working as a journalist I went to a writing program at Johns Hopkins. It was interesting because it was neither journalistic nor historical, but it emphasized writing style, and afterwards I was asked to write my first book.
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I could never write a book where the point-of-view character was a short person, because I just can't imagine what that's like.
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You can write the best book you can, and that might still not be enough. Appeal isn't something that most writers can't strive for or identify. It's something even the best agents and editors can't always identify.
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Because I was in the business of translating the 'X-Men' from the very successful comics, and taking the most popular book of the 20th century in 'The Lord of the Rings,' and making it into three movies, I hope people realize I wouldn't get involved in anything I didn't think was really going to be worth their while.
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Certainly one of the surprising truths of having a book published is realizing that your book is as open to interpretation as an abstract painting. People bring their own beliefs and attitudes to your work, which is thrilling and surprising at the same time.
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I thought I could never write a proper book; I'd never done it before. But I thought I could write a sequence. Then I had a chapter. The next thing I knew I was turning acting down.
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I don't have a favorite author; I have favorite books. 'Moby Dick' is a favorite book, but Melville was a drunk who beat his wife. 'Moveable Feast' by Hemingway, but I would not like him personally. He was a stupid macho person who believed in shooting animals for fun, but that book was incredible!
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When my plans to become a world-famous rockstar didn't pan out, I decided to try being a lesbian instead, didn't pull that off either, and wrote my second book, the national bestseller, 'The Straight Girl's Guide To Sleeping With Chicks.'
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I started writing my first book for young people when I was in college. I was only a couple of years out of my teens when I began; I felt closer to that experience than I did as an adult. But I've always been drawn to stories about young people.
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You cannot write a book unless it is totally inhabiting your imagination and you are totally engrossed with it. Which is a kind word for obsession.
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It's much better to write a book and stick to the research - that's history. In cinema, emotional truth and psychological truth is much more important.
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I've bought pretty much every book ever written about the Alamo, and I talk to my friends that I've made over the past 15, 20 years. It's just a constant learning and fascinating thing for me.
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When I was a child, eight or ten years old, I made a solemn promise to God that, when I grew up, I would write him a hymn for the prayer-book. The vow has never been fulfilled. But I have painted a large number of pictures, and there must be more than thirty religious ones. I wonder if they will do instead.
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I can't write the same book over and over again... let it go, once it's gone!
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The value of a story like 'Deadline' is kids get to look at death at the perfect distance. They can put the book down. They can experience the story, rub up against it, but it's not real life.
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Be kind and considerate with your criticism... It's just as hard to write a bad book as it is to write a good book.
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'Extraordinary' is an original fairy tale, a contemporary story. But like a traditional fairy tale, it heads quickly into frightening, bloody territory. I am afraid for my book, as it goes out alone into the world, just as I was frightened for Phoebe as I wrote and rewrote her story.
