I believe passionately in preemptive pessimism, especially before a book comes out. I expect the worst both from reviewers and sales, and then, with any luck, I may be proved wrong.
But then of course you reach a point where you have to say, I've got to figure out how this book's going to end. Otherwise, you're going to write yourself into so many dead-ends.
There are certain books that should be taken away from young writers; that should be prised out of their clutching fingers and locked away until they are all grown up and ready to read them without being smitten.
Since I've written many of my books from a less-than-sympathetic viewpoint, I think that being able to see things from all sides is a useful talent.
If I read a book that impresses me, I have to take myself firmly by the hand, before I mix with other people; otherwise they would think my mind rather queer.
If I read a book that impresses me, I have to take myself firmly in hand before I mix with other people; otherwise they would think my mind rather queer.
This character's entirely invented, and the woman that I interviewed wouldn't recognize herself, or really anything about herself, in this book, which she hasn't read, because she doesn't read English.
Of all the unexpected things in contemporary literature, this is among the oddest: that kids have an inordinate appetite for very long, very tricky, very strange books about places that don’t exist.
I have loved many men, but only one in real life. All of the other men who have ever stolen my heart in more than friendship, are in books.
I did go there later, but I hadn't been there before I wrote the book. Sometimes I feel like the imagined can feel more real than the real?
I have a screened in porch, and it's nice to curl up with a book outside when it's raining, especially an old battered classic like 'Pride & Prejudice & Zombies.'
Living is like tearing through a museum. Not until later do you really start absorbing what you saw, thinking about it, looking it up in a book, and remembering - because you can't take it in all at once.
Financial parasites: greedy people who live luxurious life at the expense and hard work of others." ~ Angelica Hopes, an excerpt from the book, Odyssey of a Heart, Home of a Soul
Imagine a world in which no writer has written a literary novel in sixty years. Imagine a place where not a single person has read a book that is truly about the character at its center.
I don't understand this irony - valuable things like cars, gold, diamond are made up of hard materials but most valuable things like money, contracts and books are made up of soft paper.
Pitches are like pages of a book; they're so important. The chess game; how I set you up early, and how I'll do it differently later.
Take all that you can of this book upon reason, and the balance on faith, and you will live and die a happier man. (When a skeptic expressed surprise to see him reading a Bible)
A childhood without books – that would be no childhood. That would be like being shut out from the enchanted place where you can go and find the rarest kind of joy.
I'm supposed to say, Bill O'Reilly, that's immoral - click - and then walk back in and book his A block the next day and have a fine day and everything be kosher? I don't think so.
I don't often reread my own books, unless I am going into another in the series and need to refresh my mood when originating the concept.
My bookshelves were groaning with WW2 books, Hitler's baleful eyes staring out at me from covers and spines for any new visitor (or passing burglar) to wonder if I might be a fan or at least mildly obsessed.
