Books Quotations

I always figured there would be a kid audience and an adult audience, and there is. That's true for 'Hunger Games' and 'Twilight' and 'Harry Potter.' And 'Maximum Ride,' for sure. In particular what happens is a lot of parents share the books with their kids, and the mom has read it, and the kids, and they talk about it.

'Pastoralia' by George Saunders. Possibly my favorite book. It's one of the weirdest books I've ever read. If Monty Python and Thomas Pynchon had a love child, and it was raised by Frank Zappa on a weird commune, that would be this book.

I like reading books with both hands, with my heart pumping, with blood on the page. So I'm interested in people who make stuff, and I'm interested in the lives that make the text. To read a book or watch a movie any other way, to me, personally, feels like a waste of time and misapplication of energy.

My inspiration for writing is all the wonderful books that I read as a child and that I still read. I think that for those of us who write, when we find a wonderful book written by someone else, we don't really get jealous, we get inspired, and that's kind of the mark of what a good writer is.

I get tired of comedies where there are a bunch of funny guys and a beautiful woman who doesn't do anything funny. And I don't like books where there's a rough-and-tumble boy and a really clever, snotty girl. That's just not my experience with teenagers.

I spent my entire childhood in an environment in which the mighty of the earth had no place outside story books and dreams.

Mom and Dad were bibliophiles. Dad shared his father's love of westerns, Mom favored the likes of Zelazny and Heinlein, Howard and Burroughs. We owned several hundred books stored in trunks that comprised our portable library.

We weren't dirt poor, but there was no spare money kicking around. While it was very much understood that the way to a better life was through education, books were a luxury we couldn't afford. But when I was six, we actually moved opposite the central library, and that became my home from home.

Browsing for books with a mouse and screen is not nearly as joyful an act as wandering the stacks and getting lost in the labyrinthine corridors of knowledge. The best libraries are places of imagination, education and community. The best libraries have mystery to them.

I didn't like books where people played on a sports team and won a bunch of games, or went to summer camp and had a wonderful time. I really liked a book where a witch might cut a child's head off or a pack of angry dogs might burst through a door and terrorize a family.

As winter approaches - bringing cold weather and family drama - we crave page-turners, books made for long nights and tryptophan-induced sloth.

Who I am, what I am, is the culmination of a lifetime of reading, a lifetime of stories. And there are still so many more books to read. I'm a work in progress.

Both types of books - fiction and nonfiction - are a search for story. As a writer and a reader, there's nothing I crave more than a good story!

The one thing that I would say that defines me is I love to learn. I get excited about new things. I buy more books than I read or finish.

By 2025, we can expect the world to be completely digital. Paper books will be a thing of the past. Education will be delivered through analytics-based assessment tools and adaptive learning platforms.

The early readers are in-between books for the kids who aren't ready for novels yet but are done with my picture books. It's really rewarding to think that they can grow up reading my books at all the different levels.

The American people are screaming out saying it's unfair that the wealthiest, the largest corporations who can afford the best attorneys, the best accountants, take advantage of these special tax treatments that the lobbyists have, along with lawmakers, have cooked in the books here.

I write at a desk. I have a room of my own where I can have my computer. I write in there, usually directly onto my computer. It used to be the room where my two sons used to sleep with the dog and the cat, but now it's all mine. It has pictures of art from my books on the walls.

How much energy is wasted in Italy in trying to write the novel that obeys all the rules. The energy might have been useful to provide us with more modest, more genuine things, that had less pretensions: short stories, memoirs, notes, testimonials, or at any rate, books that are open, without a preconceived plan.

I'm a professional non-fiction reader, that's what I do. But in my 20s we had our own vampire and witch moment, courtesy of Anne Rice, whose books I read and loved.

My books often involve characters who began in some form of mental isolation, with a feeling of having died to the world. Then they become involved in some kind of action where by necessity they're forced to reengage, to get back into the game of life, as it were. You could say that about 'Chance.'

I was a huge fan of 'Game Of Thrones.' I hadn't read the books but had watched the series from the beginning.

I believe that it is my job not only to write books but to have them published. A book is like a child. You have to defend the life of a child.

I grew up reading not-serious literature, like comic books and pulp novels, so my instinct is to amuse the reader and entertain.

When you write for children and young adults, you have much more affect and influence on them than when you write for adults. The books that get us through our childhood stay with us for life.

