From a child I was fond of reading, and all the little money that came into my hands was ever laid out in books. Pleased with the 'Pilgrim's Progress,' my first collection was of John Bunyan's works in separate little volumes.
I collect books, primarily first-edition 20th-century fiction.
I don't write huge books any more. I used to write 1,000 printed pages, but now I write short books. I did one on Napoleon, 50,000 words - enjoyed doing that. He was a baddie. I did one on Churchill, which was a bestseller in New York, I'm glad to say. 50,000 words. He was a goodie.
Writing is a intensely personal activity. I can pen down my best thoughts when I'm alone. But when one is elevated into the stature of an author, you have to think about your books in terms of their business angle.
I don't often reread my own books, unless I am going into another in the series and need to refresh my mood when originating the concept.
The way I look at it, movies are a different medium for storytelling than books.
I did some feature work, then tried TV. I was always very aware that the only power that you have is the power of options. If the film industry dries up, then you focus on the TV or the books. For me, it was always about what story do I want to tell next?
My books are shelved in different places, depending on the bookstore. Sometimes they can be found in the Mystery section, sometimes in the Humor department, and occasionally even in the Literature aisle, which is somewhat astounding.
I was supposed to go to drama school and then go to New York and do theatre. But I grew up on all those fabulous movies and had read all the bold Hollywood books, and I thought I just had to take a look.
I think of an intellectual as just being bookish, being interested in history books, utopian ideas, that kind of thing.
In the 'Revelation Space' books, the spaceships are a bit old and rusty, and things go wrong, and they don't work quite how they're meant to. And people asked why I did it this way, and groping around for an explanation, I said that I grew up in Barry, this post-industrial sea town full of rusting infrastructure.
I organize a chess festival in Hungary. I support chess in schools, and I have my own chess foundation. And I started writing books.
In general, I write for ages 12 and up - although I've received emails from readers between the ages of seven and seventy. My books are science fiction.
Good books, like good friends, are few and chosen; the more select, the more enjoyable.
I'm constantly trying to mine the DNA of John Constantine and stay true to that character in the comic books.
What five books would I like to be remembered for? Well... Tau Zero, I like that one especially. It was somewhat of a tour de force, and I think it got across what I was trying for.
Why do we have a brain in the first place? Not to write books, articles, or plays; not to do science or play music. Brains develop because they are an expedient way of managing life in a body.
Deep-versed in books and shallow in himself.
I read a lot about her. I read a lot of bios. I read bios about the royal family; I read this little novella called 'The Uncommon Reader,' which is a fiction: it's about Queen Elizabeth going on this library bus and choosing books and reading them, but it's so sweet.
I guess I cringe when the discussion leads to, rather than books and sentences and characters and the stuff that writers are supposed to be concerned with, how to have an online presence and how many followers you have on Twitter. That stuff always makes me uncomfortable.
I've written books as acts of discovery: things I need to know and that I need to touch. And it's very dangerous work to deal with the most toxic internal elements... I feel like Madame Curie at my computer. I feel like I should be hemorrhaging from my eyes and ears.
I had a very wise mother. She always kept books that were my grade level in our house.
I mean, I wasn't stupid. I knew we'd make money and sell a lot of Dune books.
For 'American Born Chinese,' my first graphic novel with First Second Books, I did mostly 'memory' research. It's fiction, but I pulled heavily from my own childhood.
Books and movies are never finished, only surrendered.
If you want to cry, you're not going to like my books.
What a word is truth. Slippery, tricky, unreliable. I tried in these books to tell the truth.
I don't read books.
Movies are not scripts - movies are films; they're not books, they're not the theatre.
Since I can barely write two books a year the best solution seems to be co-author projects. My goal isn't to get another writer to clone me... it's more to produce a book that shares my vision of positive, fun entertainment.
Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind.
I feel when a writer treats a character as 'precious,' the writer runs the risk of turning them into a comic book character. There's nothing wrong with comic book characters in comic books, but I don't write comic books.
I do not remember any proper children's books in my childhood. I was not exposed to them.
Slightly embarrassing admission: Even when I was a kid, I used to have these little spy books, and I would, like, see what everybody was doing in my neighborhood and log it down.
If an army of monkeys were strumming on typewriters, they might write all the books in the British Museum.
A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.
