You go into a book and you're in the dark, really. You go in with a certain fear and trembling. You know one thing. You know you will not be the same person when this voyage is over. But you don't know what's going to happen to you between getting on the boat and stepping off.
I often wonder what I'd do if there weren't any books in the world.
When the book comes out it may hurt you - but in order for me to do it, it had to hurt me first. I can only tell you about yourself as much as I can face about myself.
The highest compliment I can give a science fiction book is that it's 'plausibly surreal' - it manages to feel like a relentless extrapolation from today even as it overwhelms with unexpected consequences of that extrapolation.
As useful as websites and journals are, there's real value in books, too.
I've written a book about my mother, and I don't remember anyone going to Antigua or calling up my mother and verifying her life. There is something about this book that drives people mad with the autobiographical question.
I would pretend when I was a child that I was Charlotte Brontë, because I'd read Jane Eyre when I was ten and, although I didn't understand it, I loved the idea that this woman had written a book. I wanted to be her.
Of course, every time I end a book, I look down at myself and I'm just the same. I'm always disappointed that I'm just the same, but not enough to never do it again!
When I write a book, I hope to be beyond mortal by the time I'm finished.
The Holocaust happened in Europe, and that's important to how it is viewed. Had Europeans done such a thing in the far corners of the earth, rather than on their own doorstep, it might not be mentioned in the history books.
Gardening is really an extended form of reading, of history and philosophy. The garden itself has become like writing a book. I walk around and walk around. Apparently people often see me standing there and they wave to me and I don't see them because I am reading the landscape.
In L.A., if you're in improv, and you're on those stages, all the big agents and managers and producers are watching those shows. They're not flying to Chicago to see the show. People are booking jobs off the stages in L.A. who aren't more talented than the guys in Chicago. But the most guys book out of L.A., and the second is New York.
Ang [Lee] gave us a lot of books about cowboys who had been gay or stories about it and all that stuff. And I just talked to a lot of my friends - who [was] their first, particularly same-sex, first situation. That was fascinating to me - trying to learn what that was in a certain period of time. Certain age. The secrecy involved in it. All those things.
Never far from a dining table, the characters in Heather A. Slomski's limpid and elegant debut collection are not given to melodramatics. Civility reigns, voices are not raised, much goes unsaid. But just beneath the sophisticated composure are longing, loss, heartbreak. And how intensely familiar is the table itself, which made this reader suddenly understand how much of our real life takes place there. Heather A. Slomski is truly a fresh voice on the scene, and The Lovers Set Down Their Spoons is that rare thing, a new book as innovative in its design as it is compulsively readable.
Maybe I'd be a storyboard artist. Graphic novel/comic book artist. Backup dancer. Singer. It would be cool to focus on one of these full time. But I like seeing them all intertwine.
I'm a huge comic book fan - me and the kids.
When I wrote 'Fast Food My Way' in 2004, I hoped that my friends would prepare my recipes. Now, more people cook from that book than any other I've written in the past 30 years.
I believe in the value of the book, which keeps something irreplaceable, and in the necessity of fighting to secure its respect.
The book, like the bicycle, is a perfect form.
My favorite reader is one that revisits books and gets something new out of them each time.
I think boys don't always like to read books with female protagonist - I don't even know what to say about this.
Because I write realistic fiction, I generally don't think about fixing anyone - I just think about how I want to feel at the end of the book - And I try to write toward that feeling.
I rewrite my books until they're mostly memorized so that's a lot of rewrites, a lot of time spent with my stories.
A lot of times, when people send me books to read - new writers mostly - I find that the book is still in a draft stage and that before it can leave the writer's hands and head to a publisher, it needs about five more revisions. Some people don't want to do that.
I think people need to remember that a book isn't done after a few rewrites and a publisher isn't going to buy an 'undone' book so the hard part is making it a book that at least ten other people want to pay for to read.
