I've only written one science-fiction book: 'Fahrenheit 451.' That book is a book based on real facts and my hatred of people who destroy books.
You cannot write a book unless it is totally inhabiting your imagination and you are totally engrossed with it. Which is a kind word for obsession.
My son jokes with me that he thinks I Google the word 'sad' to come up with book ideas.
Ideally a book would have no order to it, and the reader would have to discover his own.
The book is like the spoon, scissors, the hammer, the wheel. Once invented, it cannot be improved. You cannot make a spoon that is better than a spoon... The book has been thoroughly tested, and it's very hard to see how it could be improved on for its current purposes.
In my first book, 'A Return to Love', I wrote about things in the outer world that need to change - how we need to ameliorate deep poverty, heal the earth, end war.
A lot of people say I tried to emulate Tupac, but when I look back at my career, we're very different artists. I took pages out of Pac's book, of course, and lots of other rappers - Biggie, Nas - of course you take pages out of those books, but you eventually make it your own thing. And I think I did a good job of that.
My views about the safety of Jews in the world have not been changed by the work on the Dreyfus affair or, for that matter, by the work I did on Franz Kafka for the book on him I published a year before the Dreyfus book appeared.
Call me a nerd if you like, but I do find it hard to leave home without my laptop and a good book.
Sarah Palin - now don't laugh - is writing a book. Not just reading a book, writing a book. Actually, in the word of the publisher, she's 'collaborating' on a book. What an embarrassment! It's one of these 'I told you,' books that jocks do.
I looked back at the years since I'd left college and thought of the list of things I'd have liked to do. I'd always wanted to write a book - not a small undertaking. I never felt I had the time or creative energy to spare in order to write one as well as I wanted.
My dream scenario would be that you could go into a bookshop, examine copies of every book in print that they're able to offer, then for a fee have them produce in a minute or two a beautiful finished copy in a dust jacket that you would pay for and take home.
I'm so not a comic book guy. The most I knew about 'The Flash,' as a little kid, was the Underoos. I had 'The Flash' Underoos.
Since 1988, I have been writing steadily. I did decide a couple of years or so ago to scale back to writing one book a year - a sort of semi-retirement. But I never did have much success with that plan!
I worked in publishing before I became an author, so I knew how a book gets made.
No one wants to read an apologetic book.
I highly recommend reading the book 'Confessions Of A Video Vixen.'
My husband, a.k.a. Swede, and I both come from athletic backgrounds, so once we identified the goal - get book published - we attacked it. At any given time, I would have my writing out in 25 various forms - either contests, mentoring critiques, agent/publisher queries, etc.
I always try to mix it up with each book - changing tone, changing style keeps the work very vital for me.
I confess that I am a messy, disorganized and impatient reader: if the book doesn't grab me in the first 40 pages, I abandon it. I have piles of half-read books waiting for me to get acute hepatitis or some other serious condition that would force me to rest so that I could read more.
Every woman who has a business book has a platform. For the most part, they're either a television personality or someone who had the perfect pedigree and worked their way up the career ladder.
I read books all the time. I'm just half looking for something to do; I mostly just read for pleasure. Occasionally I stumble across something that could be a movie, but I don't put a book down just because I don't see a movie in it, either.
I've started working on a new album, I'm writing a new book... there are a lot of good things on the horizon.
I was a slow and lazy reader as a kid. 'The Prince and the Pauper' was the only non-school book I would read, over and over, between television, records and radio, until I picked up my aunt's copy of 'In Cold Blood' and she didn't ask for it back.
Whenever people say they didn't like the main character of a book, they mean they didn't like the book. The main character has to be a friend? I don't get that.
All literature consists of whatever the writer thinks is cool. The reader will like the book to the degree that he agrees with the writer about what's cool.
When I look for new books, I often struggle to find things that challenge and entertain me. This has caused me to spend a number of cycles thinking about where I can get the serendipitous book discovery experience that we had in physical book stores.
I spend about eight months researching and outlining my book.
Every time I write a book, I've probably taken five years off my life.
My first movie I saw when I was a kid was 'The Jungle Book.' I was 5 years old, and I saw it in a movie theater. Seeing that movie really lit the fuse and ignited my passion for animation.
When you're reading, you're not where you are; you're in the book. By the same token, I can write anywhere.
I watched so many comic book movies where the actors weren't as built as the characters in the book. It made me mad because they didn't look right.
From 'The Sandman' and 'Black Orchid' to 'Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?,' Neil Gaiman has provided some of the most memorable stories of the comic book industry.
Once the words of a book appear onscreen, they are no longer simply themselves; they have become a part of something else. They now occupy the same space, not only as every other digital text, but as every other medium, too.
Every beginning is only a sequel, after all, and the book of events is always open halfway through.
When I was first offered the book deal, I was like, 'I am not a writer. I haven't practiced this.' My approach has been completely stream-of-consciousness, and then edit down, because that's been YouTube for me forever.
