The one thing I regret is that I will never have time to read all the books I want to read.
Publishers like a good buzz, and negative responses sell books just as well as positive ones.
Blake has always been a favorite, the lyrics, not so much the prophetic books, but I suppose Yeats influenced me more as a young poet, and the American, Robert Frost.
Writers are troubled about finding time to write and writer's block and publicizing books that aren't books yet. They agonize over how to write and what to write and what not to write.
Whites were the winners, blacks were the losers, we wrote the history books, and they didn't feature.
I love the idea that we put in jokes the kids don't get. And that later, when they grow up and read a few books and go to college and watch the show again, they can get it on a completely different level.
I knew people were independently publishing, and I buy books on Amazon. I began seriously considering it when Amanda Hocking was in the news about her self-publishing success.
Probably all the books I've ever written have been efforts to define the boundaries of humanity.
I don't just want my books to be about the '30s and '40s. I want them to read as if they had been written then. I think of them as '40s novels, written in the conservative narrative past.
The best way to obtain truth and wisdom is not to ask from books, but to go to God in prayer, and obtain divine teaching.
I have copies of the books my grandfather illustrated for Scribner's in each house. I read those books all the time.
My books are, in a way, a record of my life - that part of it that came to flower and fruit in my mind.
I don't keep any copy of my books around... they would embarass me. When I finish writing my books, I kick them in the belly, and have done with them.
I like books that expose me to people unlike me and books that do battle against caricature or simplification. That, to me, is the heroic in fiction.
Listen, my day job is also Chief Creative Officer for Marvel, and it's a very painful job because we publish a lot of books, and there are things I see where I can punch people out. Therefore, we have some new people now, and the kids are going to read our books.
The fact is that our kids aren't reading books - or frankly, much of anything lately. Schools are under funded, some schools even closing their libraries. Parents have to realize that it's their job, and not the school's job, to get kids into the habit of reading for fun.
In the 1970s and early '80s, Shanghai was quiet, cautious, a ghost of a once-great city - and yet physically, little was changed from its glittering heyday. When visiting, I enjoyed reading books on local history and used my time off to scope out the former haunts of gangsters and jazzmen.
I love the idea of cooking, but I don't like using recipe books, so I'll put a mish-mash together, and it might be amazing by total accident, or it will be a catastrophe.
I'm very comfortable with myself and my sexuality, but it doesn't define me. I also read books believe it or not.
There aren't any fences to the imagination, and so there shouldn't be any for books.
It is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with superior minds. In the best books, great men talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their souls into ours.
I'm happy to work until I'm 70 if I'm able to. Actually, I'm happy to keep writing as long as people keep buying my books.
If I could go back in time and tell my younger self that eventually that I'd become very successful writing Dune books after Frank Herbert's death, I would have laughed myself silly, I think, at how strange that prospect would be.
My parents were Northern Ireland Labour party people. We read the 'Guardian' and the 'New Statesman,' listened to the BBC. The house was full of books. We didn't get a television until 'That Was The Week That Was' started. There was nothing to do but read.
The love of learning, the sequestered nooks, And all the sweet serenity of books.
I've had many of my books optioned.
The multitude of books is making us ignorant.
The thing about Marvel is that they're not - they're into real acting. They're looking for artists that are willing to take chances and are willing to create characters. Even if that character has been around for years and years in comic books, they still are depending on us to create something and take it somewhere else.
All books are either dreams or swords, you can cut, or you can drug, with words.
The best books of our times have included the three mature volumes of Philip Larkin. They're very short books of poems, and very carefully arranged.
I haven't been very enthusiastic about the commercialization of children's literature. Kids should borrow books from the library and not necessarily be buying them.
When I die there may be a paragraph or two in the newspapers. My name will linger in the British Museum Reading Room catalogue for a space at the head of a long list of books for which no one will ever ask.
My first novel was turned down by about twenty publishers over a period of two and a half years. Because my name is Irish and would not be familiar to English editors, one of them said: 'If she writes anything else, do let us know.' Slowly, very slowly, the books began to sell and be noticed.
Most of us... are simply just trying to get through the day. And wait for those times in their life that are markers, that put things into relief. That's why we like movies and books so much.
People would react to books by authors like James and Austen almost on a gut level. I think it was not so much the message, because the best authors do not have obvious messages. These authors were disturbing to my students because of their perspectives on life.
I'd only read a bit of the first book. And I just knew about all the media furor over it. But I'd not read books 2 or 3. I'd just read a bit of it. And I'd seen the films.
