College: two hundred people reading the same book. An obvious mistake. Two hundred people can read two hundred books.
I think anything that opens my mind and triggers my imagination I’m reading. I like to read science fiction and imagine the character. Anything that keeps my imagination flowing.
I spent my entire time reading books and going to the cinema, just to escape.
I spent my life in the library reading books.
Reading, not just an escape, but an exercise in living...
I’m writing a movie about Mozart going to New York in the ’60s. I’ve been reading so many novels.
To me, if I’m reading a fantastic story or I go on a nice first date and I have a wonderful time, I’m not gonna complain because it didn’t work out. I’m gonna go on a second date.
Oh, I’m nerdy about science fiction and fantasy and graphic novels and reading, and I’m nerdy about board games. My favorite board game is a board game I’m working on right now. It’s a game of Napoleonic era naval warfare, and it’s going to be fun.
I always know exactly where my stories take place, which gives me something certain so I can use my imagination for the other stuff. I worry though, who wants to keep reading stories about Kalamazoo?
Eight years ago, I was drawn into Keats’s world by Andrew Motion’s biography. Soon I was reading back and forth between Keats’s letters and his poems. The letters were fresh, intimate and irreverent, as though he were present and speaking. The Keats spell went very deep for me.
In five minutes the earth would be a desert, and you cling to books.
The big problem in America is that everyone is spending 2-3 hours a day watching TV. If you spend that same amount of time reading, you’ll be in the top 1% of whatever your field is.
And I’m auditioning right now for a movie, and then I have a script that I’m reading right now for a horror film, and I’m meeting for a couple of television shows that I just had yesterday, and pretty much was offered one of them.
Reading a book, watching a movie, going to a play, it’s transporting, and very, very exciting. And to be a part of that, creating things with your imagination, whoa.
A man’s reading program should be as carefully planned as his daily diet, for that too is food, without which he cannot grow mentally.
The truth is we’re all probably more creative than we realize, except we spend our lives watching TV or reading somebody else’s book. We never pick up a brush and stand in front of our own easel.
The other thing that happened in 1883 was my reading of Thoreau’s Walden.
I’m obsessed with TV. How wrong our parents were when they said we should only watch an hour a day. Stop wasting your time reading books.
I was reading William Shawcross’s biography of the Queen Mother, dressed in my witch outfit! And you know what? It was a really good mix; it was a therapeutic mix.
I am so sick of reading about another car bomb, another suicide bomber, another 10, 20, 30, 70, 100 people dead in a day, both Americans and Iraqis.