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"It took me about three years to write About Grace. I wasn't teaching two of those years, so I was working eight-hour days, five days a week. And it would include research and reading - it wasn't just a blank page, laying down words."
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"I think that every reader on earth has a list of cherished books as unique as their fingerprints....I think that, as you age, you tend to gravitate towards the classics, but those aren't the books that give you the same sort of hope for the world that a cherished book does."
Author Name
Personal Development
"Just as one spoils the stomach by overfeeding and thereby impairs the whole body, so can one overload and choke the mind by giving it too much nourishment. For the more one reads the fewer are the traces left of what one has read; the mind is like a tablet that has been written over and over. Hence it is impossible to reflect; and it is only by reflection that one can assimilate what one has read. If one reads straight ahead without pondering over it later, what has been read does not take root, but is for the most part lost."
Author Name
Personal Development
"Those who are incapable of committing great crimes do not readily suspect them in others."
Author Name
Personal Development
"Whatever you're ready for is ready for you."
Author Name
Personal Development
"A book is as dangerous as any journey you might take. The person who closes the back cover may not be the same one that opened the front one. Treat them with respect."
Author Name
Personal Development
"Back at the Chateau Windsor there was a rat-like scratching at the door of my room. Vinod, the youngest servant, came in with a soda water. He placed it next to the bag of toffees. Then he watched me read. I was used to being observed reading. Sometimes the room would fill like a railway station at rush hour and I would be expected to cure widespread boredom."
Author Name
Personal Development
"Someday I must read this scholar Everyone. He seems to have written so much--all of it wrong."
Author Name
Personal Development
"The true reader reads every work seriously in the sense that he reads it whole-heartedly, makes himself as receptive as he can. But for that very reason he cannot possibly read every work solemly or gravely. For he will read 'in the same spirit that the author writ.'... He will never commit the error of trying to munch whipped cream as if it were venison."
Author Name
Personal Development
"It is a good rule after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between."
Author Name
Personal Development
"Reading for enjoyment won't die altogether, but this Ereader device has the potential to repel those less imaginative from fiction. And that could have an undesirable domino effect."
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"I found my first novel difficult. I don't want to make it sound like it's any more difficult than driving a cab or going to any other job, but there are so many opportunities for self-doubt, that you just kind of need to soldier on."
Driving
"I write reviews of science books for the Boston Globe, so I like to give science books."
Science
"I've been getting into Nick Drake lately, the folk singer. Sad, gorgeous stuff."
Writing
"Travel definitely affects me as a writer."
Travel
"You don't say, I'm going to be a writer when I grow up - at least I didn't."
Writing
"I guess whatever maturity is there may be there because I've been keeping a journal forever. In high school my friends would make fun of me - you're doing your man diary again. So I was always trying to translate experience into words."
Friendship
"For me it was perfect, because it wasn't a very competitive environment, and it was a studio program. They basically send you off, and say, bring us some work, and we'll help you improve it. It really rewarded self-discipline."
Work
"But then of course you reach a point where you have to say, I've got to figure out how this book's going to end. Otherwise, you're going to write yourself into so many dead-ends."
Writing
"It wasn't until I was 26 or 25 when I started sending work out to magazines."
Work
"It took me about three years to write About Grace. I wasn't teaching two of those years, so I was working eight-hour days, five days a week. And it would include research and reading - it wasn't just a blank page, laying down words."
Reading
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