Quotes About Books

The fate of the singers who, like my songs, went up in flame was also the fate of the books which I later wrote. All of them went up in flame to Heaven in a fire which broke out one night at my home in Bad Homburg as I lay ill in a hospital.

I have written a few children's books. The first book that I wrote was for children. It was called 'The Package', and it was a mystery story in pictures. It had no words.

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.

I've always wanted to be a part of that experience of writing to an audience that is just starting to fall in love with books. When I felt that my writing for adults had become cemented, I decided to write a YA series.

The only thing that makes a book YA is that it is about teenagers, and it is written in a very conventional, non-artsy, non-pretentious way. YA is not the place for the oblique or the cryptic. If it is in any way experimental in form, it is not YA.

All of my books, which are supposedly, I mean they're called YA novels, my hope is that adults would find no reason not to read them if they read them.

When I was young, there was no such thing as YA. You simply went from reading children's novels to reading adult novels. So one year, I was reading Tove Jansson, and the next year, I was reading Stephen King.

I think more people are going to continue reading YA as well as reading other books because they have learned that they can find books there which they will truly love: a teenage protagonist is close enough to adult so readers of whichever age can sympathise and empathise with them.

Initially, I wanted to write middle grade. YA scared me: there's a lot of responsibility in being a YA author. It's so important to give that age range the right books that reflect their world and show them themselves.

When I was in the YA age range myself, I didn't feel like there were a lot of books for me.

I wasn't one of those kids who stole Richard Pryor records. I wasn't a comedy-nerd kid. I had no concept of stand-up. Actually, the only inkling of stand-up I had was I read one of Paul Reiser's books when I was, like, 12. I found it at a yard sale, and I carried it around with me for six years.

I'm a sporadic reader. I have moments when I can't stop... then I kind of forget that I can read. But then I go, 'Oh God, yeah, books!'

People say, 'All my son will read is 'Captain Underpants,' or 'My son is crazy about shark books, is that O.K.?' I want to be the person to say, 'Yeah, that's really O.K., as long as he's motivated to want to read.'

I think of all media, television is the most powerful when it comes to selling books, because when you have a feature film, yeah, there's a rush. But then after that month is over and the movie goes out of release, that's it.

For a whole year in elementary school, when the class marched down to the school library every week, I would refuse to return my book. I would just check it out again and again. Every week. For a whole year. The object of my fourth-grade filibuster was 'D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths.'

I haven't written a young-adult book in years. I'm also doing six 'Goosebumps' books a year now.

I asked a French critic a couple of years ago why my books did so well in France. He said it was because in my novels people both act and think. I got a kick out of that.

I don't travel and tell stories, because that's not the way these days. But I write my books to be read aloud, and I think of myself in that oral tradition.

I interviewed a lot of people in India, and I asked my mother to send me a lot of Bengali books on the tradition of dream interpretation. It's a real way for me to remember how people think about things in my culture.

I'm not a massive reader of traditional books.

When self-publishing started, it was mostly people who really couldn't write. And they just wanted to get their book out, and they couldn't get traditional deals.

Asking me to choose between a traditional book and a Kindle is like asking me which of my dogs I love most.

Our literary culture is marinated in deep traditions of the fantastic and the supernatural, and we export those rich qualities in films and books on a spectacular industrial scale.

I grew up in an apartment that would have made a trailer look really decadent and nice. Pretty much the only dependable thing I had was books.