Nobody sells books like J.K. Rowling. We have a rule in publishing: Never compare anything to 'Harry Potter' because it's like lightning in a bottle.
The language of my books has shaped me as a man.
The architecture for 'Paladin' - given that it's at least three books, with the possibility of more - turned out to be bigger than anything I've ever created, with multiple levels of reality, interlocking mysteries and a terabyte of time frame.
At the age of seventeen, I decided I would spend my life writing fiction. I didn't know what this entailed, exactly - a room, I supposed. A room and books and paper and solitude.
I love comic books. I just do.
Even in times when it's difficult to figure out, how do you go forward, art - and books - always help.
I'm sure you're aware, with the time it takes to put these books together, everything can suddenly start coming out at once even though I wrote anything between one and five years ago.
I was always a big fan of the books and over the years I've become quite attached to Ron and we've meshed into the same person, really.
The mortality of all inanimate things is terrible to me, but that of books most of all.
The experience gathered from books, though often valuable, is but the nature of learning; whereas the experience gained from actual life is one of the nature of wisdom.
I have been reading crime books ever since I was a child, but I had never tried to write one.
My books are water; those of the great geniuses are wine - everybody drinks water.
If my books had been any worse, I should not have been invited to Hollywood, and if they had been any better, I should not have come.
I've had nine of my books adapted to film, and almost all were enjoyable. I've been very lucky with Hollywood, and look forward to more movies being adapted. But I don't get involved in that process. I know nothing about making movies and I stay away from it and hope for the best.
I have no problem selling books to media franchises and we do it all the time. The author must understand that he/she is a writer for hire and has no control over copyright or over editorial changes made to the text.
I hadn't realized quite how intense the first few years of grad school would be. When you're being assigned 40 books a week... there's not much room for novels.
I want to write such things as compel the admiring acclamation of the world at large, such things as are written but once in years, things subtle but distinctly different from the books written every day.
Books, like proverbs, receive their chief value from the stamp and esteem of ages through which they passed.
The biggest fatal flaw in most fictional portrayals of nanotech - what sends those books arcing across the room - is ignoring that the nanobots need energy to do... anything.
We need to write books that publicists and marketers and booksellers and book club leaders and librarians and readers can get excited about. That have something about them that makes them stand out. That makes them shine.
All summer, I read fiction because you must read for the pleasure and beauty of it, and not only for research. I don't read thrillers, romance or mystery, and I don't read self-help books because I don't believe in shortcuts and loopholes.
I learned how to believe in myself. Learned how to set goals, you know, self help books man. I just read every single one I can get a hold of, and I still do.
To me, I was always just standing on the sidelines because up until issue 50, we were just doing Spawn. I wasn't recruiting anybody because I didn't have any books for people to work on.
I think my sensibility is very literary; all my books were built as books, and I wasn't thinking about them being movies.
I've loved science fiction ever since I was a little kid, mainly from looking at the covers of science-fiction magazines and books, and I've read quite extensively as an adult.
In the past, people generally believed they could acquire magic in two ways: through learning the craft, either from another practitioner or from books; or through obtaining magic from a powerful being-think Faust or the classic, demonized witch, both of whom get their mojo from Satan.
If you want to know anything about me, read my books - it's all there.
Old books that have ceased to be of service should no more be abandoned than should old friends who have ceased to give pleasure.
Every ceremony or rite has a value if it is performed without alteration. A ceremony is a book in which a great deal is written. Anyone who understands can read it. One rite often contains more than a hundred books.
After I had written seventeen full-length mysteries, two volumes of mini-mysteries, a travel guide and some quiz books, not to mention a spin-off Roman Mystery Scrolls series, I thought it was time I moved to new historical pastures.
Upon books the collective education of the race depends; they are the sole instruments of registering, perpetuating and transmitting thought.
I don't think of my books as being biographies. I never had any interest in doing a book just to write the life of a great man. I had zero interest in that. My interest is in power. How power works.
You're getting to know who the great chefs are through their books.
I think it takes a lot of desire because I think a lot of people who've never written books don't know quite how hard it is to stick with, to put in the amount of time and just make the commitment to just sit there every day and do it while everybody else is out having fun.
First and foremost, I'm a decorator and product designer. Everything I do, the television shows, the books, that comes from the design work. It's what I love.
I hope people who read my books feel empathy for us and really see us as complicated people.
