I think we did a great job of putting together a program that would have made good e-books available had people been buying e-books in any real numbers.
Some of the most famous books are the least worth reading. Their fame was due to their having done something that needed to be doing in their day. The work is done and the virtue of the book has expired.
Stephen King in many respects is a wonderful writer. He has made a contribution. People in the future will be able to pick up Stephen King's books and learn a lot about who we were by reading those books.
The fact that books today are mostly a string of words makes it easier to forget the text. With the impact of the iPad and the future of the book being up for re-imagination, I wonder whether we'll rediscover the importance of making texts richer vis...
In 'The Plato Papers' I wanted to get another perspective on the present moment by extrapolating into the distant future. So in that sense, there's a definite similarity of purpose between a book set in the future and a book set in the past.
It's funny because 'The Book of Mormon' is 'The Book of Mormon' now. When I was doing it at the very beginning, and I was a part of it for four years and always believed in it, I never really knew if it was going to be more than a convention for 'Sou...
Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image, but thee who destroys a good book, kills reason its self.
I sold a bunch of stuff. I sold Omaha Steaks, vacation packages... the worst, though, was Time Life Books, because no one wants Time Life Books. No one wants an 'Encyclopedia Brittanica' showing up at their house.
Men do not understand books until they have a certain amount of life, or at any rate no man understands a deep book, until he has seen and lived at least part of its contents.
I think of a book and a play, or a book and a movie, as two separate things - I don't think of it as my novel having a new life.
A surprising number of people - including many students of literature - will tell you they haven't really lived in a book since they were children. Sadly, being taught literature often destroys the life of the books.
Books constitute capital. A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not, then, an article of mere consumption but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital.
I fell in love with reading when I was allowed to choose whatever books I wanted to check out of the library. I was around nine years old when I began choosing my own books in earnest.
I love meeting people who've read my books. The prime reason to be on the planet is to make things I can show to other people: paintings, books, movies.
I grew up reading comic books, pulp books, mystery and science fiction and fantasy. I'm a geek; I make no pretensions otherwise. It's the stuff that I love writing about. I like creating worlds.
It should be said upfront that I totally dig people who work in bookstores and libraries. They love books, and I love books, and that is all I really need to know. If they are friendly to me, then we are clearly soul mates.
I think e-books are terrific in their own right. I love being able to get on a plane and basically carry around seven books and it weigh 10 ounces.
I love creator-owned comics. Most of my favorite books these days are creator-owned, from stuff DC publishes, like 'Fables,' to books like 'Saga,' 'Fatale,' 'Hellboy,' and 'Courtney Crumrin.'
'Pnin' by Vladimir Nabokov, which is a literally small book, fit right in my common law book. I would sit in class and read it.
I believe that we should only read those books that bite and sting us. If a book does not rouse us with a blow then why read it?
I suspect it may be like the difference between a drinker and an alcoholic; the one merely reads books, the other needs books to make it through the day." (Interview with blog, September 2010)
