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"The key to this collaboration - which we undertook after much deliberation - was to stretch creatively. New characters, new locales, new form (the novella)."
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"Some books sold because they are (said to be) great. Some are (said to be) great because they sold."

"The world has become sad because a puppet was once melancholy. The nihilist, that strange martyr who has no faith, who goes to the stake without enthusiasm, and dies for what he does not believe in, is a purely literary product. He was invented by Turgenev, and completed by Dostoevsky. Robespierre came out of the pages of Rousseau as surely as the People's Palace rose out debris of a novel. Literature always anticipates life. It does not copy it, but moulds it to its purpose."

"Literature always anticipates life. It doesn't copy it but moulds it to it's purpose."

"This would be...a book that would be a trapdoor down into some place dark. A place only you could go, alone, when you opened the cover. Because only books have that power."

"A good novel tells us the truth about its hero, but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author."

"No, said Bran. "I haven't. And if I have it doesn't matter. Sometimes Old Nan would tell the same story she'd told before, but we never minded, if it was a good story. Old stories are like old friends, she used to say. You have to visit them from time to time."

"Like someone excitedly relating a story, only to find the words petering out, the path gets narrower the further I go, the undergrowth taking over."

"Books are well written, or badly written. That is all."

"For what was it about books that once finished left the reader in a bit of a haze and made them reread the last few sentences in order to continue the ringing in their hearts a while longer, so as not to let the silence illumine the fact that reading, they had gained something - distance, a lesson, a companion, a new world - but now, after the last full stop, they had lost something palpable and felt a little emptier than before."

"Do you understand now why books are hated and feared? Because they reveal the pores on the face of life. The comfortable people want only the faces of the full moon, wax, faces without pores, hairless, expressionless."
Explore more quotes by Jonathan Kellerman

"Time spent researching varies from book to book. Some novels require months, even years of research, others very little. I try to do most of my research before I begin but inevitably questions emerge during the writing."

"It didn't feel difficult at the time because I was so charged up about both books. Afterward, however, I was pretty tired. In a good way, like after a great workout."

"That's what's so great about my job. I get paid to do what got me in trouble in grade school space out and play with my imaginary friends. In terms of Isaac, when the time's right."

"Each novel is harder than its predecessor because I must work harder at not repeating myself. However, I enjoy the challenge. This is the greatest job in the world."

"That has to remain the principal reason for doing it, doesn't it? I know it's possible to write for money, and many very good writers have done so. But for me, it has to remain the principal thing that I actually want to do the writing."

"We tend to read each other's books in sizeable chunks as they are written. I don't know that you could say we are ruthless with each other - in fact, I suppose we are very kind. There are ways to make suggestions which are not destructive."

"Without sounding pompous, I really do feel that I have a set of standards that I must adhere to, even leaving aside considerations of what the readers expect."

"I don't practice, but I am still officially in paediatrics. I keep in touch with journals, and I have a very good data bank of medical information and there is a key thing for a writer knowing where to go. I know where to go to get the information that I need."

"The characters emerge from my rather twisted mind. That's another enjoyable part of the job making stuff up."

"These people are real to me, and situations keep coming up where their emergence feels natural. It's like meeting old friends. I hope readers feel the same way."
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