The great thing about Stephen is that he sees the movie as a separate thing, I think. He wants it to capture the essence of the book, and if he feels that's been done, then he's not too particular about the details. I think that's why he's happy.
It's just my goal to deliver the best story I can, and I want to make sure each book is better than the last, and in order to do that, I have to take chances.
I was at La Fenice opera house back in 1991 with friends, and we started talking about a conductor whom none of us liked. Somehow there was an escalation, and we started talking about how to kill him, where to kill him. This struck me as a good idea for a book.
I'm going to play as much as they want me to, as long as I can put up with what they book me.
It is only in the country that we can get to know a person or a book.
There's a fairy story called the 'The Shoemaker and the Elves' where this old cobbler keeps leaving leather out overnight and wakes up the next day, and there's a new pair of shoes. Co-authoring is a little like that. You send off the manuscript to your partner, and a few days later, you check your email, and hey, there's more book in here!
I think in some ways, you end up with more interesting storytelling with series, because if you've written yourself into a corner with something in book 1, you have to be cleverer to get out of it.
I get letters from readers who say that they have always hated reading, but somebody suggested one of my books, they actually finished the book and enjoyed it, and they're going on to read another book. I'm thrilled that they have figured out that reading is fun.
She unbent her mind afterwards - over a book.
I can never tell ahead of time which book will give me trouble - some balk every step of the way, others seem to write themselves - but certainly the mechanics of writing, finding the time and the psychic space, are easier now that my children are grown.
You read a book from beginning to end. You run a business the opposite way. You start with the end, and then you do everything you must to reach it.
Selling a book or story has never become absolutely automatic for me.
If somebody writes a book and doesn't care for the survival of that book, he's an imbecile.
Usually, when inspiration strikes late, the light of day reveals that I haven't gotten an idea for a book so much as a psychiatric case study.
Oftentimes, a history book in school will talk about the Underground Railroad as if it's one sentence. But thousands of people decided to run, and they single-handedly changed the trajectory of our nation. By running to the North, they put a face to slavery, which recruited a lot of abolitionists.
We named the book 'Extreme Ownership' because we really found that when we looked at not only at leaders but at teams that were the most successful, we found that the ones that had this attitude of extreme ownership were the ones that did the best, and it's definitely an attitude that I had.
My favorite book is always the one I'm working on at the moment.
Having been unpopular in high school is not just cause for book publications.
I don't have any sense or urgency about any of my writing, actually. I don't think mankind will be damaged if I don't put out a new album or a new book.
I can never read this book, just like I can never see a movie that I wrote a screenplay for. I can read it and see it physically, but I can't accurately judge it. I'm too close to it. If I read it ten times I'll have ten different reactions.
If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry.
I have no memory for what happens in what books. I don't know when I might remember a scene, but beats me what book it's in because there are 14 of them now.
My first book was an adult novel, 'Down Among the Gods,' published by Virago, and I've written poems as well, a slim volume of poetry.
Being a magician taught me how powerful the element of surprise can be. In each book, I've tried to work that in - an unexpected twist in a story that reveals an insight, a counter intuitive study that turns your beliefs upside-down.
I write about five thousand words a day, when working on a book, about three thousand a day if I'm writing a short story. I take long periods off between projects, when I read a lot, garden, and think about the next book or stories.
With 'Ilustrado,' I set out to change the way we read literature, and I think I failed spectacularly. In fact, I know I failed. In reaching further than I could, I may not have produced a life- or literature-changing book, but I did produce one I am proud of.
I've grown up with girls that are like Precious. I've grown up with people that are like everyone that I read about in that book. And so years later, when I was given the role, I just felt a huge responsibility to show the reality of that situation and to show that we're not making it up.
It's always easiest for me as a writer if I know I have a great ending. It can make everything else work. If you don't have a good ending, it's the hardest things in the world to come up with one. I always loved the ending of 'The Kite Runner,' and the scenes that are most faithful to the book are the last few scenes.
What I did was, I went and collected every bit of information from Adventist publishing houses in the basic areas of doctrine covered in the book Questions on Doctrine.
Writing a book of poetry is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo.
'The Luminaries' is such a different book to 'The Rehearsal.' There are only a couple of things that link the two books: there's a certain preoccupation with looking at relationships from the outside, being shut out of human intimacy; and then there's patterning.
I do 280 episodes of TV a year, write 15 recipes for the magazine, and publish an annual book. With all of that, we try to get one weekend a month with Isaboo at our home in the Adirondacks to relax and recharge.
I've read pretty broadly on the Holocaust - both fiction and non-fiction - and to me, 'The Lost Wife' is one of the best. The horrors of war serve as a backdrop to a love affair that spans a lifetime, and that love story stayed with me long after I put down the book.
I became interested in making books, starting about 1965, when I did the Serial Project #1, deciding that I needed a small book to show how the work could be understood and how the system worked.
I've been really lucky to get on shows that stay on. It's one thing to book a show, and it's like winning the lottery again to have it picked up, and then again to have the show stay on the air.
Actors are agents of change. A film, a piece of theater, a piece of music, or a book can make a difference. It can change the world.
