Books that have become classics - books that have had their day and now get more praise than perusal - always remind me of retired colonels and majors and captains who, having reached the age limit, find themselves retired on half pay.
About my books, that's all that I think the public has, in its normal way, to know. My private life is, by definition, private.
People like to pigeonhole. People like to label - not just books and movies, but everything in their life. If people want to call me 'literary horror,' I guess that's fine. What I'm trying to do is be both thrilling and thought-provoking.
One of the biggest motivations for me with writing my books is to offer girls some escapism, especially girls who really need it, like I did.
Books on their own aren't insanely expensive compared to other things; three large cappuccinos cost more than a paperback, and two and a half gallons of gas cost more than a paperback.
I'm a novelist - not an expert on coal mining. I'm not a politician with an agenda to push. I'm not a reporter presenting facts, and I'm not a sociologist documenting the last struggling remnants of blue-collar America. I'm simply an author who sets her books in coal country because it's where I come from, and it's what I know.
I guess you could say I'm 'kind' to my past books in the way you might be kind to an old boyfriend you still quite like and bear no grudge against but with whom have absolutely no interest in getting back together.
My own daughter is a big fan of the 'Twilight' stories, the books.
My readers often tell me that what they admire about my books is my ability to write from so many points of view. My challenge to myself is whether I'll ever be able to write a novel just from one point of view. It seems impossible.
I hate SF books that think all you need to make a book is cool technology and mind-bending ideas without a decent plot or characters. And I hate when fantasy books are allowed to ramble off into five hundred page diatribes which don't advance the story one bit.
I look at 'The New York Review of Books.' It's what it has been for 35 or 40 years, which is a highly sophisticated vehicle for anti-American self-hatred.
When you're younger and you see something that really speaks to you, it's indelible in a way that's not the same as when you're an adult. So I'll always love reading books and making movies that resonate with young people.
We never had books at home, but my dad, seeing how keen I was to read, took me to Islington Library when I was about eight and we pulled out two - a Biggles and a science fiction novel. I never got the ace fighter pilot but fell in love with all things to do with the future and space. Isaac Asimov soon became my guiding star.
Seeing architecture differently from the way you see the rest of life is a bit weird. I believe one should be consistent in all that one does, from the books you read to the way you bring up your children. Everything you do is connected.
As far as I'm concerned, I'm a writer who's writing books, and therefore, I don't want to die. You'd miss the end of the book wouldn't you? You can't die with an unfinished book.
My mom is a self-taught home cook, so books that offer guidelines on how to organize menus are critical to 'cook from the book' people like her.
I was a member of Corstorphine Library in Edinburgh, and every Friday night, my parents took me there to borrow books. I also used to spend nearly all my pocket money on books.
I've always loved 'Before and After' stories, in books, magazines, and TV shows. Whenever I read those words, I'm hooked. The thought of a transformation - any kind of transformation - thrills me. And that's the promise of habits.
I don't collect books just because other people collect them, and I'm not going to have books in my collection if I think it's badly written.
The institution of a public library, containing books on education, would be well adapted for the information of teachers, many of whom are not able to purchase expensive publications on those subjects.
I don't think that books are wondrous, magical things that come from nowhere. It's important that a book has clues about where and how it was written.
All the books I was reading as a teenager were about individuals having adventures. So I thought that was what writers were supposed to do: to go out on the road.
Now my only income is a few royalty cheques from my books.
Printed books usually outlive bookstores and the publishers who brought them out. They sit around, demanding nothing, for decades. That's one of their nicest qualities - their brute persistence.
One of the biggest challenges of writing for middle-grade or even young-adult readers is that I don't want to have too much violence in it - which really limits what you can do. It's important that they're not just bloodbaths or glorifying violence. I always try to show that a person who dies leaves a hole. There's grief in my books.
There is a sort of theory that you should adapt bad books because they always make more successful films.
I'm in production year round. I work long hours. I have a dog and a wife. There's not a lot of available time for consuming any culture: T.V., movies, books. When I read, it's generally magazines, newspapers and web sites.
When I write a book... it's the same essential approach to music as with books. It has to be something I want to hear or read. Hopefully the audience comes along, since that's the only way you can write righteously. I have to ask, 'What do I want to hear?' not 'What do people want to hear?'
I can't throw books away. My wife is always telling me to get rid of some.
Doesn't anyone here think this sounds like a vision of hell? While we are all competing or dying, when will there be time for sex or music or books? Stop the world, I want to get off.
All good books have one thing in common - they are truer than if they had really happened.
I talked to Marvel about 'Thor' at one point, but I didn't want to do Thor. It wasn't something I read growing up, really; it wasn't one of the books I loved.
In the 20th century alone, there have been 1,600 books about the circus. My adding one more would be superfluous unless I do something totally new and different.
I grew up in a middle-class house without books, without art. No one around me wrote poetry or even read it.
From search and books to online TV and operating systems, antitrust affects our daily digital lives in more ways than we think.
I never talk about books in progress. I could decide to change it to a series of seafood recipes, after all.
