When I was about 14, in about 1984, I decided to become a great poet. Faber & Faber was going to publish me, and when Ted Hughes read my first anthology he would invite me to Yorkshire for meat pies and mentorship.
There's always these giant baffling books, like 'The Da Vinci Code.' People say it's not as well written as 'Midnight's Children.' Why aren't people reading 'Midnight's Children?' Nobody knows why these phenomenons happen but they're great.
Every ceremony or rite has a value if it is performed without alteration. A ceremony is a book in which a great deal is written. Anyone who understands can read it. One rite often contains more than a hundred books.
I think there's a great difference in consciousness in that same way in that when we're young we read books for the story, for the excitement of the story - and there comes a time when you realise that all stories are more or less the same story.
As a teenager I read a lot of books. Books with lots of scary trends, things like nuclear weapons and overpopulation and global diseases, and I thought, 'Wouldn't it be great to write stories that showed people these problems and that we could do som...
One of the great things about the Internet is that you can read what everybody has to say about everything. It is fascinating to me, the critiques about humor by people who have no sense of humor.
I think often people don't realize the great diversity of Southern writing because in their minds, if you're not from the South, it can seem regional and small, and of course that's not the case at all when you start to read the work.
I want to read books and go for walks and make dinner. I guess there are people who love working and that's great. I'm not one of them. I love tackling roles and I love theater, but filming, I don't get it. It seems mind-numbing to me.
I get Twitter, and think it's a great way to keep it in touch, but I don't do it a lot. I hate reading when people tweet about what you're eating or who they are out with, but it's a nice way to keep in touch with people.
Personally, I really enjoy sci-fi. I watch it, I read comic books, and I play video games. I love this kind of world, so to be able to work in it is a dream. I enjoy it. It's all good.
Mostly it was Mad magazine. And I did read a lot of - I had a subscription when I was little, but I also had access to some old collections, the little paperbacks of the really good stuff.
The planet is ill, everyone knows that. But I need to be optimistic, otherwise I would just be adding to the negativity. So every night I come on Madrid TV and read a piece of good news.
And I think it's because good cons are all based on the victim's need, and the successful con artist is the one, I guess, who can exploit that. I remember reading something about this, that one of the great traits of confidence tricksters is the leve...
Right now I'm doing four shows at a time, trying to read four outlines every week, four scripts every week, and watching four rough cuts; it's a lot of good work. It's fun to do it, but it does wear you out.
I'm a great believer that the most important years are the sort of early years but the preschool years and then into the first and second grades. If you get a good base in the first and second grade and you can read, you can do anything.
I always tell people there's only one trick to writing: You have to write something that people are willing to pay money to read. It doesn't have to be very good, necessarily, but somebody, somewhere, has got to be willing to pay money for it.
The characters are always the focal point of a book for me, whether I'm writing or reading. I may enjoy a book that has an intriguing mystery or a good plot, but to become one of my real favorites, it has to have great characters.
You need to put easy, nice, tranquil thoughts in your head before you go to bed. You know what I do? I read metaphysical books. The good stuff stays in your brain once you go under.
Reading a book about management isn't going to make you a good manager any more than a book about guitar will make you a good guitarist, but it can get you thinking about the most important concepts.
I came up in the theater, and I learned pretty quickly that reading a review, whether it's good or bad, can strangely affect the next performances, because you're reacting to something that's been said about you. So I tend to avoid that stuff pretty ...
I read all these stories that I don't know anything about politics. But I must know something. I've had some good victories in Congress, and I've survived this town for four years.
