You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.
Book tours are almost designed to beat out of an author any affection he has for his book.
It is better to read one intellectually challenging book every 12 months … than to read 12 entertaining books every month.
My main wish is to get my books into other people's rooms, and to keep other people's books out of mine.
Just the omission of Jane Austen's books alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn't a book in it.
I'm an author. And writers write books. And writing books is a full-time career.
read thousands of books and I will power myself with knowledge. Pens and books are the weapons that defeat terrorism.
I just write the sort of book that I would enjoy reading myself, a book that is both scholarly and recreates the experience of people at that time.
In my experience, it's not just that serious books get a hearing on comedy shows. But serious books get a serious hearing, as well as a funny one, on comedy shows.
In my experience, adults rarely bother reading the reviews of children's books and almost never read the books themselves - particularly if they don't have children.
When I write a book, I write a book for myself; the reaction is up to the reader. It's not my business whether people like or dislike it.
I'm not that into reading. If I'm gonna read, I'm gonna read some cool sci-fi book or something, not some stupid self-help book.
If I was a book, I would like to be a library book, so I would be taken home by all different sorts of kids.
I'm always imposing my taste in books on others. I hope that people enjoy being surprised by a book they might not otherwise read - I enjoy the surprise myself when others do this to me.
Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill.
I can't go into Oklahoma without thinking about Larry Clark's photography book 'Tulsa.' It's a great book about how life works.
I went on a Buddha jag. I read 'Confession of a Buddhist Atheist' by Stephen Batchelor and Karen Armstrong's biography of Buddha, which is a great book.
Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them in: but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents.
Your life story would not make a good book. Don't even try.
I think of life as a good book. The further you get into it, the more it begins to make sense.
Be kind and considerate with your criticism... It's just as hard to write a bad book as it is to write a good book.
