Television and film are our libraries now. Our history books.
I like to be with my friends and my family, listen to music and read books. Things like that relax me.
Well, my books - I think one of the hallmarks of my thrillers is that they're based in reality.
I have so little patience with the whole Y.A. book thing. As far as I'm concerned, you either read books for children or you read books for adults.
J. K. Rowling is one of my favourite authors, and I really admire how she created this big wizarding world. But I think our books are very, very different, and I don't think there can be a next J. K. Rowling. She is one of a kind.
I can imagine a future in which real books will exist but in a more limited, particular way.
My father was an engineer - he wasn't literary, not a writer or a journalist, but he was one of the world's great readers. Every two weeks, he'd take me to our local branch library and pull books off the shelf for me, stacking them up in my arms - 'Have you read this? And this? And this?'
The biggest critics of my books are people who never read them.
I think really good books can be read by anybody.
We should be as careful of the books we read, as of the company we keep. The dead very often have more power than the living.
Some of the most famous books are the least worth reading. Their fame was due to their having done something that needed to be doing in their day. The work is done and the virtue of the book has expired.
I've been reading Greek mythology since I was a kid. I also taught it when I was a sixth grade teacher, so I knew a lot of mythological monsters already. Sometimes I still use books and Web sites to research, though. Every time I research Greek mythology, I learn something new!
And so for a couple of years my life was divided between my music and my school books.
There's this trouble with books for me because I'm terrible at thinking of titles. The truth is, even with the titles that I've landed on in the end, they always feel wrong. I think it's because of this whole problem of having to package your book in a certain way.
Giggs is the realest.
Entire books are being written about the distractions of social media. I don't believe media compel distraction, but I think it's clear that they afford it.
I am interested in writing how women really feel, how they really think, and how they respond to men. I don't want men reading my books because they might find out too much.
There are relatively few science fiction or fantasy books with the main character being an old person.
I offer detailed but mostly invented narratives about the provenance of my books.
A lot of illustrators have one central character and then they develop it, and all their books are based around it. But that was not my wish. I wanted to introduce children to the whole creative side of many aspects of life.
I love being in the archives, traveling, sitting in dusty places and looking at books with brittle pages. I love reading biographies and researching, to make myself informed about whatever political or historical time I'm writing about. From there, a lot of the emotional truths about my characters emerge.
I've been on this kick reading about the beginning of forensic science: autopsies, fingerprinting, psychological profiling. I've been reading a lot of books about forensic anthropology.
The reason why so few good books are written is that so few people who can write know anything.
I have a private press. I'm a book artist. I publish books of other authors and artists. I do the illustrating. I set the type. I print it myself on my press. I do everything but bind it.
A book is a fragile creature, it suffers the wear of time, it fears rodents, the elements and clumsy hands. so the librarian protects the books not only against mankind but also against nature and devotes his life to this war with the forces of oblivion.
Some books leave us free and some books make us free.
I was brought up in Zimbabwe, and there were seven of us in my family, so it was difficult to read aloud to us all. There weren't that many picture books around in the Fifties in Zimbabwe. My favourite was Heinrich Hoffmann's Struwwelpeter, which was really frightening.
Without books I would not have become a vivacious reader, and if you are not a reader you are not a writer.
My interest in society - at times so pronounced that the word 'snob' comes a little to mind - derives from the fact that I like an immense number of things which society, money, and position bring in their train: painting, tapestries, rare books, smart dresses, dances, gardens, country houses, correct cuisine, and pretty women.
To tell the truth, I don't read children's books. I'm an adult. I just write them.
I played Little League for one year. That was it. Then my mother realized I liked books and threatened my father. I owe her forever for that.
Books stay with me and have shaped me and made huge impacts on my life.
It was 1966 by the time I started taking pictures seriously and books, newspapers and magazines of the time were full of great pictures that helped to inspire me.
You throw the kitchen sink at your early books. You put everything in there. It's like when you meet a new girlfriend or boyfriend, you tell them all your best stories. By the time you have been married for 10 years, they are crying, 'Shut up!'
So many books that have Christian characters but are written by atheists mercilessly pillory and mock and question the motives of people with faith. I'm past all that.
Sometimes, my books start with a scene I see in my mind, such as a woman in a wedding dress running away from her wedding like in 'Embers of Love.' Sometimes, a book can start with a character.
