A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man's life as in a book. Haste makes waste, no less in life than in housekeeping. Keep the time, observe the hours of the universe, not of the cars.
There are reasons people seek escape in books, and one of those reasons is that the boundary of what can happen is beyond what we do - or would want to see in real life.
I wrote my first books when I was single and then I got married and then had a kid and there were different things happening in my life.
There was a day where I was sitting at my desk, working 90-hour work weeks, in a suit, looking at a computer, with all these pitch books on my desk, and I just thought, 'This can't be my life.'
Characters develop as the book progresses, but any that start to bore me end up in the wastepaper basket. In real life, we may have to put up with tedious people, but not in novels.
There are no makeovers in my books. The ugly duckling does not become a beautiful swan. She becomes a confident duck able to take charge of her own life and problems.
A reactionary is someone who wants to return to a previous state - that's never a possibility in my books. For me, everything's irreversible in the life of a society, as well as an individual's.
A fine book, in the perfect setting, when there's all the time in the world to read it: Life holds greater joys, but none come to mind just now.
A life spent largely among books, and in the exercise of a literary profession, has very obvious drawbacks, as a subject-matter, when one comes to write about it.
I had a complicated life until I was 25. I was born in Bristol and was brought up by my mum and my stepfather in Edinburgh. He introduced me to books.
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.
I wanted all my life to give my world into other arts - books, plays, movies - but I didn't want to sell out.
I have known Farley Mowat all of my life, from reading his books as a child to becoming a close friend of his over the last three decades.
Every time I write a book, I've probably taken five years off my life.
Horror can be contained within a book, given form and meaning. But in life, horror has no more form than it does meaning. Horror just is.
If books were Persian carpets, one would not look only at the outer side. because it is the stitch that makes a carpet wear, gives it its life and bloom.
What I would do is when I was younger I would draw in a sketch book something that happened in my life and then write a little something on the side about what happened or what the story.
I've never turned into a bee - I've never been chased by a mummy or met a ghost. But many of the ideas in my books are suggested by real life.
I write about myself with the same pencil and in the same exercise book as about him. It is no longer I, but another whose life is just beginning.
While books provided me with some escape from the mental and physical horrors of my early life, they were unreliable. Many times the protagonists suffered terribly and then died at the end.
What I've always tried to find in my books are points at which the private lives of the characters, and also my own, intersect with the public life of the culture.
