Top 45 James Patterson Quotes

I love the idea of expanding the universe of games to some extent. At one point, they were kind of limited to boys, fanboys and whatever. I like the idea of liberation for games.

Every once in a while, I’ll have a ‘Do you know who I am?’ moment, at least in my head. I hate that.

I’ve always been into ‘fast-paced, don’t bore ’em, keep it moving along, stick with the story.’ You know: tell a story the way I want to hear a story. I find it more rewarding to write for kids, but I also find it a little easier, because you can just let loose a little bit more in terms of fantasy and stuff.

A good love story always keeps the pot boiling.

There are reasons people seek escape in books, and one of those reasons is that the boundary of what can happen is beyond what we do – or would want to see in real life.

I have a number of writers I work with regularly. I write an outline for a book. The outlines are very specific about what each scene is supposed to accomplish.

What I’m really addicted to is getting people to understand that if their kids aren’t competent readers coming out of middle school, it’s really going to be hard for them in high school.

If I’m writing and a chapter isn’t coming, I just move ahead.

I read some, and then visited with people involved in this curious, exciting and somewhat misunderstood sub-culture. I met with a fang maker, who offered to fit me for an exquisite pair.

I don’t think about an industry or building things, but somebody says you’re lucky if you find something you like to do, which is true, and then it’s a miracle if you get paid to do it.

There are terrific models for success with reluctant readers, but many school systems and state governments need to set aside their ‘not invented here’ and ‘we have more important problems than education’ attitudes.

You know, I remember watching Morgan Freeman when he did the two Alex Cross movies, and he’s so confident that he’s going to knock the scene dead. And I’m really confident that I can tell a good story now, so I just don’t worry about things.

I love to tell stories. It’s a delight for me.

I get up every morning and chop wood, and I pretty much do it seven days a week, and I like to do it. I still have time for my wife and my son, who’s 14, and at this point, my head is still above water.

I love this idea of expanding the game universe. It has been limited. I guess probably because the genre was so successful, and the people who were creating those games made so much money at it they just had no desire to sort of open it up.

I don’t believe in lecturing people. It’s much more effective to present reading as a fun, rewarding pastime.

I grew up in a house full of women: my mother, grandmother, three sisters, and two female cats. And I still have the buzz of their conversations in my head. As an adult, I have more female friends than male ones: I just love the way that women talk.

It seemed to me that I could write commercial fiction. I wasn’t sure whether I could, or whether I wanted to write serious fiction at that point. So I said, ‘Let me try something else,’ and I wrote a mystery – but I didn’t know much about it.

For many years I had heard about an underworld consisting of people who act out a vampire fantasy while I was living in New York. Fortunately for me there are also several books on the phenomena.

As we go through this transition where a lot more people will be reading on devices, nobody is paying enough attention to make sure it’s a smooth transition. I believe we still need places where people can go to handle, hold and talk about books, get information about what books are out there, and so on.

I’m very emotional. I do feel stuff, for better or worse.

I’m not a writer’s writer. I’m not a craftsman. I could be, and that would be a one-book-a-year operation.

Somebody said the key to life is to work hard, play hard, rest hard, and I’ve pretty much adopted that.

Kids say the No. 1 reason they don’t read more is that they can’t find books they like. Freedom of choice is a key to getting them motivated and excited.

I’m big on having a blistering pace. That’s one of the hallmarks of what I do, and that’s not easy. I never blow up cars and things like that, so it’s something else that keeps the suspense flowing. I try not to write a chapter that isn’t going to turn on the movie projector in your head.

The best way to get kids reading more is to give them books that they’ll gobble up – and that will make them ask for another.

Life is hard, and a lot of people come home tired from work. If they’re gonna spend half an hour reading, they want some entertainment and a sense of achievement. So that’s what I give them. That’s all I’m trying to do. Is that really so wrong?

When I was 26, I wrote my first mystery, ‘The Thomas Berryman Number’, and it was turned down by, I don’t know, 31 publishers. Then it won an Edgar for Best First Novel. Go figure.

I’m a very good storyteller; I have a lot of compassion for people. That’s very useful for a novelist. A lot of novelists are snots. They’re just mean people. I’m not a terribly skilled stylist, nor do I want to be. I want a lot of people to read one of my stories and go, ‘That was pretty cool.’

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.

Hollywood is a peculiar beast – people in Hollywood are nuts.

Schools and parents can team up to find books that kids will really get excited about – that will make them say, ‘That was a great experience. Now I know why people get excited about reading.’

I have a folder in my office with about 400 ideas in it. So it will take me another 40 years to get through those.

I learnt to love reading. And then I started scribbling stories, and I liked that even more.

I did know that the book would end with a mind-boggling trial, but I didn’t know exactly how it would turn out. I like a little suspense when I am writing, too.

The more you read, the better you get at it.

One of the interesting things about YA books – I don’t know about Percy Jackson, but I do know about ‘Twilight’ and ‘Maximum Ride’: There are a lot of adult readers. In fact, we released ‘Maximum Ride’ both as a paperback for kids and as a mass release for adults.

There is a lot to be said for collaboration, and it should be seen as just another way to do things as it is in other forms of writing, such as for television, where it is standard practice.

Generally I find that kids ask better questions than you get with adults. Something that kids will do a lot is, they’re so nervous, and they’re not really paying attention, so they’ll ask the same question someone just asked. And you’re trying to be nice and not embarrass them any more than they are already.

Commercial books don’t even get covered. The reason why so many book reviews go out of business is because they cover a lot of stuff that nobody cares about. Imagine if the movie pages covered none of the big movies and all they covered were movies that you couldn’t even find in the theater?

I write larger than life. It’s what I do.

A lot of people like the idea of eternal love and eternal romance. The notion of love that is more profound and deeper because it is eternal is very powerful.

My life revolves around my writing, my wife and my son.

I’m very conscious that I’m an entertainer. Something like 73 percent of my readers are college graduates, so you can’t condescend to people. You’ve got to tell them a story that they will be willing to pay money to read.

In my office in Florida I have, I think, 30 manuscript piles around the room. Some are screenplays or comic books or graphic novels. Some are almost done. Some I’m rewriting. If I’m working with a co-writer, they’ll usually write the first draft. And then I write subsequent drafts.