Quotes About Books

In a television interview, I said that diversity in our children's books should include the adventures of disabled children, travellers and gipsies, LGBT teens, different cultures, classes, colours, religions. It shouldn't be a token gesture, nor do such stories need to be 'issue-based'.

I read a lot when I'm travelling and always have a couple of books on the go.

I read most often when I am on the road, travelling on my journeys. In cars, on planes, trains... I'm very lucky that I don't get car sick when I am reading and I can spend really long journeys immersed in a book!

I bring spiritual books with me while travelling. I like books about thoughts and how you see the world.

I love reading. I spend a huge amount of time travelling on planes and have always got a book on the go.

Sometimes, my reading choices are defined by the place I'm travelling next.

Olives changed the direction of my life. My husband Michel and I found a ruined farm with an olive grove near Cannes. I became fascinated by olives and found myself travelling around the Mediterranean for 17 months, researching two books on the subject.

I have a mini-library at home and I have begun reading books I'd purchased during my travels.

My first favourite book was 'Are You My Mother?' A picture book about a lost bird. After that my favourites changed almost yearly. I loved everything by Roald Dahl, but my favourite was probably 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.' A librarian gave me a first edition of that book, which I treasure.

I grew up in a cloistered, conservative culture that adhered to strict gender roles. So it's easy to understand why the 'girl dressed as a boy' trope resonated so much. In a world that didn't want to give people like me adventures or significance, books with cross-dressing girls were treasures.

It's always a treat for me to go to the British Library.

I treated the first few books as a very long journalistic exercise. I thought of every chapter as an article that needed to be finished.

I had a library of maybe 1,000 books in my room in Buenos Aires. I did have the sense that everything there was organised in the right way. You'll probably think I needed serious psychiatric treatment, but there were times when I would not buy a book because I knew it wouldn't fit one of the categories into which I had divided the library.

We live in such a celebrity-driven culture, but all those people have to go buy toilet paper, and all those people have products they use and their favorite sweet treats. They all have to write to-do lists, and they're all reading books - well, hopefully most people are doing those things.

It's embarrassing to admit how many times I've reread the following: 'A Tree Grows in Brooklyn,' '1984,' 'Lord of the Flies,' 'The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter,' 'Germinal,' 'We Have Always Lived in the Castle,' and 'A Moveable Feast.'

I discovered writing children's books was a way to keep living in my imagination like a child. So I wrote a number of books before I started 'Magic Tree House.' Then, once I got that, I never looked back because I could be somewhere different in every single book.

Of all my childhood books, 'The Giving Tree and Hope for the Flowers' really did change my early world, but after reading 'Momo' in my 30s, I thought, Ahhhhhh, this is the one book I wish I had read as a kid! Then reread at every subsequent chapter of my life.

Trees are being saved because of the Kindle.

I liked climbing trees and could often be found up one reading a book. I played games with Dad and drew maps for him on isometric paper. It was very bonding.

Most books are surplus to the world's requirements, and I am going to sound very conceited here, but I am trying to write books that aren't just using up trees.

Learned to read, and for a while as a kid, you think books are just leaves on trees. Then suddenly, you think a human being is making that, and maybe you could do that.

In non-fiction, I found John Gardner's two writing books to be tremendously helpful.

May I have a few friends and many books - both true.

Oh, Sweetie. No one ever gets through their TBR list. For every book you finish, you'll add five more. That's just the way it works.