I remember I used to come up to my teacher crying because I couldn't read. She would say: 'You can do this. You just don't want to do this.'
People ask me why I write strong women, and I say, 'Well, I don't like stupid ones.' Who would want to read about weak and whiny women? Are they people who assume women are weak and whiny? If so, why do they think that?
Cancer is too real, and too awful, and I can't make it good or magical. I couldn't even read a book where a character had cancer, for a while... But now I've reached a point where I don't think about cancer nonstop anymore, and sometimes I worry about that - I'm going to forget what I went through; I'm going to forget how horrible it was.
I'm a huge Cormac McCarthy fan and have read every book of his.
If you read a lot of Chinese literature, there has always been very strong women figures - warriors, swordswomen - who defended honor and loyalty with the men. So, it's not new to our culture - it's always been very much a part of it. It's good that now the Western audience would have a different image of the Chinese women.
When I had a baby, I didn't leave the second floor for six months. I nursed my babies. I was a full-time homemaker. I taught them all how to read before I let them go to school. So I gave them that care in the early life that somehow feminists have been led to believe is demeaning and is not worth the time of an educated woman.
Of course, you can't legislate for how people are going to read.
I write for whoever needs to read it.
You see, I am trying in all my stories to get the feeling of the actual life across - not to just depict life - or criticize it - but to actually make it alive. So that when you have read something by me, you actually experience the thing. You can't do this without putting in the bad and the ugly as well as what is beautiful.
Readers want to visualize your story as they read it. The more exact words you give them, the more clearly they see it, smell it, hear it, taste it. Thus, a dog should be an 'Airedale,' not just a 'dog.' A taste should not be merely 'good' but 'creamy and sweet' or 'sharply salty' or 'buttery on the tongue.'
When I'm in America, I like to be near the sea, listen to music, watch films, read and write.
Blogging is great, and I read blogs all day long. However, my goal is really to have a deep, meaningful discussion with people. For some reason, I'm able to accomplish this best via email.
I do have a personal life. I spend half of the week at home. One of those nights, I'll go out with some friends and have a good time. I have a day and a half at home, and love to just sit on my backyard by my pool, read a book, or do some writing. That's my vacation.
I would like to know that when I read the paper in the morning, it's telling me something that actually happened, and I think the vast majority of journalists want the same thing.
I first read 'Madame Bovary' in my teens or early twenties.
I love 'The Stand;' I read it when I was a kid - it was one of my favorite books when I was growing up. I love Stephen King; I think he's a remarkable writer.
I didn't want to do a book just to do a book. I wanted to do a book that, if you should read it, you might take one thing from it. Until that was clear in my mind, I wasn't going to do one.
My mother taught me to read in part by reading me Walt Disney comics, and I never stopped.
I don't really know the story of the Pied Piper. I don't read stories, first of all. I just remember either a rabbit or a rat leading people out of the village with a flute. That's all I can tell you.
It's a fairly common phenomenon of London life - people having fully developed critiques of books they haven't read and films they haven't seen. I'd probably include myself in that.
'Peanuts' is a life-long influence, going back to before I could even read.
I like the idea of the audience absorbing the language and getting to understand it as they journey through the film. It starts off being more obscure, but you get used to it. A 'Clockwork Orange' thing. I read 'Clockwork Orange' without any vocabulary, and I got to understand the words as I went through it. I like that process. It immerses you.
I've read a lot of war writing, even World War I writing, the British war poetry of Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves's memoir 'Goodbye to All That,' and a civilian memoir, 'Testament of Youth,' by Vera Brittain.
Learning to read the Bible in the light of the times in which it was written is critical. Reading it uncritically, without understanding the cultural and historical setting of the text, leaves us forced to accept scientific and sociological norms of the ancient Near East from 3,000 years ago.
I don't go back and read my own stuff too much, but there are times where I second-guess myself and said I could have done something different, like a line of dialogue.
The HoLee model was the first term structure model. I remember reading their paper soon after it was published and as it was fairly different from many of the other papers that I had read, I had to read it quite a few times. I realized that it was a really important paper.
I read somewhere that when I go on stage, people realize that they're not me and they feel better. When I walk off the stage, people know who I really am. I'm not saying it's great comedy, cool comedy or better comedy - but that's what I do, and I do it first for myself.
When I was 13 or 14, my mother used to gift me books that I was dying to read. Those are my most memorable birthday gifts.
I don't have regular TV; I have Apple TV, so I pick what I watch, which is perhaps not a good thing. I read all the big publications and also listen to a lot of podcasts.
Sometimes I get to see a movie that's adapted from a book that I haven't heard about or that I love the movie so much that I will, of course, read the book.
What is the Geneva Convention on wars! I have never read it.
Yes, I was the child who would sneak into her closet and read 'Nancy Drew' for hours after the designated 'lights out' time of night.
You've read the Torah, right? So you know the Torah defines marriage as being between one man and one woman.
My wife read Narc as well and was really into it.
Solitude is very different from a 'time-out' from our busy lives. Solitude is the very ground from which community grows. Whenever we pray alone, study, read, write, or simply spend quiet time away from the places where we interact with each other directly, we are potentially opened for a deeper intimacy with each other.
I'm pretty money savvy. My dad made me read 'Rich Dad Poor Dad' when I was 12 - this investing book about how to manage your money and be smart. So I'm kind of like a grandmother.
