The idea of a flip book still really appeals to me. That idea of fiction and non-fiction.
My next book – each one while I’m working on it – dances in my mind and thrills me at every turn. If it didn’t, why would I write it?
Books are something social – a writer speaking to a reader – so I think making the reading of a book the center of a social event, the meeting of a book club, is a brilliant idea.
Books, like people, can’t be reduced to the cost of the materials with which they were made. Books, like people, become unique and precious once you get to know them.
There are books of the same chemical composition as dynamite. The only difference is that a piece of dynamite explodes once, whereas a book explodes a thousand times.
If people don’t want to come to the ballpark, how are you going to stop them? -Yogi Berra, The Yogi Book, to baseball commissioner Bud Selig about lagging baseball attendance Ninety percent of the game is half mental.
Words are power. And a book is full of words. Be careful what power you get from it. But know that you do.
I travel a lot, so when I arrive in a city, I like to go to good local bookshops and make a selection based on how I’m feeling and what I’m thinking. The book I pick usually seems to have a definite karmic connection!
People say that this new generation is so used to the Internet that their heads are already different. They can’t read a book from beginning to end. That is not a tragedy. The book changes form.
A lot of things have been thrown at me in life, and I’ve got through it all without a rule book, taking it one day at a time.
I’m writing a book about Siamese Twins that are attached at the nose. It’s called: Stop Staring at Me!
It’s difficult to tell the truth about how a book begins. The truth, as far as it can be presented to other people, is either wholly banal or too intimate.
First rule of writing: When still a child, make sure you read a lot of books. Spend more time doing this than anything else.
As far as I’m concerned, if you want to find out about the last day of WWII or the roots of the Indian Mutiny, get thee to a books catalogue.
Cambridge was a joy. Tediously. People reading books in a posh place. It was my fantasy. I loved it. I miss it still.
I don’t keep any copies of my books in the house – they go to my mum’s flat. I don’t like them around.
I like books that don’t give you an easy ride. I like the feeling of discomfort. The sense of being implicated.
I like books that expose me to people unlike me and books that do battle against caricature or simplification. That, to me, is the heroic in fiction.
If you’re going to write a good book, you have to make mistakes and you have to not be so cautious all the time.
There’s so much more to the book than the page you were stuck on.