Book Quotes - Page 814

I remember vividly what it's like to read as a 10-year-old - that passionate inhabiting of a book.

Kraken' is a very undisciplined book. That's a gamble. If it doesn't come off, it's disastrous. But there are pleasures, I think, to a meandering lack of discipline that you can't get the other way, and vice versa.

Personally I don't like it when writers become excessively proscriptive about the way that people read their books.

But I do think it's important to remember that writers do not have a monopoly of wisdom on their books. They can be wrong about their own books, they can often learn about their own books.

When I'm writing a book, generally I start with the mood and setting, along with a couple of specific images—things that have come into my head, totally abstracted from any narrative, that I've fixated on. After that, I construct a world, or an area, into which that general setting, that atmosphere, and the specific images I've focused on can fit.

Books are always obviously having conversations with other books, and some times they're amiable and sometimes not.

Americans think African writers will write about the exotic, about wildlife, poverty, maybe AIDS. They come to Africa and African books with certain expectations.

I think it's important to humanize history; fiction can help us remember. A lot of books I've read in the past have been so much more important than textbooks - there is an emotional connection with one particular person. I'm very much of a research-is-important type of fiction writer, even for contemporary fiction. I wrote about blogs in America and I've never blogged. But I read many, many blogs - usually about feminist things, or about race, or about hair.

I always write too long in the beginning, then it is a matter of going through it over and over again on subsequent drafts, looking for anything that slows down the narrative. It can be hard, cutting out parts I love, but I try to make the book as tight as possible so that the reader doesn't get bored.

Before I start a book, I talk over my characters with a friend who is a counselor. I like to make sure I have the right dynamics in place and understand each character's belief system, fears, coping mechanisms and things like that.

Even now I try to make each page compelling for the readers to get absorbed in the book.

If I can avoid doing freelance work, I prefer to. Not just because it takes me away from drawing comics, but also because it's just annoying having to deal with art editors, and having to read people's articles or books or whatever.

I think the thinking is, in the comic books, I should pack as much onto a page as possible, because, you know, it's kind of the cheaper format, and you want to give readers as much as you can for their dollar.

Alan Moore does have a sheen of class. He's a smart guy, and I'm sure there was a metaphoric level, I'm not denying that, but let's face it. the main reason he was doing a super-hero comic was because he was working for a super-hero comic book company.

I think you’re never the same person when you close a book as when you open one; it changes your life very subtly.

Of course some people manage to write books really young and publish really young. But for most writers, it takes several years because you have to apprentice yourself to the craft, and you also have to grow up. I think maturity is connected to one's ability to write well.

Don't lament so much about how your career is going to turn out. You don't have a career. You have a life. Do the work. Keep the faith. Be true blue. You are a writer because you write. Keep writing and quit your bitching. Your book has a birthday. You don't know what it is yet.

Writing is such a strangely and radically private act, and yet its purpose is this great sense of connection and community. I mean, I wanted people to love the book. And the only way to get them to love it is to try to make it good for them. So of course the audience has to be considered.

One of the scandalous things I did was as I read them afterward I would burn them. I loved them, but for practical reasons I had to lighten the load. I burned favorites, like William Faulkner's "As I Lay Dying." There's a whole list in the back of my book. It's me,[Adolf] Hitler, [Benito] Mussolini, and Pol Pot. We're the book burners.

I myself love getting cookbooks and novels that some congenial person has already tried and liked.

It's black women as perpetual sidekick. We need to hear from more women's voices. And it would be nice to see some books geared toward us.

And people tended not to bother a woman with a book.

I enjoy art, architecture, museums, churches and temples; anything that gives me insight into the history and soul of the place I'm in. I can also be a beach bum - I like to laze in the shade of a palm tree with a good book or float in a warm sea at sundown.

The whole thing about my books and my life is that I create drama's always around me.

My life and my legs have been an open book.