Book Quotes - Page 633

I believe that if we could see the chapters that are missing from the book [The Autobiography of Malcolm X], we would gain an understanding as to why perhaps - perhaps - the F.B.I., the C.I.A., the New York Police Department and others in law enforcement greatly feared what Malcolm X was about, because he was trying to build a broad - an unprecedented black coalition across the lines of black nationalism and integration. And in way, it presages 30 years ahead of time, the Million Man March.

What is striking is that from almost from the very beginning of certainly by September and October of 1963, as the book was being constructed, that [Alex] Haley was vetting - asking questions to the publisher and to the publisher's attorney regarding many of the things that Malcolm X was saying. He was worried that he would not have a book that would have the kind of sting that he wanted.

[Alex] Haley had a tendency to write even more frequently and voluminously to his agents and his editors than he did putting pen to paper in his own books.

Let me put it in a positive light, with that archive [of Anne Romaine], we have gained extensive knowledge about how [Alex] Haley and Malcolm X actually worked and how the book, the autobiography, was constructed.

I find it interesting that people often seem to believe that authors of realistic fiction are directly translating their personal experiences into their work. The fact is that telling a story is a transformative experience. There is rarely a one-to-one translation onto the page unless you're writing memoir, and even then, memory is unreliable. I think that the best books feel emotionally true, and that truth has to be rooted in real-world experience.

I find it interesting that authors of fantasy and science fiction novels are rarely asked if their books are based on their personal experiences, because all writing is based on personal experience. I may not have gone on an epic quest through a haunted forest, but the feelings in my books are often based on feelings I've had. Real-life events, in fantasy and science fiction, can take on metaphorical significance that they can't in a so-called realistic novel.

Ten guards and the warden couldn't have torn me out of those books. Months passed without even thinking about being imprisoned....I had never been so truly free in my life.

One of my brothers read a lot. His head was forever in some book.

I always resist seeing my own personal motivation in my work, but I guess it must be there on some level. And I do feel very much that my life follows the kinds of things I talk about in my books. I've always thought of myself as an insanely lucky person, so perhaps the success of my first two books led me to want to examine this phenomenon on some unconscious level.

If you think success is about so many more things and is so much more arbitrary, then you can be much more open to the idea that you can be Ben Fountain and publish your great book at forty-nine.

The iPod is clearly a tipping point (and I'm not quite sure it is a wholly positive development), because it is a revolution in the way that we consume creative property, which I would call art. It has radically changed the relationship between the artist and the audience, how money changes hands, and how much money changes hands. Music was the first, and books are coming next. The Kindle or some form of electronic book is clearly inevitable, and it will massively reshape how books are sold, who pays for them, and how they're consumed. It is going to be really fascinating.

I don't really collect books. I tend to lose interest in them the minute I've read them, so most of the books I've read are left in airplanes and hotel rooms.

Over the years, I've evolved a somewhat heretical but time-and mind-saving approach to books, articles, editorials that deal with weighty matters. More often than not, by beginning at the end and contemplating the conclusions, one can determine if it's worth going through the whole to get there.

read thousands of books and I will power myself with knowledge. Pens and books are the weapons that defeat terrorism.

The best way to fight terrorism is not through guns. It's through pens, books, teachers and schools.

We realize the importance of light when we see darkness. We realize the importance of our voice when we are silenced. In the same way when we were in Swat, we realized the importance of pens and books when we saw the guns.

The Taliban could take our pens and books, but they couldn’t stop our minds from thinking.

The three things that kept me sane as a child were bikes, books, and soccer

We wanted to describe society from our left point of view. Per had written political books, but they'd only sold 300 copies. We realised that people read crime and through the stories we could show the reader that under the official image of welfare-state Sweden there was another layer of poverty, criminality and brutality.

I like Jo Nesbo and Hakan Nesser. There are so many good books in the world. I don't want to spend time reading bad crime novels.

There were many films made for both cinema and television, and in general I don't connect them very much with our books. I have one favorite: 'The Man on the Roof' by director Bo Widerberg, which was based on 'The Abominable Man.

I have a Facebook page for me and my friends and a Twitter page.

I had read some books on the Baha'i Faith. I had read - I was looking into Buddhism and trying to understand sort of the agnostic approach, so there was just a bunch of stuff I was just looking at.

As a rule I had a distaste for any reading beyond my school books.

Let our lives be open books for all to study.