When I was young, all the books were about a Mary Jane and the football player and the prom and ending up with the quiet guy and making your mom happy.

You'll notice that my books offer great variety. Some are for adults, some for children and some for teens. There are mysteries, historical novels, picture books, love stories and stories of crisis and courage.

There are two books that I often travel with; one is 'The Theory on Moral Sentiments' by Adam Smith. The other is 'The Meditations.' It's not that I agree with either views expressed in the books, but I believe ideas and thoughts of older generations can offer food for thought for the current generation.

A lot of illustrators have one central character and then they develop it, and all their books are based around it. But that was not my wish. I wanted to introduce children to the whole creative side of many aspects of life.

I grew up in a household without a TV. We lived next door to a library for a while, and at one point, I checked out all the books in the fairy tale section. I remember the librarian's quiet smile as I'd bring back one stack and exchange it for another.

I always think the most romantic books or films are the ones where the romance doesn't happen, because it makes your heart ache so much watching it.

I don't keep any copy of my books around... they would embarass me. When I finish writing my books, I kick them in the belly, and have done with them.

My mother always kept library books in the house, and one rainy Sunday afternoon - this was before television, and we didn't even have a radio - I picked up a book to look at the pictures and discovered I was reading and enjoying what I read.

I have no personal experience in the military. All I know about it is what I've seen in movies and read in books and watched on television. My knowledge is probably no more or no less than the average person's. 'A Brief Encounter with the Enemy' was created by taking bits and pieces from here and there, and then putting my own spin on them.

After a few drinks, my mom would recite her lines as Portia in 'The Merchant of Venice' from her high school play. But I first discovered Shakespeare properly when I was about five. I used to look for the most complicated books I could find and pretend to be reading them. I wanted people to think I was smart.

Books are so cheap and easy to get that people don't bother stealing them, which is the essential rule of piracy that the music business learned much too late.

Let's face it - online promotion of your books could easily become a full-time career if you're not careful. But if you're not writing regularly, then it won't be long before there's nothing to promote.

Books guided my life from high school, and the greatest, most interesting, most provocative, funniest, smartest people who ever lived in the last 200 or 300 years wrote those books. I would fall in love with Victor Hugo and read not just 'Les Miserables,' but 'Bug-Jargal' and 'The Toilers of the Sea' and so forth.

I wrote 'Yellow Submarine' for the Beatles. I wrote the screenplay for 'The Games,' about the Olympic Games. I wrote 'Love Story,' both the novel and the screenplay. I wrote 'RPM' for Stanley Kramer. Plus, I wrote two scholarly books and a 400-page translation from the Latin, and I dated June Wilkinson!

The best translations cannot convey to us the strength and exquisite delicacy of thought in its native garb, and he to whom such books are shut flounders about in outer darkness.

'Friend Monkey' is really my favorite of all my books because the Hindu myth on which it is based is my favorite - the myth of the Monkey Lord who loved so much that he created chaos wherever he went.

When you're younger and you see something that really speaks to you, it's indelible in a way that's not the same as when you're an adult. So I'll always love reading books and making movies that resonate with young people.

Commercial books don't even get covered. The reason why so many book reviews go out of business is because they cover a lot of stuff that nobody cares about. Imagine if the movie pages covered none of the big movies and all they covered were movies that you couldn't even find in the theater?

I did have a nice career in print, but traditional publishers don't always have the resources to create individualized marketing for their authors. Mine never figured out how to package books as hot as mine so that they found their full audience. Finally, I got frustrated enough over my lack of traction to walk away.

As much as I devoured comics, I read non-graphic books exponentially more, so I'm not sure I can credit or blame them. Comics, however, taught me a lot about what makes a story arc work and how to bring a story to its natural resting place between issues.

All my books reflect travel adventures of some kind, and all have a soul: a spiritual or mystical underpinning.

I normally hate books that have anything to do with medicine, thanks to my own background in nursing - FYI, almost everybody gets it wrong.

Books were the window from which I looked out of a rather meager and decidedly narrow room onto a rich and wonderful universe. I loved the look and feel of books, even the smell... Libraries were treasure houses. I always entered them with a slight thrill of disbelief that all their endless riches were mine for the borrowing.

