Quotes About Books

I am something of an aficionado of thrift stores. In my youth, I regularly searched their shelves for old books.

In my youth, I found that I was quite often inspired and pushed forward by what I read.

I have an agent, John Brockman, who is an agent to many academic authors like Dan Gilbert and Steven Pinker, and he's very good at conning academics into writing books. He pulled this trick on me.

Mass market paperback thrillers are a dime a dozen. The trick is to find something that actually sticks to the ribs.

Balancing an illustrator and author can be tricky, but I was an illustrator mostly before I wrote my books.

Summer is always a tricky time to recommend new literary fiction. The big releases do not hit until fall.

If you read the poets of the 19th century in Latin America, you would see that Havana or Mexico City or Buenos Aires are incredibly modern and global cities that they were not. And eventually they became real, and they became real because people read these books and tried to live in a better world.

I have been reading crime books ever since I was a child, but I had never tried to write one.

I was a great reader of fairy tales. I tried to read the entire fairy tale section of the library.

All my life, books have felt alive; some more so than people, or rather, some people. Alive - this has to do with me, I know, and not the books - in a way that some people aren't. Alive as teachers, alive as minds, alive as imaginative triggers.

The time frame is summer 1961, a year after the gold medal in the National Science Fair. I always saw my 'Coalwood' books as a trilogy. This book finishes the story of my life in Coalwood. I think it's the best of the three.

One of the traps or the pitfalls of writing a trilogy - or a triptych, or whatever term you want to use - is that the second book can be a long second act to get you from book one to book three, which borrows all of its energy from the first book.

Netflix was like, 'We want all the books!' So, thank you, Eric Heisserer. But I was really nervous at first. It's one thing to hand over the keys to one trilogy, but it's quite another to hand over the keys to 10 years of work.

Occasionally, I hear grumbles about everything being a series or a trilogy, but apart from the question of them maybe selling more books, I think that there's a real problem in trying to introduce a new world or a new concept while also getting your reader to pay close attention to your characters and themes.

I read Tolkien when I was 11. I read 'The Hobbit' and the trilogy on a road trip with my family. I identified with the nonhumans in those books, and it never occurred to me why that was.

I notice when I'm on these trips, I read like mad. It's the only thing that seems to center me, bring me back to remembering who I am. Or forgetting who I am!

My mother doesn't need much sleep. At any hour of the night, you'd wake up, and she'd be reading. She'd read five, six books a week. When we went on sailing trips, she'd bring a suitcaseful for the week. Even then, her office would have to send more.

Books on offer to preteen boys, for example, are all too often nihilistic, without a sense that the world is ordered and everything has a purpose and that those who strive hard and behave in noble, brave or self-sacrificing ways will triumph over adversity.

One trouble with developing speed reading skills is that by the time you realize a book is boring you've already finished it.

I always have trouble with titles for my books. I usually have no title until the editor has to present the book and calls me frantically, 'Judy, we need a title.'

With my mother, Julie Andrews Edwards, I've authored such children's books as the 'Dumpy the Dump Truck' series, 'Dragon: Hound of Honor,' 'The Great American Mousical,' 'Simeon's Gift' and 'Thanks to You: Wisdom from Mother and Child.'

I grew up with three little brothers. Every Christmas, we'd have piles of toy trucks and Lincoln Logs and G.I. Joes under the tree. Those were for them. For me? My No. 1 favorite present of all time: books. Two or three tall stacks of wonderful stories that I could lose myself in for weeks.

After 'Bake Off,' I got these book deals that were very much baking books. But the books I'm producing now like 'Perfect Plates in Five Ingredients' and 'Comfort,' they're really a truer representation of who I am as a food writer and a food industry professional.

Mark Hopkins was one of the truest and best men that ever lived. He had a keen analytical mind; was thoroughly accurate, and took general supervision of the books, contracts, etc. He was strictly the office man, and never bought or sold anything. I always felt when I was in the East that our business in his hands was entirely safe.