When it's in a book I don't think it'll hurt any more ...exist any more. One of the things writing does is wipe things out. Replace them.
He would give every penny he has (such is the malignity of the germ) to write one little book and become famous; yet all the gold in Peru will not buy him the treasure of a well-turned line.
Definition of rock journalism: People who can't write, doing interviews with people who can't think, in order to prepare articles for people who can't read.
The sacred books of our holy religion, as distinguished from the false and profane writings on which all other faiths are based.
A book called Life of Silence would get everyone talking. I should write it, using invisible ink. Or to really make it see-through, I should hire a ghostwriter.
I write books for young adults because I truly connect with them on some very deep level. They are our hope, our future, and inspiring them to be the best they can be is very important to me.
One of the best places for a shy person to meet people is in a coffee shop. If you are a reader, bring a book and read it there - that gives a guy something to ask you about. Same goes for sketching, writing, or any hobby you can take with you.
A book comes and says, 'Write me.' My job is to try to serve it to the best of my ability, which is never good enough, but all I can do is listen to it, do what it tells me and collaborate.
We are motivated by a keen desire for praise, and the better a man is the more he is inspired by glory. The very philosophers themselves, even in those books which they write in contempt of glory, inscribe their names.
That's why I haven't been so anxious. But now, lots of people write and say, 'I want to find out what you're doing.' So I know that this book will enlighten them.
No book includes the entire world. It's limited. And so it doesn't seem like an aesthetic compromise to have to do that. There's so much other material to write about.
But even before that, in 1980 I went so far as to write a book about what had happened. And I wrote all about the bank robbery, I went ahead and printed it even though I had no use immunity for it.
I had no idea I'd end up writing four books when I completed 'Mortal Engines.' I didn't even think it would find a publisher.
I think plays, like books, are endemic. They grow out of the soil of the writer and the place he's writing about. I think, you just can't move them about, you know.
I did not end up as broadly educated as my Cambridge colleagues, but I graduated probably better equipped to write a book on my chosen subject.
During the 1980s, when Japan's economy was roaring and people were writing books with titles like 'Japan is Number One,' most Japanese college students didn't make the effort to become fluent in English.
When I started to write 'Hannah's Child,' I realized that this had to be a book of passion, to have a certain kind of vulnerability. I think that people respond to that.
Even after I'd published three books and had been writing full-time for twenty years, my father continued to urge me to go to law school.
Writing a book with completely fictitious characters is like running a democracy, centered around a capital state. You constantly live with the fear & suspicion that one of the characters will start an uncontrollable rebellion.
I know what I want to achieve in each book and the major points, but I don't plan right down to the chapters. I think that the characters write themselves in some degree.
I said: 'I'm throwing in my job, and I'm going to write a book.' Everyone thought: 'She's off her trolley,' and it was quite crazy, really. I'm just lucky that it came off.
