When I was eight, I would look at the cover of the 'Ghost Rider' comic book in my little home in Long Beach, California, and I couldn't get my head around how something that scary could also be good. To me it was my first philosophical awakening - 'How is this possible, this duality?'
I think the definition of a book is changing.
'Codename Baboushka' is an action-packed modern pulp spy thriller, in the sort of British tradition of 'Modesty Blaise', New Avengers and of course James Bond. It's a book about Contessa Annika Malikova, the last of a noble Russian line and an enigmatic, mysterious figure in New York high society.
Your life story would not make a good book. Don't even try.
I was engrossed with the book, I was having difficulties with it, and I just didn't notice the years were going by.
I challenge those who are in business and other professions to see that there are copies of the Book of Mormon in their reception rooms.
There are writers who say they have no social responsibility except to write a good book, but that doesn't satisfy me.
Whenever I'm reading a book I enjoy, I always develop a mental list of the people I want to share it with.
As a youngster, I had friends who became lawyers and doctors, and I was as idealistic as anybody. When I was in the Army, I read a book by Adlai Stevenson. He said law was as noble as saving a person's life. So at one point, I felt that way, too. But after a while, I said, 'Let me just finish the degree. I'm getting the G.I. Bill.'
Every time I write a nonfiction book I get sued.
Publishers just want you to write the same book over and over again. But why would I want to do that? It would be like putting on a threadbare dressing-gown day after day.
I spent many years writing and directing in radio drama, so I am comfortable with an audience or a microphone, but I do worry about the blurring of an author's public persona with the work itself. A good 'performer' can make a mediocre book sound strong, and a shy author can leave listeners missing the excellence of his or her writing.
Ever read a book that changed your life? Me neither.
In fact I have a full page warning, right in the front of the book, that no one under the age of eighteen should read this book and no one should even turn the pages if they are sexually conservative or erotically deprived.
You write, hoping to write a good book; that's it.
When you write a book for publication, you're writing it for other people to read.
Which is - you know, like check it out, I'm pretty young, I'm only about 40 years old. I still have maybe another four decades of work left in me. And it's exceedingly likely that anything I write from this point forward is going to be judged by the world as the work that came after the freakish success of my last book, right?
I brought samples in, because I didn't have any comic book samples, and I brought all these illustrations that I had influenced by Norman Rockwell and a couple of the other big boys. That's all I had, that's all I brought.
I'm trying to convey to my audience that you really can't judge a book by its cover, and there's more to the universe than you can see with your eyes.
Every single person that spent a few bucks to buy a book that I wrote deserves a big thank you from my whole family.
I guess another message I'd like to say with this book is no matter how many times you fail... I failed a lot of times trying to get clean, and never thought I'd get to this point.
I didn't go to Latin America thinking, 'I'm gonna write a book. This is what I'm gonna do.' I went there to work for UNICEF and to learn.
My book is already online. I can type 150 words a minute. I took typing in high school.
My dad read history, about a book a day, but only after he retired as a successful bank and insurance man.
Orwell wasn't right about where society was in 1984. We haven't turned into that sort of surveillance society. But that may be, at least in small part, because of his book. The notion that ubiquitous surveillance and state manipulation of the media is evil is deeply engrained in us.
The idea of a flip book still really appeals to me. That idea of fiction and non-fiction.
Well, I do have some maiden aunts that are not quite like the aunts in the book, but I definitely do have a couple of them, and a couple of old aunties.
I've always believed in writing without a collaborator, because where two people are writing the same book, each believes he gets all the worry and only half the royalties.
I don't think any book of mine will ever come as close to pure fantasy as 'A Heaven of Others.' I'll never again set a book in a world or after-world in which it's impossible to buy a cup of coffee or take an undisturbed afternoon nap.
What draws me in is that a trip is a leap in the dark. It's like a metaphor for life. You set off from home, and in the classic travel book, you go to an unknown place. You discover a different world, and you discover yourself.
I've read a lot of books on the laws of attraction, and in my home, I have a big book on Muhammad Ali, which I've read because he is, like, a hero of mine, but other than that, no, I'm not a big reader.
Because they feel that without them telling you to do this, you wouldn't have had the characters that you have, you wouldn't have the book that you have.
Reading a book is like re-writing it for yourself. You bring to a novel, anything you read, all your experience of the world. You bring your history and you read it in your own terms.
The first book I ever wrote was in fourth grade and it was called 'Billy's Booger.' It was an autobiographical piece about a kid who was really bad at math.
Take a newspaper account of Waterloo or Trafalgar, with all the small advertisements: it seems much more real than reading about it in a history book.
Once I found this possibility to use Twitter and Facebook and my blog to connect to my readers, I'm going to use it, to connect to them and to share thoughts that I cannot use in the book.
