My books are elegiac in the sense that they're odes to a nation that even I sometimes think may not exist anymore except in my memory and my imagination.
Have you ever heard the expression: Walk a mile in my shoes, and then judge me? And write your own books.
There's always an anxiety about playing literary characters because one of the great joys of reading books is that you can create your own vision of things.
I try not to worry about rewriting books that worked well the first time. I'm too busy writing new books to worry about things that are already in print.
We went to the British Museum, and I was looking up my family in the books - pages and pages on it.
It's healthy to have interests besides books.
My parents both had Oxford degrees, they read important books, spoke foreign languages, drank real coffee and went to museums for pleasure. People like that don't have fat kids: they were cut out to be winners and winners don't have children who are overweight.
Many of my books come from what if questions that I can't answer, things that I'm worried about as either a woman, a wife, a mom, an American.
People apparently only read mystery stories of any length. With mysteries, the longer the better, and people will read any damn thing. But the indulgent, 800-page books that were written a hundred years ago are just not going to be written anymore, and people need to get used to that.
Writing is incidental to my primary objective, which is spinning a good yarn. I view myself as a storyteller more than a writer. The story - and hence the extensive research that goes into each one of my books - is much more important than the words that I use to narrate it.
I know that I am very popular in Holland, in fact I have visited Amsterdam several times to publicize my books. I have a great publisher in Holland and they have published all of my books in Dutch.
Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new at all.
'The Hunger Games' for me is I love the books so much and the character and the story were incredible. That's kind of the game plan is just do really interesting stories with interesting characters.
I just had the sense that at least the books that I had read about law just didn't really have enough of that.
Whatever the readers feel when they're reading my books, I feel it tenfold when I'm writing it.
The difference between people who believe they have books inside of them and those who actually write books is sheer cussed persistence - the ability to make yourself work at your craft, every day - the belief, even in the face of obstacles, that you've got something worth saying.
I was born Joseph Lane, but when I applied to the actors union, they said they already had a Joe Lane on the books and I'd have to change my last or first name. I had played the character of Nathan Detroit, whom I liked very much, in 'Guys and Dolls,' so I took the name Nathan.
Probably I, like a lot of people, became a writer in imitation of or in homage to the books I enjoyed. When you're so captivated by something, you think, could I do that? Hmm, let me try.
Educate yourself: Read up on current events and books.
I like to deal with EVERY aspect of our condition, and that means terror and humor in equal mix. Some books have more room for humor than others.
I guess there is also an element of deliberate change involved. Each of my books has been, at least from my point of view, radically different from the last.
Foreign-language books are sometimes more beautiful when you can't tell what's being said. It's like you ruin it by reading.
There are people who think it's easier to write books in verse, and it's definitely not.
I have a friend who calls me the queen of the nightmares because I've always had really bad nightmares. I keep a notebook by the side of my bed, so I'll wake up in the night from a bad dream, and my heart's pounding, and I'm really scared, but I write it down, and sometimes I get ideas for books that way.
We don't need lists of rights and wrongs, tables of do's and don'ts: we need books, time, and silence. Thou shalt not is soon forgotten, but Once upon a time lasts forever.
I love to read. I love to stretch. In the morning, I get up, and if I'm not in a hurry, I will lie on the floor on a rug, look through some books and magazines, and maybe listen to music and try to do stretching exercises to tune up.
All my books are about one major idea and two or three subsidiary ones. I have thought a lot about music when constructing books, and I like the way in music that themes come back.
When I was growing up in the 1960s, there was starting to be more books geared towards young adults.
If you want to publish two books a year under your own name and your publisher doesn't, maybe you need a different publisher.
Our Lord has written the promise of resurrection, not in books alone, but in every leaf in springtime.
Frank is such a great visual storyteller, that if you study his artwork you see that his Sin City books are already the best movies never seen on the big screen.
I don't have a copy of my books, and the degree to which I never read them is profound. I never look.
Part of the brilliance of Stieg Larsson's books is that they are so complex, so many different facets coming together.
I don't have many friends. It's not because I'm a misanthrope. It's because I'm reserved. I'm self-contained. I get all my adventures in my head when I'm writing my books.
What's gratifying is that it's my books that are being read and reread until they're battered over the years. I love that.
But when I was a little kid, I was always writing stories and illustrating little books that I would create.
