I dream that one day I would be a published writer and people would read my books - if not, I would be living in the mountains in a small hut, near a pond where swans swim, writing a diary for myself.
I am a big outliner. For my adult book, 'The Visibles,' I did not outline, and it took me two years to write because I just didn't outline, and I had no path.
Writing historical fiction has many common traits with writing sci-fi or fantasy books. The past is another country - a very different world - and historical readers want to see, smell and touch what it was like living there.
I've been drawing authors and politicians for newspapers for many years. I try to read up on the person; in the case of authors, read one of their books. I watch interviews via YouTube and collect pictures via the Internet.
When the mind stops searching, when it stops wanting refuge, when it no longer goes in search of security, when it no longer craves more books and information, when it ignores even the memory of desire, only then will Love arrive within.
When a young reader tells you that they'd never finished a book outside of school until they read yours, or that they really needed to hear something that one of your characters says or thinks... that's just rewarding and humbling.
I read a book recently by a psychiatrist who was able to interview a few serial killers and she had a thesis on how you could figure these people out. And she thinks that there are things that could tell you whether someone has the potential to do th...
Once the words of a book appear onscreen, they are no longer simply themselves; they have become a part of something else. They now occupy the same space, not only as every other digital text, but as every other medium, too.
Predictability is boring! I want a book to take me someplace I haven't been before, show me sights I haven't seen, make me ponder questions I may not have pondered before.
People always tell me I'm nothing like my character. Well, hopefully not! He's a character who's very defined. He was purposefully written by Jo Rowling as very one-dimensional in the first few books, because you're supposed to hate him.
My brother and I spent our childhood in movie theaters screaming. I decided early on that that was the epitome of entertainment. I'm always trying for that same level of adrenaline in my books.
The terrible thing about the Internet and Amazon is that they take the magic and happy chaos out of book shopping. The Internet might give you what you want, but it won't give you what you need.
I never planned on doing a book about Paul Farmer or his organization. I met him in Haiti when I was on a magazine assignment. It's almost like his story sort of fell in my lap.
One of the comments that we've heard that has really blessed us is people have been driven back to the book of Revelation to prove us wrong only to find that what we said was there.
I think people would actually be surprised by what we put out. Unfortunately the shadow that the original founders cast was that they were just artists that can't write books so people swept the whole of Image with that paintbrush.
My parents were Northern Ireland Labour party people. We read the 'Guardian' and the 'New Statesman,' listened to the BBC. The house was full of books. We didn't get a television until 'That Was The Week That Was' started. There was nothing to do but...
Many things embarrass me, but reading isn't one of them. I'm not ashamed of my slightly weird collection of prison memoirs. Nor the flaky meditation books. After all, I can pretend I never read those.
For someone who loves literature, and all books on principle, being asked to name three titles over a half century of serious reading is akin to asking one to recall their three favorite sunsets.
Montrose decided then and there that a full library, one made of old-fashioned paper books with bindings, the kind that cannot be electronically re-edited by anonymous lines of hidden code, was just as much a necessity for a free man as a shooting ir...
[W]hat I like best is staying home and reading. Being rich is not about how many homes you own. It’s the freedom to pick up any book you want without looking at the price and wondering whether you can afford it.
A novel and its writer are inseparable: you are your books. A play's not like that at all. 'Abandonment's not mine - it's everyone's. I wanted it to be a co-operative thing because I was tired of that anal control that I have over novels.
