I would like to have the superpower of being able to touch a book and then gain all the knowledge out of that book without spending hours and days reading it.
I think one day I can make a book about coffee shops in Hong Kong. I spent almost most of my time in coffee shops, in different coffee shops.
For starters, let's dispense with the cheap jokes about cannibalism. That means cracks about giving an arm and a leg - sorry - for a good book on the subject, or similar tasteless - sorry, again - attempts to make the subject more palatable - last one.
It's called 'A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius' by Dave Eggers. It is absolutely everything the title implies. It's the greatest book I've ever.
Some people manage their writing by saying, 'I need to get 2,000 words written today,' others by saying, 'I will write for X hours.' Not me. I start with a plan for the book, break it down into scenes, and I know what scenes need to get written each day. If the scene takes more words than I thought, so be it.
We are always looking for the book it is necessary to read next.
The profession of book writing makes horse racing seem like a solid, stable business.
Some years ago, I wrote a book called the Emperor's New Mind and that book was describing a point of view I had about consciousness and why it was not something that comes about from complicated calculations.
My characters live inside my head for a long time before I actually start a book about them. Then, they become so real to me I talk about them at the dinner table as if they are real. Some people consider this weird. But my family understands.
A book is the only immortality.
When I was a teenager, reading for me was as normal, as unremarkable as eating or breathing. Reading gave flight to my imagination and strengthened my understanding of the world, the society I lived in, and myself. More importantly, reading was fun, a way to live more than one life as I immersed myself in each good book I read.
Sometimes you go into an audition and you'll do what you think the character is, and then if they agree, then it's awesome and you'll book it maybe, and you'll live happily ever after. But sometimes they don't agree.
I didn't want it to be a book that made pronouncements.
My next book is also set in the eighteenth century. It's about the Revolution, with the focus on the year 1776. It's about Washington and the army and the war. It's the nadir, the low point of the United States of America.
After I left the convent, for 15 years I was worn out with religion, I wanted nothing whatever to do with it. I felt disgusted with it. If I saw someone reading a religious book on a train, I'd think, how awful.
I'm reading a book about Romaine Brooks, a wonderful painter from early in the last century.
Generally a chef's book is like a calling card or a portfolio to display their personal work.
Every writer I know got their start in a library somewhere. We read a book, and we thought, 'I want to do that.'
We don't quite have the same comic book culture as America, but I would watch Spider-Man cartoons and X-Men cartoons and watch Bond as much as anyone on the planet.
I haven't even graduated from high school yet - and I've realised in the last four years, with all the travelling I've done and all of the movies I've made, that the world is my classroom. I've experienced things I don't know you can necessarily get from reading a history book.
What that book does for me is give me the tools in the same way that I had the tools when I learned the regular scales or the alphabet. If you give me the tools, the syntax, and the grammar, it still doesn't tell me how to write Ulysses.
A novel is a relationship, you know? When you read a book, the writer has done half the work, and you're doing half the work. You're providing the imagination; the words are turning into pictures in your mind. There's an active relationship that's going on.
I wanted to be a shoe designer, but I never thought it could be a profession. But what was the alternative? Doctor? Too dirty! Air-hostess? Maybe not! Then someone gave me a book on Roger Vivier, and, cheri, instantly I knew that was it!
If you live in a yard sale kind of neighborhood - in good weather, most neighborhoods are crawling with them on weekends - do a sweep to see what the competition is charging. No one is going to buy your $7 book if they can get it down the block for $1.
You know how when you read a book and it becomes a movie, and it's different than you pictured? In some ways, acting is a lot like that.
When you're adapting a novel, there are always scenes taken out of the book, and no matter which scenes they are, it's always someone's favorite. As a screenwriter, you realize, 'Well, it doesn't work if you include everyone's favorite scenes.'
I don't know what your childhood was like, but we didn't have much money. We'd go to a movie on a Saturday night, then on Wednesday night my parents would walk us over to the library. It was such a big deal, to go in and get my own book.
I lived in the Republic of Ireland. I wrote a book about the North but as an outsider. The hatreds there were not mine. I never felt them. I liked how open in most ways Catalan nationalism was, compared to Irish nationalism. I disliked the violence and cruelty in Ireland.
I hate the idea of sequels. I think you should be able to do it in one book.
Characters develop as the book progresses, but any that start to bore me end up in the wastepaper basket. In real life, we may have to put up with tedious people, but not in novels.
Usually, I would mistrust a book if it took that long to write. Usually, if it isn't done in two years, I suspect there's something wrong and throw it away.
No one wants to read a math book.
I was a huge comic book fan as a kid. The only problem I had with comic books is how expensive they got. I didn't have a lot of money, so I had to be very specific about what I wanted to collect. I think they're all somewhere in the basement of my folks' house.
When I was 7 years old, I announced that I was going to write a book about pollution. I didn't get around to it until I was 29, but I always recognized that pollution was a theft. That it was a way of stealing something from the public - the common earth.
I've learned that I have to be happy with creating discussion and debate and that I shouldn't be trying to write a book that appeals to the consensus.
I had a book that was given to me as a kid that was called 'Faeries.' It was this dark, sinister book with pictures that used to scare me because they were these creepy little creatures. But, I was always really drawn to that fantasy world, more than a sci-fi world, in terms of outer space stuff.
