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Books Quotes
"Books in a large university library system: 2,000,000. Books in an average large city library: 10,000. Average number of books in a chain bookstore: 30,000. Books in an average neighborhood branch library: 20,000."
37
"I don't have the feeling that as a very young person I read books that absolutely made their mark on my mind."
37
"It is books that teach us to refine our pleasures when young, and to recall them with satisfaction when we are old."
36
"I'm very lucky. I'm very fortunate that my books have never gone out of print - none of them."
36
"There are too many books I haven't read, too many places I haven't seen, too many memories I haven't kept long enough."
36
"I teethed on books of heroes such as Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln and King David."
36
"The biggest markets for my books outside the UK are France and Italy, and those are the two countries where I also have the closest personal relationships with my translators - I don't know whether that's a coincidence, or if there's something to be learned from it."
36
"I read one or two other books which gave me a background in mathematics other than logic."
36
"I have learned to do more with less, so you don't see the big books anymore."
35
"Quentin and I were constantly finding something new that we had in common and comic books were one of them. I think we were talking about comic books much earlier in our relationship, before I had the part."
35
"I loved to read when I was a kid, and as soon as I realized that an actual person got to make up the books I loved so much, I decided that that was the job for me."
35
"The deadlines are much, much longer with books. When I was a reporter, a lot of times I'd come in at 8:30 a.m., get an assignment right away, interview somebody, turn the story in by 9:30, and have the finished story in the paper that landed on my desk by noon."
35
"I'd always liked to read, but when I picked up books I wasn't getting the same kind of excitement from them that I was from going out clubbing. I wanted to get the same kind of feel."
35
"It's weirder and more surprising than the other books. I think there are more places where it's just more reality bending, deliberately so. I think it's a lot more emotionally raw."
34
"When I was growing up in the 1960s, there was starting to be more books geared towards young adults."
34
"All the books we own, both read and unread, are the fullest expression of self we have at our disposal. ... But with each passing year, and with each whimsical purchase, our libraries become more and more able to articulate who we are, whether we read the books or not."
34
"The books that help you the most are those which make you think the most."
34
"The writer I feel the most affinity with - you said you felt my books are 19th century novels, I think they're 18th century novels - is Fielding, Henry Fielding, he's the guy who does it for me."
34
"I took up a sort of a hobby of just hanging around the local library. I'd pick out an author and I would read all their books."
34
"No matter how people mess with you or let you down, or how you let yourself down, a good book means that when you get in bed that night, you have a good hour. I feel like you pay all day for that hour. That's what books mean to me. I can open this two-dimensional, flat white page with squiggly little black marks on them, and someone has created this world that you're going to enter into."
34
"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."
33
"I've written 16 children's books and five unpublished novels. Some of the latter were breathtakingly bad."
33
"The new spirituality will bring about what I'm calling the 'end of better.' And that is in fact what is called for in the next of the series of books that I've been writing."
33
"I always wanted to go to the Chavez school but I could never afford it when I was growing up so a lot of my learning came from magic books and watching other magicians. I was also very lucky that I had a couple of really good magic teachers."
33
"And yes, there's a simplicity to writing books because you're not a member of a team, so you make all the decisions yourself instead of deferring to a committee."
33
"Generally my typical books have lots of twists and turns a big surprise ending and then usually another surprise at the end and ideally, as in Garden of Beasts, we get to the very end and we find at the last few pages that there's yet another surprise."
33
"Henry Miller wrote novels, but he calls his protagonist Henry, often Henry Miller, and his books are in this gray area between memoir and novel."
32
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