When students ask me today, 'What do you think we should learn from this book?' I tell them, 'Whatever you got out of it.'
Some authors have a very hard time understanding that in order to be faithful to the spirit of the book, it's almost always impossible to remain faithful to the text. You have to make changes.
The publishing of a book is a worldwide event. The attempt to suppress a book is a worldwide event.
'Piaf' I did it because I wanted to do more theater instead of only musicals, and someone gave me the book and said to me, 'You have to do it.'
Indeed, every book on my shelves is a key to a little vault of memories.
Writing a book is very personal. It's a very personal relationship. A book will start with something as simple as two men talking about work. That gets the fire going. Sustaining that fire is the hard work. It takes attention and empathy to hone the characters.
I wasn't trying to write a book; it wasn't even in my vision. I was posting stuff online just because it made me feel relieved - as a way of getting things off my chest.
I want to write a script, but before that, I am planning to compile a book of short stories.
The worst advice I ever received from my dad was to play by the book.
I hate SF books that think all you need to make a book is cool technology and mind-bending ideas without a decent plot or characters. And I hate when fantasy books are allowed to ramble off into five hundred page diatribes which don't advance the story one bit.
I've always figured the only way I could finish a book and get a plot was just to keep making it longer and longer until something happens - you know, until it finds its own plot - because you can't outline and then fit the thing into it. I suppose it's a slow way of working.
As far as I'm concerned, I'm a writer who's writing books, and therefore, I don't want to die. You'd miss the end of the book wouldn't you? You can't die with an unfinished book.
My mom is a self-taught home cook, so books that offer guidelines on how to organize menus are critical to 'cook from the book' people like her.
There were a lot of lyrics that I sang but didn't understand. But I had this facade in performance of looking like I wrote the book.
I have a cartoon I'm developing with Adult Swim called 'Monster Town U.S.A.,' so I'm busy doing that. Trying to do a coffee-table book of my photography that's been requested of me a couple of times. I'm constantly busy.
When I look back at my career as an author, I don't look at the first book that was ever published as to where my career began - I look to the first book that I ever wrote.
I don't think that books are wondrous, magical things that come from nowhere. It's important that a book has clues about where and how it was written.
What I'm always trying to do with every book is to recreate the effect of the stories we heard as children in front of campfires and fireplaces - the ghost stories that engaged us.
'The Sun Also Rises' by Ernest Hemingway is my favorite book. You feel manly reading it.
I've always written a little bit. I mean, I've written screenplays, and I've doctored my dialogue for years, and I've written speeches - I was a speechwriter on 'The West Wing,' so I like that kind of thing. But I never really thought I'd write a book.
When I write a book... it's the same essential approach to music as with books. It has to be something I want to hear or read. Hopefully the audience comes along, since that's the only way you can write righteously. I have to ask, 'What do I want to hear?' not 'What do people want to hear?'
From an early age, I had the idea that writing was truth-telling. It's on the record. Everybody can see it. Maybe it goes back to the sacred origins of literature - the holy book. There's nothing holy about it for me, but it should be serious, and it should be totally transparent.
At 13 years old, I realized I could start my own band. I could write my own song, I could record my own record. I could start my own label. I could release my own record. I could book my own shows. I could write and publish my own fanzine. I could silk-screen my own T-shirt. I could do this all myself.
I feel like we have so much to add to this book called the American Dream, and I want to add our chapter to it. I want to talk about what it means to be brown American and this concept of what I feel is the New Brown America.
'John Henry Days' was already half in the can before my first book came out, so I'd already started something that was big and sprawling - I just had to finish it.
For the last 15 years that I have been performing, all I ever wanted to do was transcend poetry to the world. See, it wasn't enough for me to write a book. It wasn't enough for me to join a slam competition, and while those things hold weight, it wasn't the driving force that pushes the pen to the pad.
Going out at night and having a fabulous social life takes a lot out of you, and I don't know if I have that much to give, honestly. I would rather give that time to my kids or spend that time reading a book or watching a film. I am selfish and lazy.
Writing is the hardest thing I know, but it was the only thing I wanted to do. I wrote for 20 years and published nothing before my first book.
I always say, I'm certain I changed 'Watchmen' less than the Coen brothers changed 'No Country for Old Men.' I'm certain of it. But you don't hear the Cormac McCarthy fans, like, up in arms about it. They should be. It's like an amazing Pulitzer Prize-winning book.
Yeah, because I think it's more important just to inspire people to wake up one day and pick up a book and start feeling it out for themselves.
Whenever I go to Germany I find that my readers have T-shirts with my book covers printed on them. They come to all the events, they have gifts and they come with their families. They are always very open to sharing their personal stories.
Not long after I published my first book, I quickly found I was terrible at being interviewed.
I get bored easily, so I need to do a lot. I've started a record label, so I get to nurture new talent and talk about music, which is a passion of mine. I've written another book. And I get to come to work and do the TV show, which is always really fun.
You will be hard pressed to read another book that understands you as well as 'Leaves of Grass' does. It was made for you in the way that the constellations were made for you. It understands and makes space for your doubts, your love, the guilt and passions of your life and waits for you.
I travel a lot, so when I arrive in a city, I like to go to good local bookshops and make a selection based on how I'm feeling and what I'm thinking. The book I pick usually seems to have a definite karmic connection!
I've tried to reduce profanity but I reduced so much profanity when writing the book that I'm afraid not much could come out. Perhaps we will have to consider it simply as a profane book and hope that the next book will be less profane or perhaps more sacred.
