When you're 14, anything with a sword and a dragon is pretty cool. But when you're 21 and you've read 2,000 fantasy novels, you start to realize that some of those books, well, they weren't really good. OK, let's be honest. A lot of them were crap.
But for me, being an editor I've been an editor of all kinds of books being an editor of poetry has been the way in which I could give a crucial part of my time to what I love most.
I think you need humour and a sense of fun, which is what I try to bring to my books to leaven the danger and action. The ones that really transcend the genre always have a great laugh in them, such as 'Fright Night,' 'Lost Boys,' 'American Werewolf in London' - just to name a few.
I think our Batman had to be fun, light-hearted, funny, tongue-in-cheek... and I think that made kind of an homage to those earlier comic books, where Batman always had a quip or something.
When I'm writing, I try not to think things like, 'Gosh, I have to finish writing this book.' Books are very long and it's easy to get discouraged. Instead I think to myself, 'Wow, I have this great story idea, and today I'm going to write two pages of it. That's all - just two pages.'
These are not books, lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on the shelves.
I like shelves full of books in a library, but if all books become electronic, the task of big research libraries remains the same - keep what's published in the form in which it appeared.
You know, it's about getting out there and having a good time. Not about worrying - all these young books for women are like I'm 29 with a closet full of Prada shoes and I can't get a date. Come on.
People review my comic books. People review every article I write - 'The Atlantic' even publishes them. A great deal of the critique of 'Between the World and Me' was from a feminist perspective. bell hooks pushed back, among others. Some of that has value. Some of it does not. I try my best to separate the wheat from the chaff.
All the information you could want is constantly streaming at you like a runaway truck - books, newspaper stories, Web sites, apps, how-to videos, this article you're reading, even entire magazines devoted to single subjects like charcuterie or wedding cakes or pickles.
Many of the less prolific killers' stories go unheard because they simply don't make good books.
Look, I had a passion for comic books growing up.
I've been changed watching films or reading books or hearing music, and that helps you to live your life.
I wrote books to entertain. I'm not trying to teach anything! If I suspected the author was trying to show me how to be a better behaved girl, I shut the book.
I got into history when I was 11 years old, and it all started with the Titanic. I'd read books in the library about it. Of course I've seen the movie, too - I don't think I've ever cried that much.
When I was growing up, 'Anna Karenina' was one of my favourite books.
My books are about losers, about people who've lost their way and are engaged in a search.
I have great admiration for the fact-checking team. Considering it takes me years to gather all the facts in my books, it's a daunting task for the fact-checkers to review all of that material in a matter of weeks.
I had to learn chord shapes. I bought books with chord charts. I used to listen to all kinds of pop music.
In my books the technology that I choose to talk about has to serve the themes. What that means is that I end up having to cut out a lot of cool technology that would be really fun to describe and play with, but which would just confuse everybody. So in 'Amped,' I focus on neural implants.
By virtue of some of the ways the game is played, in terms of message discipline, in terms of access for reporters, and especially in the way that sources and subjects, especially famous subjects, treat the media, almost by default there's more news that's falling into books.
I have been illustrating Tolkien's books ever since I first read them, long before illustration became my profession.
Most of my life wasn't about knowledge from books, but experiential knowledge.
The main thing that gives me hope is the media. We have radio, TV, magazines, and books, so we have the possibility of learning from societies that are remote from us, like Somalia. We turn on the TV and see what blew up in Iraq or we see conditions in Afghanistan.
I don't write down my experiences, but I have a very decent memory. I have tons of books in which I write down phrases as they occur to me. That's how I write songs. I'll need a line and I'll go through the books and find it, the right rhyme and everything.
I read a lot of obscure books and it is nice to open a book.
I write books that seem more suitable for children, and that's OK with me. They are a better audience and tougher critics. Kids tell you what they think, not what they think they should think.
I didn't have time for talent shows and stuff like that. I was into books and studying real hard.
My only books were woman's looks, and folly's all they've taught me.
Sadly, I don't think books ever sell based on your name alone - the minute we make an assumption like that is the minute it all goes horribly wrong!
If you read any of my books, they tend to have a strong historical perspective.
Books and all forms of writing are terror to those who wish to suppress the truth.
I have to tell you, I'm a happy man. I've lived the life I wanted to live. I've written the books I wanted to write. No publisher has ever even suggested that I change so much as a phrase - commas and periods, yes - and I suspect that I have a lot of serious readers; in fact, I know.
All that mankind has done, thought or been: it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books.
Look, I like to fantasize that there's more to reality than what we have here, and that's why, from a young age, I just loved Philip K. Dick's books.
Books are like movies of the mind and it's better to leave Kinsey where she is.