I have to have three or four books going simultaneously. If I'm not impressed in the first 20 pages, I don't bother reading the rest, especially with novels. I'm not a book-club style reader. I'm not looking for life lessons or wanting people to think I'm smart because I'm reading a certain book.

There's always that discussion about fiction about how do you market it - these are books for boys, these are books for girls, these are books for adults. Actually, they're just stories, and if they're good stories, then they surpass those boundaries.

Not all series books are sagas. Some are shaped more like beads on a string, separate episodes held together by a set of characters, who may or may not grow and change as the series continues.

Although he moved away from the Midwest for good at the age of thirteen, Ray Bradbury is a prairie writer. The prairie is in his voice, and it is his moral compass. It is his years spent in Waukegan, Illinois - later rechristened by Ray as 'Green Town' in many books and stories - that forever shaped him.

Standing as a witness in all things means all things - big things, little things, in all conversations, in jokes, in games played and books read and music listened to, in causes supported, in service rendered, in clothes worn, in friends made.

When I was reading books for 'Seesaw Girl,' I came across several references to the fact that in the 11th and 12th centuries, Korean pottery was considered the finest in the world. I liked that - the idea of a little tiny country being the best at something.

It takes a while to get a movie together, and they don't start talking books until the movie is close to being finished.

Books change us. Books save us. I know this because it happened to me. Books saved me. So, I do believe through stories we can learn to change, we can learn to empathize and be more connected with the universe and with humanity.

I tend to think of stories and books as being for everyone, just with an 'entry reading age' rather than an age range.

These 'mistakes' occur in my books for a reason. I have an agenda: I'm secretly trying to inspire kids to create their own stories and comics, and I don't want them to feel stifled by 'perfectionism.'

I read the three 'Hunger Games' books in a week and because I liked them so much I wrote 'Just a Game.'

When I visit schools, I try to reach kids who perhaps don't have books at home or aren't that keen on reading. Somehow you draw them in with the pictures and then perhaps they'll want to learn more about it. I use a lot of audience participation and find kids who aren't really part of it and try to include them - to draw in those reluctant readers.

I spent many hours ensconced in the local library, reading - nay, devouring - book after book after book. Books were my soul's delight.

We live in the country, and I have a huge library there. When we go to London for the winter I never know which books to take. I never know what I am going to need. That's the only disadvantage.

When I made the leap from category romance to larger single-title books, I was encouraged to make the book 'big,' and suspense was allowed. Over the years, I've been able to write the kind of books I love, with a balance of suspense and romance. How lucky am I?

Lets tell young people the best books are yet to written; the best painting, the best government the best of everything is yet to be done by them.

I'm omnivorous in my tastes, fiction and non-fiction, always several books on the go, though I'll read a novel in a day or two.

You've got all these books on self help, getting to know yourself, doing the right thing, eating the so-called right foods, even down to what books you have on your shelves. People are encouraged to look to themselves first as opposed to being a part of society.

Well, I don't know. It's long, it's longer than both of the other books put together, so it's more ambitious. I think I get under the skin of the people a lot more than in the other books.

In real life, people are integrated into society. That's what happens in my books as well. Minor characters don't just walk in and spout lines, they interact and have an effect on the events. It's not an isolated universe.

The best characters in books are always the difficult ones, and why would you want to fall in love with someone difficult? The ones I'd fall in love with are the ones I'd definitely keep out of a book.

Every child's taste is different. Don't worry if they're not reading 'War and Peace' at age 12. First, build a good foundation and a positive attitude about reading by letting them pick the stories they enjoy. Make friends with a bookseller or librarian. They are a wealth of information on finding books that kids enjoy.

About 15 years ago I went though a period of a year or so when I just couldn't find anything good. My wife noticed I was having trouble reading menus. I bought some cheap reading glasses in a drug store. I got home and suddenly all these books that weren't good were good.

Not as ours the books of old - Things that steam can stamp and fold; Not as ours the books of yore - Rows of type, and nothing more.

Books are men of higher stature; the only men that speak aloud for future times to hear.

In my books and in romance as a genre, there is a positive, uplifting feeling that leaves the reader with a sense of encouragement and hope for a brighter future - or a brighter present.

I have an affection for tangible objects, like books and pages, but people sure do seem to love their Kindles! We're definitely in the middle of a revolution that will determine how people find, read, and experience stories.

