A book comes and says, 'Write me.' My job is to try to serve it to the best of my ability, which is never good enough, but all I can do is listen to it, do what it tells me and collaborate.
The fundamental difficulty that most novelists face when they are trying to adapt their own book into a screenplay is realizing that a screenplay is a completely different way of storytelling, and it has limitations.
When you publish a book, it's the world's book. The world edits it.
The book is openly a kind of spiritual autobiography, but the trick is that on any other level it's a kind of insane collage of fragments of memory.
I began thinking there should be an American phrase book, 'cause I've got an Italian phrase book, and an Arabic one... now a British one. I think it'd be pretty good to have an American phrase book.
I think there are readers out there and I don't think the book is dead. And more importantly I don't think readers have to choose between literary and commercial fiction.
The world is a beautiful book, but of little use to him who cannot read it.
Many women have told me they remember where they were when they read the book, and how they felt suddenly that what they really thought or felt about things made sense.
Til 1983, I wrote primarily for other psychologists and expected that they would be the principal audience for my book.
In 2004, I wrote 'What We've Lost,' a book about the Bush administration. It sold only reasonably well, in part, I think, because the book was a horrific downer, an unrelenting account of the administration's actions, bungles, deceptions, half-truths, untruths, and downright corruptions.
While I'm writing, I'm also the first reader, and I want to write a book where I'm excited about what happens next.
I read 'Holes' in 10th grade, and I haven't read a full book since. The movie version with Shia LaBeouf was OK, but the book was way better.
Technology has changed the way book publishing works, as it has changed everything else in the world of media.
That was par for the course but I also found that commissions were being canceled and in fact I considered this directly libelous - I write biographies for a living as well as being a journalist - for a non fiction book to be called fiction from beginning to end.
It was a book to kill time for those who like it better dead.
For the first ten years after I got out of graduate school, I studied success. I read every book I could get my hands on and took every training I could find, and that allowed me to become an expert in this area. I learned how to create high self-esteem and success in my own life and in the lives of others.
I try to get in quiet time and book time, but really, the only time I ever get that is when I'm on an airplane - I have a fear of flying, but I actually love flying because it's the only time I can sleep, and it's the only time I get to read.
I don't know David Cameron very well. I like him. I think you can judge a book by its cover - whoever said you can't is wrong - that's the whole point of nature giving us intuition, instinct and so on. I think the cover is pretty good.
When a novel has 200,000 words, then it is possible for the reader to experience 200,000 delights, and to turn back to the first page of the book and experience them all over again, perhaps more intensely.
In my book I don't just demonstrate that free enterprise is the most efficient way of organizing an economy - which it is. I also show that it's an expression of American values, and, thus, that a fight for free enterprise is very much a fight for our culture.
If I ever write a book, it will be called 'Bottle Blonde.'
Although my book is banned I am still allowed to go to China and travel. There is no longer the kind of control that Mao used to have-there have been deep fundamental changes in society.
Every good story needs a hero. Back when I wrote 'The Search,' that hero was Google - the book wasn't about Google alone, but Google's narrative worked to drive the entire story.
I was focused on building things from an early age. When I was about 3, our toilet broke, and my mother was ready to call the plumber. I told her I would fix it and asked her to get my Richard Scarry book 'How Things Work in Busytown.' Between the picture of a toilet and the text she read to me explaining how the parts worked, I fixed it.
The main benefit of the book for the more experienced practitioners is as an evangelical tool. The book will give you some ways of expressing the value and importance of your work that you may not have had before.
You are only as good as your last book, and so there has to be a book.
I do, indeed, close my door at times and surrender myself to a book, but only because I can open the door again and see a human face looking at me.
My wonderful editor, Jackie Onassis, asked me to write a book that I wanted to write. I said, 'Look, it's not going to be scandalized. I'm not going to talk about anybody like a dog. I'm going to say the positiveness of my life, and talk about those who have contributed to the way I've been going, and that's that.'
It took a brave editor in the U.S. to sign a contract for Dancing Girls, and without her belief in the book, I'm not sure it would ever have found its way into print.
Every reader finds himself. The writer's work is merely a kind of optical instrument that makes it possible for the reader to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself.
I look at every book as a new learning opportunity.
Anything created by human beings is already in the great book of nature.
Over the holidays, and even during filming, I realized that I actually like my body, even if it's not perfect according to the book. I just feel sexy. For the first time, I don't want to get rid of the curves. I just want to tone it up. My body is comfortable, and it's not unhealthy, so I'm going to rock with it.
I try to do as much as possible for every character. Some of them, it is easier to do the research because you have either real examples that you work with, maybe some specific person that inspires you in that case, or the performances from other people, or the characters, or a character from a book.
A book can be wonderful and powerful and accessible and artful all at the same time.
You have to be there not for the fame and glory and recognition and being a page in a history book, but you have to be there because you believe your talent and ability can be applied effectively to operation of the spacecraft.