Books are mind reading devices; they allow us free access to the thoughts and dreams of people we have never met.
I made a series of wrong decisions about moderately recent books, and I've sold the rights to studios for ridiculous amounts of money and the films have never been made. That's the saddest thing of all, because they're locked up and no one else can make them.
With fantasy, one often has to think of a well-loved series before narrowing the selection to a favourite book. So it is with Zelazny. I've read his 'Princes in Amber' books so often, I know them almost verbatim, so much so that I am now trying to forget them so I can return to them with renewed pleasure.
The biggest influence on my books was the fact that I had worked in a newspaper for so long. In a daily paper, you learn to write very quickly; there is no time to sit and brood about what you are going to say.
My parents came to visit every two months and brought plenty of books.
I feel sorry for kids these days. They get so much homework. Remember the days when we put a belt around our two books and carried them home? Now they're dragging a suitcase. They have school all day, then homework from six until eleven. There's no time left to be creative.
I do give books as gifts sometimes, when people would rather have one than a new Ferrari.
Until I read Anne Frank's diary, I had found books a literal escape from what could be the harsh reality around me. After I read the diary, I had a fresh way of viewing the both literature and the world. From then on, I found I was impatient with books that were not honest or that were trivial and frivolous.
At Oxford University, I studied languages so I could read the great novels as they were originally written. I took what in the United States would be a double major in Russian and French, but I have to admit that the pressure of getting through so many books spoiled reading for me.
It did occur to me that certainly African-Americans are not underserved in picture books, but those books are almost all about specifically black experiences.
I come from a working-class background where I was much more likely to read socialist books and leaflets than Bronte or Dickens - neither of whom I've yet read.
Publishers vet books, and they do a good job keeping out the low quality. But they also miss some good quality.
When I was little, I wanted to be a doctor. I was really interested in gore. My grandfather was an orthopedic surgeon and he had a lot of books in his library that I would just pore over. A lot of them had really horrible pictures of deformities.
And yes, there's a simplicity to writing books because you're not a member of a team, so you make all the decisions yourself instead of deferring to a committee.
Trying to write books with a subject matter or in a genre or style you're not familiar with is the best way to find the Big Block looming.
Comics are a dying art. If you ask a little kid to choose between a video game with insane graphics or comic books... you have to compete with cable, satellite TV with its thousands of channels, and with video games that are like movies, with CGI explosions where you can blow up worlds.
When I came out, and for many years afterwards, it had become a habit for me to sit and read and read and read, like an obsession. I would take 20 books, and not come out until I'd finished them. It took me a while to change that habit.
We had literary references, so we knew what we were talking about. We could quote things, talk about books we'd read; you can say something, you don't have to explain it.
With 'The Tudors,' I had a huge amount of material, I mean so many books and so much stuff about what they really said. So, in a way it was kind of trying to strip it out and find the stories inside all this material.
Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.
My favorite books are a constantly changing list, but one favorite has remained constant: the dictionary. Is the word I want to use spelled practice or practise? The dictionary knows. The dictionary also slows down my writing because it is such interesting reading that I am distracted.
My passion has always been books and literature, and teaching.
Ideas are only lethal if you suppress and don't discuss them. Ignorance is not bliss, it's stupid. Banning books shows you don't trust your kids to think and you don't trust yourself to be able to talk to them.
Schools and libraries are the twin cornerstones of a civilized society. Libraries are only good if people use them, like books only exist when someone reads them.
I always thought it hadn't influenced me very much, but I heard from many people from England that many motives from German fairytales are to be found in my books.
With Shakespeare and poetry, a new world was born. New dreams, new desires, a self consciousness was born. I desired to know to know myself in terms of the new standards set by these books.
I have a vision of the world as being a lot darker, perhaps, than I did when I was 31 and wrote the 'Books of Blood'.
I collect books - a lot of books.
I always take a fiction break in between business books to keep the content from bleeding together.
A border collie named Orson inspired me to buy a 110-acre farm with four barns and a sheep. That led to a series of books about Bedlam Farm and about dogs, rural life, lambing and herding sheep.
Every city and town in America would be bankrupt if they kept their books the way private-sector companies keep their books - because of the obligation cities and towns have taken upon themselves to provide health care for their retirees.
One of the things I'm trying to do over and over again in my books is create new mythologies, create new ways to understand the complexity of the world. I think what mythology does is impress upon chaotic experience the patterns, hierarchies and shapes which allow us to interpret the chaos and make fresh sense of it.
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.
The animated books pay the lowest rates at the Big Two and you can forget about royalties.
The problem with making movies is that you have to devote so much of your life to fawning and flattering the men in suits, whereas that doesn't happen in books. You just go and write, and then the book comes out.
Then I heard this genius teacher Stella Adler - I recommend you read anything you might find about her and if you have anyone interested in theatre, you get them one of her books.
