My ancestors fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War; I was raised in Natchez, Miss.; I performed in the Confederate Pageant for a decade; I dug ditches and loaded trucks with black men who taught me more than any book ever could; and I gradu...
Charlie Kaufman: ...But a little fantastic and fleeting and out of reach. Robert McKee: Then what happens? Charlie Kaufman: That's the end of the book. I wanted to present it simply without big character arcs or sensationalizing the story. I wanted t...
Rachel Stein aka Ellis de Vries: They're working off a list. Of Jews with money. They murder them. Gerben Kuipers: How do you know all this? Rachel Stein aka Ellis de Vries: Because I was set up myself! Because I've seen my entire family be slaughter...
Gerben Kuipers: Ellis, a girl didn't show up today. Would you replace her? Rachel Stein aka Ellis de Vries: Work is work, right? Gerben Kuipers: Even if it is dangerous? Rachel Stein aka Ellis de Vries: What have I got to lose? Gerben Kuipers: Your l...
Narrator: [voice-over] Barry's first taste of battle was only a skirmish against a small rearguard of Frenchmen who occupied an orchard beside a road down which, a few hours later, the English main force would wish to pass. Though this encounter is n...
Hedley Lamarr: Wait a minute... there might be legal precedent. Of course! Land-snatching! [grabs a law book] Hedley Lamarr: Land, land... "Land: see Snatch." [flips back several pages] Hedley Lamarr: Ah, Haley vs. United States. Haley: 7, United Sta...
Paul Varjak: They're not the kind of stories you can really tell. Holly Golightly: Too dirty? Paul Varjak: Yeah, I suppose they're dirty, too, but only incidentally. Mainly they're angry, sensitive, intensely felt, and that dirtiest of all dirty word...
When I'm doing a book tour in the States, I'll wake up in the room sometimes in an anonymous chain hotel, and I don't know where I am right away. I'll go to the window, and it doesn't help there either, especially if you're in an anonymous strip and ...
You know I'm a coffee-lover. Having coffee it's a kind of daily ritual that is done with my friends, my family and more often - with myself, when I'm alone at home with books and music. Coffee it is a way to celebrate my friendships, to show feelings...
To me, all creativity is magic. Ideas start out in the empty void of your head - and they end up as a material thing, like a book you can hold in your hand. That is the magical process. It's an alchemical thing. Yes, we do get the gold out of it but ...
Every single day, I get letters - very moving, overwhelming letters - testifying how much my books have meant to people in times of crisis in their lives, when they were very ill, say. If I ever doubted that writing could play an important part in pe...
I would imagine that anyone picking up a book written by me would expect a fast-paced story that requires minimal effort to turn the pages. The reader would also be looking for some out-of-the-ordinary revelations along the way. At the end of the day...
I'm one of those lucky guys making a living out of something I really enjoy doing. That's a blessing. But you never know. What if my subsequent book series flops? I don't come from a wealthy background, so I'd be left with no choice. I'd have to go b...
I hate homework. I hate it more now than I did when I was the one lugging textbooks and binders back and forth from school. The hour my children are seated at the kitchen table, their books spread out before them, the crumbs of their after-school sna...
Everybody has their own America, and then they have pieces of a fantasy America that they think is out there but they can’t see…So the fantasy corners of America…you’ve pieced them together from scenes in movies and music and lines from books...
I've been very lucky at what's happened in my career to date, but playing something as far from me as possible is an ambition of mine - anything from a mutated baddy in a comic book action thriller, to a detective. If anything, I'd like Gary Oldman's...
I lived with them in my studio in New York. And of course if I were doing that book today or even ten years, fifteen years later, I would have gone to where the wild ducks were and where I could study them - I would have gone to the country somewhere...
A lot of people still maintain genre prejudice. I still meet matrons who tell me kindly that their children enjoyed my books but of course they never read them, and people who make sure I know they don’t read that space-ship stuff. No, no, they rea...
My favorite passage from the book: "Sometimes we motivate ourselves by thinking of what we want to become. Sometimes we motivate ourselves by thinking about who we don't ever want to be again. Everything we do is part of who we are. How we choose to ...
I love reading. It gives me somewhere to be, somewhere to be accepted and somewhere to be found. But most of all, it's because I don't want to face reality. And who would? Not me! My life is too miserable and way too depressing. So until it gets bett...
[W]e wouldn't want to read a book about a perfect character who never struggles with character flaws, a difficult past, or interpersonal conflict. Writers can powerfully connect with readers when they venture to these thin places of pain and brokenne...
