A new book is still on trial and the amateur is not in a position to judge it. It has to be tested against the great body of Christian thought down the ages and all its hidden implications (often unsuspected by the author himself) have to be brought ...
The books talked about it [the heart] as if it were a sump pump stuck down in the muck and mire of somebody’s backyard. Never in all my scientific reading did I encounter anything that talked about a broken heart. Never did I read anything about wh...
...you can't spend all your time alone…alone in your head…alone in your books…it's not healthy. We all need to learn to get along with and be with other people. We need to learn to make friends. It's an important part of life. " ~Dani O'Meara, ...
In 2008, while the film version of my book 'Choke' was coming to market, my mother was diagnosed with lung cancer. That meant that I had to appear in public to promote a comedy about a son trying to save his dying mother - the plot of Choke - while p...
My first book, 'To Engineer Is Human,' was prompted by nonengineer friends asking me why so many technological accidents and failures were occurring. If engineers knew what they were doing, why did bridges and buildings fall down? It was a question t...
Books can make a difference in dispelling prejudice and building community: not with role models and recipes, not with noble messages about the human family, but with enthralling stories that make us imagine the lives of others. A good story lets you...
I think the further away you get from completing a book, the more responses you see to it from readers, the more your own tastes and opinions shift and the more you start to see things you could have written differently in the detail, or done differe...
Naboo: "You've read all the books, but when it comes to the crunch, where are you?" Saboo: "The crunch! How dare you speak to me of the crunch? You know nothing of the crunch. You've never even been to the crunch!" Naboo: "Been there once." Saboo: "O...
Vampires, contrary to popular belief, don't incinerate when exposed to sunlight. If that were true, there would be a heck of a lot more stories about spontaneous combustion around the world. They are, however, very sensitive to sunlight and their ski...
If I had to put a name to it, I would wish that all my books were entertainments. I think the first thing you've got to do is grab the reader by the ear, and make him sit down and listen. Make him laugh, make him feel. We all want to be entertained a...
You know, I once read an interesting book which said that, uh, most people lost in the wilds, they, they die of shame. Yeah, see, they die of shame. 'What did I do wrong? How could I have gotten myself into this?' And so they sit there and they... di...
I imagine a child. That child is me. I can reconstruct and vividly remember portions of my own childhood. I can see, taste, smell, feel, and hear them. Then what I do is, not write about that kid or about his world, but start to think of a book that ...
When we started Appaloosa, we were going to name it Pegasus because everyone was using Greek names. We filed the name. We paid $300, and they said you cannot use it because it is taken. Pegasus Funds. Then we said Pegasus is kind of a horse. We did n...
A writer must be hard to live with: when not working he is miserable, and when he is working he is obsessed. Or so it is with me. Thus my writing life consists of spells of languor alternating with fits and spasms of mad typing. At all times, though,...
I began to ask two questions while I was reading a book that excited me: not only what was going to happen next, but how is this done? How is it that these words on the page make me feel the way I'm feeling? This is the line of inquiry that I think h...
I would rather never make a penny on book sales and know that many had derived some fair pleasure from my writing, than to know that very few had ever taken a chance on my work. I certainly won't last forever, but I'd love to think that my imaginatio...
All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you: the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse a...
Eli: Write everything exactly as I say it. The first book of Moses, called Genesis. Chapter 1, verse 1. In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. Eli: Verse 2. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of t...
Maybe I would have become an actor. I was a very outgoing kid, but being in the hospital - being outside of social action for so long - turned me into an observer. Actually, right after I got out of the hospital, I did start writing a novel, but the ...
She was opinionated without being pushy. When choosing a book to read aloud, she would try to interest him in those spunky English heroines she liked so much. He proposed Thucydides, but he understood how she, being a Quaker, did not want to read abo...
For notes related to books I'm writing, I've wondered whether I should organize my notes better, but I do find that the action or scrolling through them and seeing odd juxtapositions of ideas helps to stimulate my own ideas and creativity. I worry th...
