Whoever you are, you will not write this book. I can tell you nothing. Do not call me again. Ever.
I firmly believe that you can't get a good movie without risking a bad movie. A good adaptation of your book is worth it because it is such a wonderful experience to see your world translated onto the screen.
I think Stevie Wonder could sing the phone book and manage to make me cry.
Reading is a conversation. All books talk. But a good book listens as well.
I don't want to write formula. I don't want to crank these books out like sausages. Every book is different, which takes a hell of a lot of ingenuity on my part.
We're Jews, my family, and Jews break down into two distinct subcultures: book Jews and money Jews. We were money Jews.
So research is a terribly imperfect science, and you learn an awful lot more after you've published a book, because people keep writing to you and saying, 'Oh, gosh, I was related to such and such a character and I have a letter in my possession.'
I knew what book we had to write, it was clear in my head; it was journals and poetry. So I passed on their offer. I told my agent this is our vision, and no one's done it this way.
Most adults, unlike most children, understand the difference between a book that will hold them spellbound for a rainy Sunday afternoon and a book that will put them in touch with a part of themselves they didn't even know existed.
'The Great Gatsby,' by F. Scott Fitzgerald, remains the most perfect novel that has ever come out of the United States. Everything in the book moves as it should, in the manner of a piece by Bach or Mozart.
But I always seem to finish a book and then think, oh God, I've got to pay a tax bill, so I'd better write a novel, so I tend not to stop and learn word processing.
I wanted to do a weird book and reestablish my independent, small-press roots.
I think I wanted to write a book about the relationship between the victim and perpetrator in which the victim agrees to remain silent.
I don't give books as gifts. Books are extremely personal, and I would hate to give someone a book that they don't like or want, because it would break my heart if they didn't read it.
What about the hero of The House on the Strand? What did it mean when he dropped the telephone at the end of the book? I don't really know, but I rather think he was going to be paralysed for life. Don't you?
I knew Bobby Dylan back in the days when he lived in the village. He used to come and see me and sing songs for me, saying they ought to go into my next collected book on American folk music.
There's book smart, there is street smart, there's relationship smart, there's too many different kinds of smarts to know all of them. Everybody doesn't know every kind of smart. There's money smart, there's movie smart, there's computer smart. There's just too many different kinds of smarts for people to know all the smarts.
The English Bible - a book which, if everything else in our language should perish, would alone suffice to show the whole extent of its beauty and power.
That wasn't a bad price for a first book. My agent upped it as much as possible. I was 27 and had nothing behind me. I was working like a fool to earn a living and pay for my apartment.
My book 'Ali Pasha' tells the true story of a young sailor Henry Friston, who, in the hell-fire of battle, forms an unusual friendship.
When I get an idea for a book, something appeals to me, it's usually a character. I'll see a picture of a female marshal in front of the courthouse in Miami and she's got a shotgun on her hip and it goes up on an angle. And she's good-looking. And I say, 'I've got to use her.'
I start each book when it's ready and never before.
I'm very lucky that I started out as a reader of the comic book and a viewer of the show. And I try to remain that, and make 'The Walking Dead' that I love watching. Luckily, I have the source material that I love, and I want to serve that as well.
You need to recognize that the copyright date on a book reflects when it came out, not when it was written - assume that the information in the book is at least a year older than the copyright date, and possibly two.
When I opened the world's largest Internet cafe, certified by the 'Guinness Book of Records,' in Times Square in New York, I was live on 'Good Morning America,' and for me, that was an achievement.
I don't like my birthday. I don't like things that are directed towards me. It took me a long time to get over people asking me to write my name in the book.
Then is when I decided to take it to Archie to see if they could do it as a comic book. I showed it to Richard Goldwater, and he showed it to his father, and a day or two later I got the OK to do it as a comic book.
E-books are great for instant gratification - you see a review somewhere of a book that interests you, and you can start reading it five minutes later.
My book sales make 'real writers' possible.
One of my rules about writing exercises is you never are allowed to put them in your book because it's just too tempting. You try to shoehorn things that don't belong.
I manage to read about one book a month, all fantasy these days.
I have some friends, some honest friends, and honest friends are few; My pipe of briar, my open fire, A book that's not too new.
You're lucky if people like your book, and the more people that like it, the luckier I feel.
I haven't yet written a book in a far-future utopia, where all bad things are eliminated, but it would be fun to do that one day and introduce some subversion.
There are many days when I want to throw my computer out the window, when I tell myself I'd be better off selling shoes at the mall. But I always keep at it, because I have to. Writing is completely part of who I am. Even if I never published another book, I would keep at it - because it feeds my life and makes it richer.
My husband wrote the story for my first book, but then he didn't want to do that anymore. So if I was going to go on being an illustrator, I had to start writing the stories, too.
