Every book I've written has been a different attempt to understand something, and the success or failure of the previous one is irrelevant. I write the book I want.
The concentration in my book on Marie Antoinette's childhood and on her family influences. It is surprising how some books actually start with her arrival in France!
I read a book a day when I was a kid. My family was not literary; we did not have any books in the house.
With the crime novels, it's delightful to have protagonists I can revisit in book after book. It's like having a fictitious family.
The Cemetery of Forgotten Books is a metaphor, not just for books but for ideas, for language, for knowledge, for beauty, for all the things that make us human, for collecting memory.
Really, when I write a book I'm the only one I have to please. That's the beauty of writing a book instead of a screenplay.
McSweeney's as a publishing company is built on a business model that only works when we sell physical books. So we try to put a lot of effort into the design and production of the book-as-object.
I don't read many business books. I read good fiction. Business is about people, so my favorite business books are anything by Dickens.
I change my method and field of reference from book to book because I can never believe in the same thing two times running.
Every city and town in America would be bankrupt if they kept their books the way private-sector companies keep their books - because of the obligation cities and towns have taken upon themselves to provide health care for their retirees.
I always knew that I wanted to live with books, even as a child, because we traveled a lot. Home was the book to which I came back every evening.
If I'm home with no chore at hand, and a package of books has come, the television set and the chess board and the unanswered mail will have to manage without me if one of the books is a detective story.
When we had to do book reports, I would pick a book that no one read and just make it up and turn that in. I got praised for my imagination.
Most books, like their authors, are born to die; of only a few books can it be said that death has no dominion over them; they live, and their influence lives forever.
No one bothered reading the books and understanding - and again, I'm not being high-falutin' about it - but I think our books are great literature with great metaphors of real life dealing with fears and hopes.
A great comic-book cover occurs when it gets a potential reader to pick the book up and start thumbing through it. That's a comic cover's job: Attract someone's attention, and persuade them to try the issue out.
E-books are great for instant gratification - you see a review somewhere of a book that interests you, and you can start reading it five minutes later.
I don't usually read self-help books, but I read a great book by a guy called Wayne Dyer: 'The Power of Intention,' which I loved.
I love to read books that focus on parenting topics because there are so many different ways to do things. I find these books offer a lot of great opinions on many different subjects.
Preachers in pulpits talked about what a great message is in the book. No matter what you do, somebody always imputes meaning into your books.
All Oprah needs is a good book. My only request when she's building any house is, 'Could I please have a TV in my bedroom?'
