Then there were his education and his reading, the books he bought and borrowed, his knowledge of things that could not be eaten or worn or cohabited with, his interest in poetry and his respect for good writing.
They weren't nice words he said. He could've lived a good life and died never having made a person feel rubbed down to bones and too sad to hold together.
I got mixed up with some oddness in my youth, and the long and short of it is that I can't shuffle off this mortal coil until I have read the ten most boring classics.
Truly competent Literary Detectives are as rare as truthful men, Mr. Tweed -- you can see her potential as clearly as I can. Frightened of someone stealing your thunder, perhaps?
…Tell me, has anything odd happened to you recently? What do you mean, odd?' Unusual. Deviating from the customary. Something outside the usual parameters of normalcy. An occurrence of unprecedented weird.
If you are a student you should always get a good nights sleep unless you have come to the good part of your book, and then you should stay up all night and let your schoolwork fall by the wayside, a phrase which means 'flunk'.
The first novel I wrote was a monster - clocking in at 180,000 words - but it died a death, a death it deserved. It was called 'The Gods First Make Mad.' It was a good title, but it was the only good thing about the book. I didn't let that put me off...
You have to take your ego out of it and say, do I want people to be obsequious to me or do I want to write good books? If it's the latter, you have to take criticism. It's annoying, but that's how to do good stuff; listen to other people.
The French are pretty thin-skinned. The few times I mentioned a French writer in 'City Boy,' the relatives would ring up in high dudgeon. I once wrote a mocking review of Marguerite Duras in the 'New York Review of Books,' and good friends of mine in...
I've got lots of good friends. I could have affairs. I can read a book all night, put the cat on the end of the bed. I can pick up my passport and go to France. I don't have to ask anybody.
I would love to do a cookery show and cookery books. I'm not a professional cook, but I can definitely cook. I know the difference between good and bad cooking. I mean, when I was in 'Big Brother' I was the glorified cook of the house, so if I got of...
I just can't get with this idea that literature is a 12-step program. If someone wants to read a book to see good people get rewarded and the bad people get punished, essentially what they want is a fairy tale.
Emmet: President Business is going to end the world? But he's such a good guy! And Octan, they make good stuff: music, dairy products, coffee, TV shows, surveillance systems, all history books, voting machines... wait a minute!
It takes a week to write a book, but it takes years to write a good one.
I think a good business book has one coherent idea that is richly played out.
A good-humored wife who appreciates most, if not all, of my humor - her price is far above rubies, as the book of Proverbs doesn't quite say.
I don't have an interest in any car that isn't good for the environment, other than maybe an aesthetic quality in a picture book.
It's clear to me that there is no good reason for many philosophy books to sound as complicated as they do.
I feel happy and secure when I'm on my bed with a good book... I forget everything which is terrible in our world.
I must say I find television very educational. The minute somebody turns it on, I go to the library and read a good book.
I think really good books can be read by anybody.
