I have expressed my opinion through the written word through my books, that is all.
It wasn’t that the teachers were bad. From what I can remember, they were pretty good. It was about the selection of books. It was about not seeing my young life reflected back to me: my family dynamics, the noise and complexities of my neighborhood, the things I loved, like ice cream trucks and Kool-Aid.
When I’m not writing or tweaking my computer, I do embroidery. When I’m not plunging into the past, tweaking, or embroidering, I’m reading books about history, computers, or embroidery.
The books that help you most are those which make you think that most. The hardest way of learning is that of easy reading; but a great book that comes from a great thinker is a ship of thought, deep freighted with truth and beauty.
I had a friend who worked at a hospice, and he said people in their final moments don’t discuss their successes, awards or what books they wrote or what they accomplished. They only talk about their loves and their regrets, and I think that’s very telling.
Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody reads.
We don’t need lists of rights and wrongs, tables of do’s and don’ts: we need books, time, and silence. Thou shalt not is soon forgotten, but Once upon a time lasts forever.
The writer I feel the most affinity with – you said you felt my books are 19th century novels, I think they’re 18th century novels – is Fielding, Henry Fielding, he’s the guy who does it for me.
I used to have all the Goosebumps books as a kid too.
The books that everybody admires are those that nobody reads.
I don’t want my books to exclude anyone, but if they have to, then I would rather they excluded the people who feel they are too smart for them!
If sex is such a natural phenomenon, how come there are so many books on how to do it?
The experience gathered from books, though often valuable, is but the nature of learning; whereas the experience gained from actual life is one of the nature of wisdom.
It is up to us to change laws on the books like ‘Stand Your Ground’ laws and push elected officials to enact regulations that hold police officers to the same standards as the rest of society. This is why we vote.
Since I’ve written many of my books from a less-than-sympathetic viewpoint, I think that being able to see things from all sides is a useful talent.
Jane Austen was writing about boring people with desperately limited lives. We forget this because we’ve seen too many of her books on screen.
When I’m in my car, I’m listening to books, audio books, always.
Every 10 years you’re a different person, and the really great books evolve with you as you get older. They’re full of new rewards.
I like Nietzsche. I quote him in many of my books. He was born 100 years before me.
When you read the Bible, you are reading the Holy Spirit and not history books. When you read history books, you are reading about events, but the Bible is not an event. So, when you are reading the Holy Spirit, you are supposed to be carried along by it.
As far as I know, no kid ever bought a children’s book himself with his own money, but they’ll buy comic books. So we better make them good.
With my earlier books, I got quite bored being with one protagonist all the way through. With the Alex Morrow books, I wanted to do something a bit more holistic, so there were lots of different points of view, and I wanted to look at aspects of crime that you don’t tend to look at.
How much energy is wasted in Italy in trying to write the novel that obeys all the rules. The energy might have been useful to provide us with more modest, more genuine things, that had less pretensions: short stories, memoirs, notes, testimonials, or at any rate, books that are open, without a preconceived plan.
All books are divisible into two classes, the books of the hour, and the books of all time.
I was always writing the books that I wanted to write, books that demanded to be written at the time. But, like most writers, you start off feeling your way.
Young men should prove theorems, old men should write books.
‘The Chicken Soup for the Soul’ books are the result of over 20 years of teaching seminars and giving speeches. The first book contains all of the stories that I used in my seminars to illustrate the points that I wanted to make.
I write about characters that interest me. And I don’t think of my books as being forms of entertainment.
Any kid who has two parents who are interested in him and has a houseful of books isn’t poor.
Other people are talking about writing books about my life, or about some of the things I’ve done. I find it strange, but I also feel it’s my life and my story, and I guess I better be the one to get it on paper the way it actually happened.
Conservatives should insist that defense spending be examined with the same seriousness that we demand in examining the books of those government agencies that spend taxpayer money in the name of welfare, the environment, or education.
A single conversation across the table with a wise man is better than ten years mere study of books.
That can be the most painstaking aspect of being a teen, figuring out what the world really looks like. If you find someone in a book, you know you’re not alone and that’s what’s so comforting about books.
If I haven’t any talent for writing books or newspaper articles, well, then I can always write for myself.
I think Russell Brand’s books should be criticised for being rubbish – but it is true that there’s a professional class of opinion-former who has a financial interest in their job not being taken away.
I truly believe that when the history books are written, our age will be remembered for three things: the war on terror, the digital revolution, and what we did – or did not do – to put the fire out in Africa. History, like God, is watching what we do.
It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations.
If you look at the beginning of children’s entertainment in literature, the first books that were written for kids were cautionary tales. They were books that were there to teach kids about growing up and how to live life.
The bastard form of mass culture is humiliated repetition… always new books, new programs, new films, news items, but always the same meaning.
Who has fully realized that history is not contained in thick books but lives in our very blood?
It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.
To paint comic books as childish and illiterate is lazy. A lot of comic books are very literate – unlike most films.
Books let us into their souls and lay open to us the secrets of our own.
Books and opinions, no matter from whom they came, if they are in opposition to human rights, are nothing but dead letters.
I always carry a sketchbook around with me, and I sketch whenever I can… I might be in a financial review and be sketching because I find that I actually listen better when I sketch. Truth be told, there are probably more sketches in my books than there are written notes.
I feel sorry for kids these days. They get so much homework. Remember the days when we put a belt around our two books and carried them home? Now they’re dragging a suitcase. They have school all day, then homework from six until eleven. There’s no time left to be creative.
I was never really a nerd. I’m not really into comic books or Dungeons and Dragons or any of that kind of stuff. I was in drama class, and I’m a big movie and music buff. And I’m into sports.
Half of my library are old books because I like seeing how people thought about their world at their time. So that I don’t get bigheaded about something we just discovered and I can be humble about where we might go next. Because you can see who got stuff right and most of the people who got stuff wrong.
Three children have become adults since a phone call with Jo Rowling, containing one small clue, persuaded me that there was more to Snape than an unchanging costume, and that even though only three of the books were out at that time, she held the entire massive but delicate narrative in the surest of hands.
I’ve never turned into a bee – I’ve never been chased by a mummy or met a ghost. But many of the ideas in my books are suggested by real life.
Read a lot – poems, prose, stories, newspapers, anything. Read books and poems that you think you will like and some that you think might not be for you. You might be surprised.
I don’t get my inspiration from books or a painting. I get it from the women I meet.
I don’t often reread my own books, unless I am going into another in the series and need to refresh my mood when originating the concept.
I’m inspired by many different things. Often, I’m inspired by experiences I’ve had, books I’ve read, people I’ve met, stories I’ve heard.
I’ve read every one of Donald Goines’ books. So as soon as I heard there was an opportunity for one of his novels to be turned into a movie, I jumped at the opportunity.
Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren’t very new at all.
The tree I had in the garden as a child, my beech tree, I used to climb up there and spend hours. I took my homework up there, my books, I went up there if I was sad, and it just felt very good to be up there among the green leaves and the birds and the sky.
