A quotation in a speech, article or book is like a rifle in the hands of an infantryman. It speaks with authority.
How could I make a little book, when I have seen enough to make a dozen large books?
I was unwise enough to actually mention this in public a few times, and in fact to point out that there were two versions of the book now. One of them had somebody else's name on the cover, one had my name on the cover.
I was in the South of France. I saw a Brownie on a school trip. She was holding up a book. It said on the front 'rough guide'. I thought: 'Yeah' she's not a looker.
I write a book over a period of months or years, and when I'm done with it, usually another year goes by before I see it in print. It's hard to be patient and wait.
There's no point in making a film out of a great book. The book's already great. What's the point?
The fact that books today are mostly a string of words makes it easier to forget the text. With the impact of the iPad and the future of the book being up for re-imagination, I wonder whether we'll rediscover the importance of making texts richer visually.
When I wrote the first Betsy book, 'Undead and Unwed,' I had no idea, none, that it would be a career-defining, genre-defining book, the first of over a dozen in the series, the first of over 70 published books, the first on my road to the best-seller list, the first on my road to being published in 15 countries.
In a typical history book, black Americans are mentioned in the context of slavery or civil rights. There's so much more to the story.
I really love 'Bridget Jones's Diary' - and I love the book, too. You wonder how it ever got made into a movie. She's supposed to be chubby, and two of the hottest guys ever are straight-up fighting over her?
I really want to do a book on the history of the no-wave music scene in New York, how it extended out and formed lots of other things. It was such a great visual culture.
A book may be compared to your neighbour: if it be good it cannot last too long; if bad, you cannot get rid of it too early.
When I get back from this book tour, I'm planning to learn the internet. Maybe I can hook up in cyberspace.
My first book was signed up when I was 13, and I've been writing ever since. But penning the 'Halo' series has been so much more rewarding than I ever expected. For three years, from the age of 16 to 19, I poured my life, my experiences, and a love for the supernatural that dates back to childhood into these books.
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!
I think, for me, there's The Book I Should Write and The Book I Wanted to Write - and they weren't the same book. The Book I Should Write should be realistic, since I studied English Lit. It should be cultural. It should reflect where I am today. The Book I Wanted to Write would probably include flying women, magic, and all of that.
I don't remember how I picked up 'Different Seasons,' but it was a book I read on a grave shift. I was absolutely floored by it; 'The Body,' a story about kids who go searching for a corpse in the woods, impacted me especially.
Nobody's going to write a book about me, because nobody's going to find anything worth writing a book about.
I didn't expect to be doing a whole bunch of Amber Browns. And because it was just one book, and the father had moved away, I didn't realize I was going to have to deal more with shared custody, divorce and all those issues.
In the book, I make the point that here we have string theory and here we have twistor theory and we don't know if either one of them is the right approach to nature.
You don't have to subject yourself to the sweep and rigor of Bourdieu's book 'Distinction' to feel how thoroughly a lower-calorie version of its ideas has been absorbed into the cultural bloodstream.
One night, I wrote down all the things I was waiting to do with my little granddaughter, and it became a book, 'I Already Know I Love You.' It was one of those really lovely things in life.
At least I'm at peace with myself. I have done my best to write a book about what really happened there and why it happened and it's done, it's published. I won't write another book on Vietnam.
Too often, teachers assume that they are introducing a book or concept to students for the first time. In fact, many units are repeated over the course of a student's K-12 experience.
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.
The paperback is very interesting but I find it will never replace the hardcover book - it makes a very poor doorstop.
Don't worry about writing a book or getting famous or making money. Just lead an interesting life.
If we believe that the Bible is the inspired Word of God, then we shouldn't be recognizing it only as a book of historical and economic significance.
I wasn't at all sure I could make that sort of leap into that sort of comic book reality.
Parents who struggle to get a witness of the Savior into the heart of a child will be helped as they seek for a way to bring the words and the spirit of the Book of Mormon into the home and all the lives in their family.
What crime writers are doing connects deeper into a cultural hunger. Crime is important. When you open up a book that has a body that's dead, that matters. It matters more than a certain level of suburban angst; it really does.
This book was company for me - I wrote these things when I was in hotels, far from where I normally live. I never intended to publish it.
My first book was so horrible I have deleted all copies of it. Thankfully, it was before the Internet, so there are no lurking caches of it anywhere.
When you learn about stories in school, you get it backward. You start to think 'Oh, the reason these things are in stories is because a book said I need to put these things in there.' You need a death, as my husband says, and you need a little sidekick with a saying like 'Skivel-dee-doo!'
If I have not read a book before, it is, for all intents and purposes, new to me whether it was printed yesterday or three hundred years ago.
Especially since having children, a lot of the time if you ask me, 'Have you read that book?' the answer would be 'not personally.'