A lot of times with novels, you can get a really deep, engaging story, but there's not a lot happening, frankly. Those books tend to be super-literary and dense, and they require a lot of commitment, and that's not necessarily a bad thing, but if you want fast-moving action and gore and plot and excitement, you can get shorted on that.

I don't think many of us launched ourselves into the world of writing books fully formed.

I'm a lapsed Zen Buddhist. I've read hundreds of books on Zen, I meditated daily for about fifteen years, and once spent a month studying with Vietnamese Zen monk Thich Nhat Hanh.

Yes, I have two books that are about me: one of them I wrote, and the other one was written about me. One of my books, which is called 'Spying on Miss Muller,' is really about me even though it's a novel. My autobiography is called 'Once Upon a Time.'

I love smart commercial fiction. Susan Isaacs, for example and the readers who interest me are, in the preponderance, women. I am one of them; I like the books they like.

I remember when I was very young, I had a fever - a long rheumatic fever in bed for four months. And in the days, I stayed alone with the maid. I only had my father's books with me. They were fantasy books about ghosts, and also books by Edgar Allen Poe that made a forever impression on me.

It'll take a while for all those strange old books that I love to show up on digital: books that aren't current bestsellers but aren't public-domain freebies, either.

These are books that want to be read out loud. These are books kids share with each other, and I think that's important.

Writing for Mills and Boon taught me a lot of discipline. You have to produce books in a short time scale and four a year, and it teaches you a lot.

Originally I had planned to write just a couple of children's books and then, return the focus on adult literature. A funny thing happened along the way - I kept having new ideas, and then I looked up one day, and 30 years had passed!

My books are not generic. You know when you're reading a Joy Fielding book.

Our literary culture is marinated in deep traditions of the fantastic and the supernatural, and we export those rich qualities in films and books on a spectacular industrial scale.

There's something about the idea of writing, and thinking about writing as a form of prayer - the way as a writer you call out into the world and throw your words into the world. You're not praying to a god, but you're almost conjuring a reader to arrive. That's what books do: they're an invitation to readers.

While writing books about the past, I think about the present. It's not intentional, but somehow my books end up being written under the sign of a political mood.

I think a big part of marriage is not going anywhere on those days you feel you really want to. It's like in the Barrier Islands. If you want to stay together, don't leave. I think just culturally - in the media, in movies, in books - we're trained to divorce when that first blush of sexual longing starts to fade. That's just where marriage starts.

Books have this function that help me to understand the work I've done, to wrap it up.

Aeroplanes interested me, and at the outbreak of the Second World War, I joined the RAF as a volunteer reservist. I took the opportunity of studying the books which the RAF made available for radio mechanics and looked forward to an interesting course in radio.

I've met men who've stood in long lines on my book tours, and they've said things like, 'I've read your books and they've changed the direction in my life, and I want to thank you.' I think they're standing in line for their wife or their mother or their sweetheart or somebody, but no.

When you need a good laugh, do you reach for a book? I don't. I expect books to move me deeply and submerge me in another reality. So when a novel makes me roar with laughter, it's always a delightful surprise.

I developed my own production company. I'm reading different books and writing, working on myself. I'm being focused on that, but also being focused on in front of the camera and balancing mommy life at the same time. I just want to continue to move forward.

'Dandelion Wine' became one of the few books that I returned to time and again, and while not anywhere near the story crafter as Mr. Bradbury, I hope I managed to absorb by osmosis some of his techniques.

While I do, of course, now feel the pressure having had books that have been very successful, I just know I have to concentrate on writing for myself. I can't worry about genres or markets or what might be commercial or not. That never works.

A lot of times, when I go back to books I loved when I was young, I don't quite understand what it was that I loved about them. Rereading 'The Secret Garden,' I felt a lot like Mary feels when she visits her garden.

The books I love most are the ones that combine some sort of gripping story with really beautiful or stylish writing. Some of my favorites are 'The Road' by Cormac McCarthy, 'The Virgin Suicides' by Jeffrey Eugenides, 'The Interpreter of Maladies' by Jhumpa Lahiri, and 'Blindness' by Jose Saramago.

What I wanted to do was use literature and different kinds of stories and poems as a springboard, tapping into the creativity of our teens - I wanted teenagers to come up with their own creative responses to literature - using books themselves as a starting point.