I'm not the next J. K. Rowling. We've got one already. It's flattering to be compared to her. I like her books and loved the first three particularly, but apart from the fact that they've got young boys as heroes, they're very different.
America is a great disappointment to me. As I said in one of my books, other societies create civilisations; we build shopping malls.
Finding people who get enormous pleasure from reading books is a more and more unusual experience, and so writers just so much want to be heard.
Managers of hospitals over the years have been increasingly recruited from outside the health service, and although their experience of running a supermarket chain might allow them to balance the books, it does not mean they have any insight into how a ward should be managed and patients best served.
I always used to look at books and wonder how anybody could come up with so many words. But my divorce and then falling in love with somebody else has released in me an ability to write in other ways apart from songs.
I do not think I will ever write screenplays based on my books. I would not know what to cut out and what portions to keep. I like all the characters I have created. I cannot imagine chopping them off.
Robin Wasserman is the author of several books, including 'Hacking Harvard,' 'Chasing Yesterday,' 'Seven Deadly Sins,' and her latest, 'Skinned.'
I read one or two other books which gave me a background in mathematics other than logic.
I read my father's books growing up. I thought then and I still think now that his writing is wonderful. It delights and infuriates me in equal measure that he's still that good.
Books don't live and die by awards. You don't listen to an Hector Lavoe album because it won some awards.
The American people are screaming out saying it's unfair that the wealthiest, the largest corporations who can afford the best attorneys, the best accountants, take advantage of these special tax treatments that the lobbyists have, along with lawmakers, have cooked in the books here.
I don't read books by people who have betrayed the Motherland.
Most people - and particularly people whose lives have nothing to do with books at all - are intrigued by the idea that somebody wants to listen to them and get it right.
Once upon a time, I sat in my mother's lap as she turned the pages of Golden Books, and I gradually learned to read.
My books are written with a strong chronological spine.
I thought a dignified thing to do would be to live in the country by the time I'm 50 and write books.
There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.
History books that contain no lies are extremely dull.
I consume an enormous number of books, but they're always on a particular subject because I'm obsessive.
I have 800 books of just Samuel Beckett's work, tons of his correspondence, personal letters that he wrote. I have copies of plays he used when he directed, so all of his handwritten notes are in the corners of the page.
My father was the child of academics and was probably destined to become an academic himself but vetoed that idea. Bailed, dropped out of graduate school and just went to work for an insurance company. But the house was full of books and music and all of that.
Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing.
I enjoy adapting my own work, or anybody's work. I like to adapt books.
We are motivated by a keen desire for praise, and the better a man is the more he is inspired by glory. The very philosophers themselves, even in those books which they write in contempt of glory, inscribe their names.
I don't think Ripley is gay. He appreciates good looks in other men, that's true. But he's married in later books. I'm not saying he's very strong in the sex department. But he makes it in bed with his wife.
I love meeting fans. The people who are fans of my books are really smart and dedicated, because some independent comics are hard to get. I will drive all the way to Pittsburgh or Detroit to put it in their hands.
And this, our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.
I read a whole lot as a child, and, of course, I still read children's books.
Go out and find a copy of 'The Shrinking Of Treehorn' and its sequel, 'Treehorn's Treasure.' Written by Florence Parry Heide and illustrated by the great Edward Gorey, master of the gothic and the macabre, these books are small masterpieces.
There are too many books I haven't read, too many places I haven't seen, too many memories I haven't kept long enough.
I know many older writers who were very successful and whose books are now out of print, so you have to go to antiquarian booksellers to buy their fifth or eighth novel or whatever it is.
I don't know why records are treated different than books. I don't know why an Eminem record is different than a Stephen King movie.
Outside books, we avoid colorful characters.
There have been more books alone written about Hamlet than have been written about the Bible.
Mr. Arthur Ashe, he was good. I read some of his books. He knew about everything, but he was real quiet and didn't talk much. I never met him.
People love Jane Austen, even though those books are absurd to us, because we like the clarity of it: we can see very clearly what Elizabeth Bennett has to overcome, what she has to deal with.
