A man, to read, must read alone. He may make extracts, he may work at books in company; but to read, to absorb, he must be solitary.
I'm a political analyst. I'm a political wonk. I read everything I can get my hands on as a contributor to the 'Weekly Standard.' Of course I read that. I read the 'National Review' on the right. I read 'Mother Jones' on the left. If I want a good laugh, I'll watch MSNBC or read 'The Nation.'
I learned very early on in life that not everyone wants to hear every fact in the world, even if you want to tell them everything you've ever read.
A solid theatrical education can only improve a screen performance. It gives you a fuller capacity to read a script and understand a character, for one thing. It's important to alternate between the two activities.
It may come as a surprise to people, but I'm actually quite boring and normal. What do I do? I read books. I drive my kid to school. I have lunch with my wife. I pick my kid up from school. I go home.
I had read Harold Bloom's 'Where Shall Wisdom Be Found?' Late in his life, having read everything, Bloom asked which books had given him wisdom. I had just read a bunch of contemporary novels that had no wisdom for me.
I started playing guitar when I was eight. Well, I started piano and really liked it but never practiced, but it taught me how to read music, and then my mom signed me up for guitar lessons, and I connected to that way more.
No Tinder, no Match, nothing. I don't mind going up to people when I'm out. I have a better chance of getting a read on them that way.
I follow politics very closely. I read several newspapers every day.
I remember having to read 'The Old Man and the Sea,' and I didn't want to read it; I didn't want to like Ernest Hemingway. I was being a stubborn teenager.
I can't stand Anne Tyler books, but I gobble them up. It's like Updike - I can't stand him either, but I read everything he writes.
There's two tiers of science fiction: the McDonalds sci-fi like Star Trek, where they have an adventure and solve it before the last commercial, and there are books that once you've read, you never look at the world the same way again.
When I first read 'Lord of the Rings,' I wanted to see a film of it. But at that time, the technology wasn't there; there was no such thing as CGI.
I grew up in a family of Republicans. And when I was 18 and registering to vote, my mom's only instruction was 'You just go in and pull the big Republican lever.' That's my welcome to adulthood. She's like, 'No, don't even read it. Just pull the Republican lever.
I never know how to give advice to a writer because there's so much you could say, and it's hard to translate your own experience. But of course, I always try. The main thing that I usually end up saying is to read a lot. To read a great deal and to learn from that.
Well, there's just some universal truths in a way that I've just observed to be true. You read Voltaire. You read modern literature. Anywhere you go, there's these observations about romantic love and what it does people, and these rotten feelings that rarely are people meaning to do that to each other.
When I first started editing a 'Year's Best' volume in the '70s, the job was pretty straightforward - there were three or four monthly magazines to read and a few original anthologies from trade publishers every year.
Don't time travel into the past, roaming through the nuances as if they can change. Don't bookmark pages you've already read.
LL Cool J was a rapper-turned-actor, and I also relate to him because he was sort of a ladies' man and had a female fan base, but yet he's a positive dude. You never read about him getting into trouble or going to jail.
At a young age, I was interested in comic books, which was really how I learnt to read. The name Cage came from a comic book character called Power Man.
I still read Hemingway. I still read his short stories because they're so good. He doesn't waste any words.
'Skeleton Creek' is like nothing you've ever read before because it's a book and a movie at the same time.
I wonder what book signings will be like when most of the books we read are electronic. Will authors sign something else? A flyer, perhaps? A special kind of card devised for the purpose?
The library of my elementary school had this great biography section, and I read all of these paperback biographies until they were dog-eared. The story of Eleanor Roosevelt and Madame Curie and Martin Luther King and George Washington Carver and on and on and on.
My favorite author is David Baldacci; I've read all his books. I even have a picture with Baldacci taken during his book-signing in the States.
I like to read the paper online. And I love email. And I love nothing better than to be interrupted.
Literature has been part of my life for as long as I can remember. I can't think back before a time that I didn't love writing and reading. When I was really young, my mother would read poems to me. I loved Edgar Allan Poe - I am sure I didn't understand it, but I loved it.
While 'The Help' is in so many ways a celebration of these women's friendships and what they overcome, it's also very truthful and very painful, and it was intense for my mom to read that.
I majored in English in college, so I read the classic dystopian novels like '1984' and 'Brave New World.'
Well first of all, I think the phrase 'jump the shark' has jumped the shark. I read it in every article and I think that when Fonzie actually jumped the shark, 'Happy Days' was on the air for another five years.
Penmanship means a lot to me. I don't have cursive penmanship, though. I've created my own penmanship. It's very clear. Everyone can read it. I write things down all day long.
Stephen King's 'On Writing' is probably the most useful writing book I've ever read.
I read the 'Kapoor & Sons' script in a half hour, forty five minutes. Not because I skimming through it... I read it like a book. By the end, I was blown away. I picked up the phone and said, 'This script is gold.'
When I'm reading a script and I see the word 'lumbering' I go, 'Oh, that's probably the part they want me to read for.'
When I started off in journalism, you knew there was an audience out there and that you wanted people to read what you produced. But it also felt like you had a limited ability to shape the audience, or to acquire an audience, for what you were doing. So you didn't really think too much about that.
Usually I spend a long while working alone before letting anyone read what I've written.
