For years I've wanted to write about the Australian countryside, but, like most Australians, I've only got a tourist's knowledge of it. I thought that if I disobeyed that basic rule of writing - write about what you know - I'd write a thin and inauthentic book.
I deliberately wrote a poem in my last book where I was suggesting that there are other passions as great as or more important than the passion of sex.
I'm writing a new book right now that is like an erotica manifesto.
My books are not generic. You know when you're reading a Joy Fielding book.
One day, I found my dad's dressing-gown in an old suitcase, and it transported me back to when I was five and thought he was a god or a superhero who could do anything. After that, I wrote my first positive book about fathers, about my dad.
I've often wished when I started a book I knew what was going to happen. I talked to writers who write 80-page outlines, and I'm just in awe of that.
The comic book world is so dangerous, you know what I mean? You say one thing and people - they're ravenous - they are very opinionated fans. But they're great fans.
I'm trying to finish my book on the Kennedy assassination.
A book is still atemporal. It is you, in silence, hearing voices in your head, unfolding at a time that has nothing to do with the timescale of reading. And for the hours that we retreat into this moratorium, with the last form of private and silent human activity that isn't considered pathological, we are outside of time.
Over the years, people I've met have often asked me what I'm working on, and I've usually replied that the main thing was a book about Dresden.
There's an inherent idea that if a Black executive producer and a Black director are going to do a movie based on a Black writer's book that everybody is going to be Black.
Aside for the dream of writing the core X-Men team, I think I would love to write an Excalibur book.
All TV can do is capture the spirit of a book because the medium is so utterly different. But I'm very grateful for the readers that Masterpiece Theatre has undoubtedly brought me.
I never wanted to be a writer. I wanted to be a book illustrator. I used to hurry home from school and draw.
With paper printed books, you have certain freedoms. You can acquire the book anonymously by paying cash, which is the way I always buy books. I never use a credit card. I don't identify to any database when I buy books. Amazon takes away that freedom.
It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole book.
I sometimes feel that if your book sells more than 20 years, then there's something in it that you can say, gee, I did something that endures, that's timeless.
No two persons ever read the same book.
There's always a slight tension when you sell a book to Hollywood, especially a nonfiction book. The author wants his story told intact; the nonfiction author wants it told accurately.
Every burned book enlightens the world.
Books were this wonderful escape for me because I could open a book and disappear into it, and that was the only way out of that house when I was a kid.
I had never read in public, never given an interview. I was doing it all and trying to produce the next book and raise three young kids and had another child on the way.
What I do in my book is let people know about these programs.
I've always wanted to do a Crichton book. I really love his writing.
What I had noticed is that there weren't a lot of women lining up to see a comic book movie, but they were going to line up to see 'The Devil Wears Prada,' which may have been something I wanted to address.
I certainly wanted to write a book that was honest about New Orleans without explaining it to death, so much so that the first draft contained references absolutely incomprehensible to anyone who hasn't lived here for several years.
My favorite is always the book that I'm currently reading.
I have so little patience with the whole Y.A. book thing. As far as I'm concerned, you either read books for children or you read books for adults.
I was doing a children's book on self-esteem, and I really felt like I wanted to shed the shame I'd been feeling - and maybe make it easier for women my age who had probably felt bad about themselves.
A good book, in the language of the book-sellers, is a salable one; in that of the curious, a scarce one; in that of men of sense, a useful and instructive one.
If you stay by the book, it's not always going to work. You've got to venture off a little bit. But you can't get too reckless, either.
I went to SXSW in 2011. God, that was awful. I mean, I only went because my publisher wanted me to promote the book and the organizers invited me and it seemed silly not to go, especially for a relatively unknown first-time author. This is just not my cup of tea; the fewer such events I do on an annual basis, the happier I feel.
At that time, I had recently finished a book called Amazing Grace, which many people tell me is a very painful book to read. Well, if it was painful to read, it was also painful to write. I had pains in my chest for two years while I was writing that book.
A subject which at first glance seems quite removed from the undeclared concern of the book can encapsulate that concern.
Somebody will be able to crack ebook files in the same way that people cracked music files a decade ago. An author could have worked for three years on his book, have someone buy it for their Kindle for £6.99 and then see it shared with everyone in the world for free.
The only other thing which I think is important is: Don't write a book or start a book with the expectation of communicating a message in a very important way.
