With the crime novels, it's delightful to have protagonists I can revisit in book after book. It's like having a fictitious family.
The Cemetery of Forgotten Books is a metaphor, not just for books but for ideas, for language, for knowledge, for beauty, for all the things that make us human, for collecting memory.
Really, when I write a book I'm the only one I have to please. That's the beauty of writing a book instead of a screenplay.
McSweeney's as a publishing company is built on a business model that only works when we sell physical books. So we try to put a lot of effort into the design and production of the book-as-object.
I don't read many business books. I read good fiction. Business is about people, so my favorite business books are anything by Dickens.
I change my method and field of reference from book to book because I can never believe in the same thing two times running.
Every city and town in America would be bankrupt if they kept their books the way private-sector companies keep their books - because of the obligation cities and towns have taken upon themselves to provide health care for their retirees.
I always knew that I wanted to live with books, even as a child, because we traveled a lot. Home was the book to which I came back every evening.
If I'm home with no chore at hand, and a package of books has come, the television set and the chess board and the unanswered mail will have to manage without me if one of the books is a detective story.
When we had to do book reports, I would pick a book that no one read and just make it up and turn that in. I got praised for my imagination.
Most books, like their authors, are born to die; of only a few books can it be said that death has no dominion over them; they live, and their influence lives forever.
No one bothered reading the books and understanding - and again, I'm not being high-falutin' about it - but I think our books are great literature with great metaphors of real life dealing with fears and hopes.
A great comic-book cover occurs when it gets a potential reader to pick the book up and start thumbing through it. That's a comic cover's job: Attract someone's attention, and persuade them to try the issue out.
E-books are great for instant gratification - you see a review somewhere of a book that interests you, and you can start reading it five minutes later.
I don't usually read self-help books, but I read a great book by a guy called Wayne Dyer: 'The Power of Intention,' which I loved.
I love to read books that focus on parenting topics because there are so many different ways to do things. I find these books offer a lot of great opinions on many different subjects.
Preachers in pulpits talked about what a great message is in the book. No matter what you do, somebody always imputes meaning into your books.
All Oprah needs is a good book. My only request when she's building any house is, 'Could I please have a TV in my bedroom?'
Children simply don't make the distinction; a book is either good or bad. And some of the books they think are good are very, very bad indeed.
Going off the grid is always good for me. It's the way that I've started books and finished books and gotten myself out of deadline dooms and things.
I read true crime books, and I read when people do case studies of stuff. I'm into books like that. Case studies or forensics or murder - all that good stuff.
