My wife likes me to point out that she puts our daughter down to sleep more often than I do, which gives me time to write stupid books about it.
I used to walk in a bookstore and see all these books on the walls. And I would say, 'Who wants to hear from me? What do I have to add to all of this?'
I read the 'Twilight' books before the movie and the whole craze happened. And then I loved it. I was in love with Edward before every other girl that says she's in love with him was. Because I read them a long time ago shooting a movie in Salt Lake City, and one of Stephenie Meyer's friends said, 'Make sure you read my friend's book.'
One of the dominant styles of the decade following the Second World War was that of Dan Barry. He flourished in the years during which comic books were expanding into new categories - realistic adventure, true crime, romance, Western, sophisticated fantasy.
Usually, if I can't fall asleep, you will find me catching up on a good book or zoning out with an episode of 'The Real Housewives.' I always have a couple books on my bedside table in various stages of completion.
Some of my own books are being developed - one as a Broadway musical.
Changes can be made. New decisions can be made. If people say, 'It's not like that in the comics!' Well, comic books reinvent their characters a lot. They do different things with them all the time. They're always changing, always keeping things fresh. So that shouldn't be an issue if the race changes for a character.
People really want to set up these rivalries because there's a lot of vampire books out there. People want to believe we're all fierce rivals, and really there's just so much camaraderie with authors. Everyone kind of boosts each other.
Books are wonderful. They are like people, except they mind less when you put them down and wander off to eat something.
Instead of books, art, theatre, and music being consigned to specialized niches, we might have a criticism that better reflects the eclecticism of our time, a criticism that takes in various arts all at once.
I focus a little more on pacing when I write books in the young adult category, and of course there's the great American fear of anything sexual, so that's somewhat backed off in YA.
Books constitute capital. A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not, then, an article of mere consumption but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital.
In 1971, when I was 29, I wrote my first volume of poetry. I am a poet, and I have published four books of my poems.
I don't think any of my kids' books talk down to kids.
Couldn't imagine any other way of living, outside of books, outside my work. Which doesn't mean I am not interested in other things, of course - I am interested in many things. But the center, the crux, is always literature.
I've read plenty of amazing science pieces where the writers don't hang out in labs. I just have fun doing it. And I get rewarded for it; I get gushy, especially when kids tell me they expected to be bored by my books, but weren't.
Every child is different. I think it's important that we don't have maybe just one or two books that we're recommending to all children - but rather we cater the books to fit each individual child.
I think the films we see, the Hollywood films, which are basically entertainment, will still be there, but they'll be in a totally different category. People won't take them seriously. They'll kind of end up the way comic books have. A side view of things.
In the early '70s - a very good time for children's books and their authors - editors and publishers were willing to take a chance on a new writer. They were willing and able to invest their time in nurturing writers with promise, encouraging them.
I've spoken in every state in the union, meeting and hugging the people who later bought my books. I spoke to anybody who wanted to hear me, including 1,000 nuns who could pay me only with homemade bread.
But I've been at writing long enough now to know that every three or four books I have to start a new direction.
One of the very first serious books I read when I was growing up was 'Atlas Shrugged.'
Rachel Cusk's books are like pop-up volumes for grown-ups, the prose springing out of the page to bop you neatly between the eyes with its insights.
You can imprison but you can't enslave a man who argues with his books.
I want to serve chess through games, books that are works of art. I would like to bring the game closer to many people all over the world.
I feel somewhat responsible for the Borders Books bankruptcy.
The business model - where books can be returned, and where a 50% sell-through is considered acceptable - is archaic and wasteful. Writers get small royalties, little say in how their books are marketed and sold, and simple things like cover and title approval are unheard of unless you're a huge bestseller.
I write about characters that interest me. And I don't think of my books as being forms of entertainment.
I just try to write entertaining books that are easily identifiable.
The last 200 years, we've had an incredible amount of automation. We have tractors that do the work that horses and people used to do on farms. We don't dig ditches by hand anymore. We don't pound tools out of wrought iron. We don't do bookkeeping with books! But this has not, in net, reduced the amount of employment.
Why am I working so hard? Going for 400 books, perhaps, but who's really counting?
The first books I remember having an impact on me when I was a kid were L. Frank Baum's 'Oz' books, which were much stranger than the movie: at once rather whimsical and really dark.
I like to write about a lot of things, which is why my books are different. This is probably why I don't like to write sequels, but chiefly I like to write about people.
I got an assistantship in physics at the University of Illinois, and I tore up my steno books.
I began tailoring my books to cater to one or another universe of readers. I found it incredibly boring; and frankly, it felt stultifying. I'd previously been in advertising. I felt if I was going to create something to fit a specific market, I might as well have stayed with advertising.
If I had to put a name to it, I would wish that all my books were entertainments. I think the first thing you've got to do is grab the reader by the ear, and make him sit down and listen. Make him laugh, make him feel. We all want to be entertained at a very high level.
