My readers have to work with me to create the experience. They have to bring their imaginations to the story. No one sees a book in the same way, no one sees the characters the same way. As a reader you imagine them in your own mind. So, together, as...
I look for two things when I am about to launch into a book. First, there has to be a dramatic arc to the story itself that will carry me, and the reader, from beginning to end. Second, the story has to weave through larger themes that can illuminate...
I felt more doubtful than usual with 'Goon Squad,' because I knew that the book's genre wasn't easily named - Novel? Stories? Novel-in-stories? - and I worried that its lack of a clear category would count against it. My hopes for it were pretty mode...
The wonderful thing about books--and the thing that made them such a refuge for the islanders during the Occupation--is that they take us out of our time and place and understanding, and transport us not just into the world of the story, but into the...
I've never really found inspiration for story ideas in the news, but I'd say it certainly affects our lives in so many ways. I would say that certainly the stories of the day appear in the work - I just have never gone so far as to say, well, this pa...
Books tended not to switch their stories whenever it suited them.
Reading with my children is incredibly important to me and a wonderful way to spend time together as a family, exploring magical worlds through books and stories.
Many of the less prolific killers' stories go unheard because they simply don't make good books.
I'd love to do a whole series of stories and have them collected into books.
I have always been drawn to coming-of-age stories and books and movies featuring compelling young characters.
The mandarins of culture—what do they do to teach the common folk to read? It's no good writing down lists of books for farmers and compiling five-foot shelves; you've got to go out and visit the people yourself—take the books to them, talk to th...
Leave no "full stop" in between the sentences that make up your life story. If anything, let "commas" show that when you were brought down by challenges, you rose up with passion and moved on again!
Millions of candles can be lighted from a single candle and the lifespan of that single candle will never be shortened! Feel free to share your success stories with every loved one out there; it will strengthen them but will never weaken you in any w...
If you are a “now-person”, you reduce the time rate during which your success story is to be published; if you delay a bit, you are either prolonging the date of publishing or you are deleting it at all cost! Be a “now-person” and do it now!
In my view, the gospels are true, not historically, but theologically, or, as I would argue, prophetically! What we have is, the Messiah’s history written in advance in story form.
If we fail to understand the biblical story of Jesus, we will compromise our prophetic interpretations of the end-times. And that's exactly what we've done.
My day starts like a regular guy’s. I wake up, drink raw eggs, run around Philadelphia, and punch raw slabs of meat. Wait, that’s not my story—that’s Rocky’s. I get us confused all the time.
Yes, the stories are dangerous, she was right. A book is a magic carpet that flies you off elsewhere. A book is a door. You open it. You step through. Do you come back?
I actually love history. I've devoured book after book of stories from World War I and World War II. They're really two sections of world history that really interest me. I knew very extensively a lot about World War I.
I think kids want the same thing from a book that adults want - a fast-paced story, characters worth caring about, humor, surprises, and mystery. A good book always keeps you asking questions, and makes you keep turning pages so you can find out the ...
I fear dying in the middle of a book. It would be so annoying to write 80,000 words and not get to the end. I'm phobic about it. So when I'm writing a book I leave messages all over the house for people to know how the story ends, and then someone ca...
