It was in a stonecutter's house where I went to have a headstone made for Raftery's grave that I found a manuscript book of his poems, written out in the clear beautiful Irish characters.
The paradox of the English country house is that its state of permanent decline, the fact that its heyday is always behind it, is part of the seduction, just as it is part of the seduction of books in general.
People think I must have been turning cartwheels on the night I sealed the movie deal - which was only two days after sealing the book deal - but I was really quite terrified.
Having a lot of people suddenly depending on me to get the job done was a marvelous motivator. The book and movie deals seemed to flip a switch in my head, and off I went.
Books on horse racing subjects have never done well, and I am told that publishers had come to think of them as the literary version of box office poison.
I am a very linear thinker, so I write beginning to end. I write hundreds of pages per book that never make it into print.
I have always been a writer of letters, and of long ones; so, when I first thought of writing a book in the form of letters, I knew that I could do it quickly and easily.
My brother used to say that I wrote faster than he could read. He wrote two books - of poems - better than all mine put together.
She trailed her fingers along the book spines as she wandered around the room. “My father thinks reading is a waste of time.” Hunter thought her father was a waste of space.
I have always been an obsessive reader - I remember going back and forth to the local library with stacks of books taller than I was.
It's interesting that so many books now are published as the first in a series. It never occurred to me. Although 'The Giver' does have an ambiguous ending. I've heard about that from readers over the years.
Often in the past, there have been authors that were deeply disappointed in their adaptation, but that's because they haven't accepted the fact that a movie is a different thing, and it can't possibly be the same as the book.
If you write a book about a bygone period that lies east of the Mississippi River, then it's a historical novel. If it's west of the Mississippi, it's a western, a different category. There's no sense to it.
You eat canned tuna fish and you absorb protein. Then, if you're lucky, someone give you Dover Sole and you experience nourishment. It's the same with books.
Dialogue is the place that books are most alive and forge the most direct connection with readers. It is also where we as writers discover our characters and allow them to become real.
I guess another message I'd like to say with this book is no matter how many times you fail... I failed a lot of times trying to get clean, and never thought I'd get to this point.
Nobody's favorite movie is some dark, dysfunctional slasher story. Everybody's favorite song is a sentimental song. So why all of a sudden is it bad to be sentimental in books?
I once tried to write a novel about revenge. It's the only book I didn't finish. I couldn't get into the mind of the person who was plotting vengeance.
The brilliance of Max Brooks is that he always quotes authorities at the back of his books that never existed. Like a Russian professor he made up that validates a story or character.
I think the thing I had to be careful about while writing a book was not to say anything that was revealing about other people that they would be uncomfortable with. I didn't want to make people angry - that's a real risk.
A good story or a book is all about it's power to hold it's readers still till the very last word of it's climax - complexity in language, dialogues, descriptions, everything else is secondary!
