It's interesting that so many books now are published as the first in a series. It never occurred to me. Although 'The Giver' does have an ambiguous ending. I've heard about that from readers over the years.
My mom used to tell me, 'If you read 50 books, I'll get you a motorbike.'
Listen, I wrote 10 unsuccessful books before I broke through, so I'm looking all the time to keep my books fascinating. I want to write what people want to read, not push any message.
I devour books. But for the longest time, I refused to pay attention to genre or labels.
The problem with people who live in a world of speeches and books and theories is they don't know how to fix things in the real world when they go wrong. They feign ignorance, blame others, and make another eloquent speech.
Thrillers have been traditionally very masculine books; the women characters often rather decorative.
Before 'Veronica Mars,' I was not, and probably am still not, much of a crime reader. My mom left out a copy of 'Helter Skelter' when I was 10, and I secretly read it, and then I spent all my teenage years afraid of hippies. I kept away from crime books for, like, ten years.
The things I keep going back to, rereading, maybe they say more about me as a reader than about the books. Love in the Time of Cholera, Pale Fire.
Books support us in our solitude and keep us from being a burden to ourselves.
I think the only boundaries are individual and personal. A writer should be free to write about anything he or she wants to, including the twin towers. I have made small references to 9/11 in my past two books.
The distinction has blurred between young adult and adult books. Some of the teen books have become more sophisticated.
What art and books do at their best is investigate why we are the way we are.
I've always loved books by the Bronte sisters. I love Jane Austen, too. I'm more influenced by people like her than by pop culture.
My only regret is that I signed away the world rights and in America they've been far and away my most successful books, but I never saw a cent from any of it.
The new spirituality will bring about what I'm calling the 'end of better.' And that is in fact what is called for in the next of the series of books that I've been writing.
I'm not a great shopper but I do buy a lot of books. I'm the publishers' friend - I buy a hundred books a year and read four.
I am really impressed by lawyers who write books and tell us that they never lost a case. Most lawyers who have never lost a case have not had enough hard cases. But there are very difficult cases out there.
The homes I like the best are totally occupied, busy, and useful, whether it's a tiny little house or a great big one. Rarely do you find a great big house that's used in a good way. So I prefer smaller spaces that are full of books, full of things that people are doing.
I'm so excited. I love Peeta so much. I think that over the course of the next couple of books, he has so many interesting places to go to, character-wise. I'm ready to dive full-force into it. When I saw the movie actually, it got me energized. 'Let's go get some cameras! Let's go shoot the second one right now!'
I hope in my books I help children to see their strengths, and show them I have some idea of what they may occasionally be going through. Especially at tricky moments when it is easier to go back and evade things rather than go forwards and confront them.
All of my books tend to be about things going on in labs that you wouldn't really expect.
As much as I devoured comics, I read non-graphic books exponentially more, so I'm not sure I can credit or blame them. Comics, however, taught me a lot about what makes a story arc work and how to bring a story to its natural resting place between issues.
The Bible remained for me a book of books, still divine - but divine in the sense that all great books are divine which teach men how to live righteously.
It's hard to change information in books, but if we have everything online, then a somewhat untrustworthy group of people controlling the thing - which I think is what we have - gives us '1984.'
He who studies medicine without books sails an uncharted sea, but he who studies medicine without patients does not go to sea at all.
I'm a huge fan of Tolkien. I read those books when I was in junior high school and high school, and they had a profound effect on me. I'd read other fantasy before, but none of them that I loved like Tolkien.
Books are as useful to a stupid person as a mirror is useful to a blind person.
Children simply don't make the distinction; a book is either good or bad. And some of the books they think are good are very, very bad indeed.
Kids have no sense of appropriateness. They can ask me whatever they want. You do develop a sense of intimacy with readers, and they tell you things about themselves. During a school year, I'll get e-mails asking about the books. I'll give them information, but I won't do their homework for them.
My books deliberately provide no answers or messages. I'm drilled in the habit of objectivity and also aware that the steady drip of fiction has more power than facts to shape opinion, so I handle it with caution.
I want to see children curled up with books, finding an awareness of themselves as they discover other people's thoughts. I want them to make the connection that books are people's stories, that writing is talking on paper, and I want them to write their own stories. I'd like my books to provide that connection for them.
People don't see this side of me. They don't know I read, like, 800 million spiritual books. Lately I am just really getting into a lot of spirituality.
Conducting! A subject, truly, concerning which much might be written, yet scarcely anything of real importance is to be found in books.
I did an audiobook for 'Rough Crossings,' which I thought was one of the best books I had published. But it was an absolute embarrassment to read it. All these horrible mucked-up bits of syntax, over-the-top adjectives. I found myself editing it while reading. Alert listeners will notice the difference.
I don't mind saying, you know, that I don't take a salary from the church, and God has blessed me with more money than I could imagine from my books. It's been printed all over, so I don't feel like I am hiding anything.
You know, he would go and look at different funny books because he wanted his character to be different and make different faces. I saw a funny book in his room and it looked like the same character he was playing. It was about a duck.
