The writing is really important in books that affect me. I read for the writing. The story is usually of less interest to me. It's the words that break your heart.
'Out' was my real breakthrough, the novel that became a hit in Japan and sold a lot of books, so it was sort of an obvious choice for being the first book to be translated into English.
I'm not a nerd, don't plan to be a nerd and read books - which I can't do at all.
While books expand horizons by exposing us to worlds outside our own, children also need to see themselves, their experiences and their cultures reflected in books they read. Unfortunately, for too many children, this is not the norm.
Somehow, I realized I could write books about black characters who reflected my own experiences or otherworldly experiences - not just stories of history, poverty and oppression.
The printing press did something really big for the world when everyone could get books in their hands and read.
I've never been willing to commit to more than one at a time, because I just don't know - I don't plan the books out ahead of time. So I have no idea how much ground we'll cover.
When you're 8 years old, and you've become subconsciously familiar with the layout and design of Black Sparrow books, and you know the difference between Miles Davis and John Coltrane, something is bound to stick.
I read a lot of 'Nancy Drew' books as a kid and considered myself a bit of an amateur detective.
The paradox of the English country house is that its state of permanent decline, the fact that its heyday is always behind it, is part of the seduction, just as it is part of the seduction of books in general.
When you have an iPad and 75 books on it, it's so easy to go, 'I'm bored, I'm just going to read something else.'
Naturally, I mine my girlfriends' lives for good anecdotes and stories - so many of their experiences find their way into my books.
Ultimately, there's always been a link between comic books and video games, and comic books and movies, and then basically all three steadily becoming this sort of transmedia.
I hope that in my books there's an undertone of politics, basic tenets of how we should live.
I'd never heard of the 'Lord of the Rings', actually. So I went to the bookstore and there it was, three shelves of books about Tolkien and Middle-earth, and I was like, 'Holy cow, what else am I missing out on?'
I write at a pace that suits me, and sometimes it's two books a year, but most often it's one.
It's important to not marginalize any people group in fiction. A complete, authentic-feeling world should include many different elements of life and culture. For this reason, my books will almost always contain people of faith.
One of my first favorite books was 'The 12 Days of Christmas,' and I would just go up to people and say, 'I can sing 'The 12 Days of Christmas,' and I would make them sit through me reciting it, and I'd go all the way, each time. I've always hooked into lyrics.
Whereas Books of Wonder excels with children's literature, McNally Jackson is where I go for my adult new releases, and no, it has nothing to do with the fact that Taylor Swift shops there, too.
Early on I came to realize something, and it came from the mail I received from kids. That is, kids at that pivotal age, 12, 13 or 14, they're still deeply affected by what they read, some are changed by what they read, books can change the way they feel about the world in general. I don't think that's true of adults as much.
If people buy my books for vanity, I consider it a tax on idiocy.
Most Americans and other Westerners claim to have read all or part of the Bible. However, when asked to identify even four books of the Bible or four of Jesus' disciples or four of the Ten Commandments, fewer than half even attempt to respond and fewer than one in ten respond correctly.
Most books set in England between 1800 and 1840 have a 'Regency' feel. The reason that era is so useful for romance authors stems from the wide-ranging social changes that were occurring over that time, and the parallels, or echoes, those create with our time and the lives of our readers.
I want things to be better all the time. And I tend to get angry about that. Books are an opportunity to vent.
Looking back, I see that I write books about brothers and sisters, about what makes up a family, what works and what is nurturing.
It's often the case that the most strained moments in books are the very beginning and the very end - the getting in and the getting out. The ending, especially: it's awkward, as if the writer doesn't know when the book is over and nervously says it all again.
I'd actually read the 'Twilight' books and seen the movies, and I was a fan.
I've only cried at one book, but I'm too embarrassed to tell you which. It wasn't terribly intellectual. I will admit, though, to crying when I've read books aloud to my elementary class. We read a biography of Gandhi once, and it was very difficult to read the part where Gandhi was killed, because they were waiting for a happy ending.
Peter Fleming was a famous English traveler, explorer and adventurer, whose non-fiction books were hugely successful. My father owned signed copies of all of them - he and Peter Fleming had become acquainted over some detail of set design at the Korda film studio in Shepperton - and I had read each of them with breathless adolescent excitement.
I love reading religious authors. Especially in the sort of circle I move in, people tend to be more secular, and I love reading books by just really smart people of religious faith. It's always a really cool perspective.
I was wrapping up my stint on 'Daredevil' co-writing with Andy Diggle during the Shadowland story, when Marvel asked if I was interested in doing something else with DD but a bit different. When they explained the purpose of the 'Season One' books, I was intrigued - I'm a big advocate of books for people new to the medium - and said yes.
Books externalise our brains and turn our homes into thinking bodies.
When I went through the Simpson case, I was a cop. Then I was a good cop. Then I was a bad cop. Then I had the media camped out in front of my house when I retired. Then, you know, I am the evilest thing on the planet. Then I write a few books, and then I start getting involved, like the Martha Moxley case.
I love building out the worlds of my fiction with fictional books.
My father spent his entire early career as an illustrator for comic books: EC Comics like 'Tales from the Crypt' and 'Creepshow,' then moving on to such magazines as 'Mad' and 'Weird Science.'
I thought that, post-apartheid, there would be absolutely no interest in South Africa. That has been both true and untrue. The major writers like Gordimer and Coetzee have produced major books. But some of the more minor writers have drifted away.
