A bad book is the worse that it cannot repent. It has not been the devil's policy to keep the masses of mankind in ignorance; but finding that they will read, he is doing all in his power to poison their books.
The problem is we don't know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books - mine included - because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn't happened.
When I was writing my first two books I was also freelancing and teaching and doing other odd jobs.
I think I get some of my love of adult books that can be fun from Douglas Adams.
I think the reason working-class people don't write books is because they are encouraged to believe that only certain people are permitted to write books.
Americans like fat books and thin women.
I used to take five or six books away and bring five or six books back. Nobody gave me direction or advice and I read much in the way that a boy might watch television.
I loved to read and to write, but then something happened. As I made my way through school, I kept getting handed books to read that didn't excite me and didn't even remotely connect to the realities of my life.
I want to read books and go for walks and make dinner. I guess there are people who love working and that's great. I'm not one of them. I love tackling roles and I love theater, but filming, I don't get it. It seems mind-numbing to me.
It is from books that wise people derive consolation in the troubles of life.
I hate all that woozy political and psychotherapeutic crap applied to books and art.
It's always hard when you're playing someone for a lot of people out there who are going to see the movie after reading the books. There's a communion between a reader and the writer, so people will have an idea who Sirius Black is and I might not be everyone's idea of that.
Very few of my books are about who stole the Maltese Falcon.
If anything, I feel a bit of pressure to write about less disenfranchised people, because I'd probably sell more books that way and would've already had some hot property that I could've sold to Hollywood.
How could I make a little book, when I have seen enough to make a dozen large books?
There are some friends you don't meet for twenty years and when you meet them again it's as if no twenty years has happened - you're lucky when that happens. I feel the same about books.
They lard their lean books with the fat of others work.
If a parent wants to talk about slavery or wants to talk about countries where bombs go off, they need to have a way - a setting - to have that conversation. And there are wonderful books out there for those kinds of conversations.
I want to warn potential victims. Many of them are women, and many of them are battered women. It's a cause for me. When I look back, though, so many of the books I've written are about wives who just couldn't get away.
I'm always surprised when large numbers of people buy my books.
God be thanked for books; they are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages.
The funny thing is, I'm not really a big reader, not a big fan of books in the first place.
I have assiduously avoided calling my books novels.
No one bothered reading the books and understanding - and again, I'm not being high-falutin' about it - but I think our books are great literature with great metaphors of real life dealing with fears and hopes.
I am a writer of books in retrospect. I talk in order to understand; I teach in order to learn.
The fact that books today are mostly a string of words makes it easier to forget the text. With the impact of the iPad and the future of the book being up for re-imagination, I wonder whether we'll rediscover the importance of making texts richer visually.
When I wrote the first Betsy book, 'Undead and Unwed,' I had no idea, none, that it would be a career-defining, genre-defining book, the first of over a dozen in the series, the first of over 70 published books, the first on my road to the best-seller list, the first on my road to being published in 15 countries.
We shouldn't teach great books; we should teach a love of reading.
My first book was signed up when I was 13, and I've been writing ever since. But penning the 'Halo' series has been so much more rewarding than I ever expected. For three years, from the age of 16 to 19, I poured my life, my experiences, and a love for the supernatural that dates back to childhood into these books.
I'm one of those writers who, when writing, believes she's god-and that she hasn't bestowed free will on any of her characters. In that sense there are no surprises in any of my books.
I don't have a favorite author; I have favorite books. 'Moby Dick' is a favorite book, but Melville was a drunk who beat his wife. 'Moveable Feast' by Hemingway, but I would not like him personally. He was a stupid macho person who believed in shooting animals for fun, but that book was incredible!
I get really flowery and verbose in my adult books, but I don't think I dumb down my Y.A. It's just cleaner and more snappy. And the adult books have multiple points-of-view. In my Y.A., it's always third person from the main character's perspective.
I am a frustrated saxophone player. If I could, I would abandon all of my books, and I would trade it all if I could play the way people I admire play.
There is a huge fan base; they're very knowledgeable and very loyal. I was astonished - before I started working on the series, I didn't know anything about 'Game of Thrones.' I hadn't heard of the books.
I read a lot when I'm travelling and always have a couple of books on the go.
I had been very dismissive of popular fiction - in fact, I'd refused to read it. And then I started working on popular fiction, and I realised these books weren't the same as Hemingway, say, but they were good in a different way.
